We Don’t Have a Gun Problem, We Have a People Problem

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by MARK DAVIS

One year ago this week, a monster roamed the halls of an elementary school in my state of Texas, murdering 19 students and two teachers before a federal tactical team leapfrogged the infamously unresponsive local officers and killed him. While the months that followed featured appropriately harsh assessments of a sluggish law enforcement response at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, the approach of the anniversary has rekindled the activism that ignites after every mass shooting—the rush to blame guns for a problem based not in weaponry but in our society.

The Texas legislature has been meeting since the beginning of the year, a session that has featured waves of lobbying designed to erode Second Amendment protections, as if stricter gun controls will stem further tragedies.

That lobbying has been undertaken by people wielding a uniquely compelling strain of testimony. Many are the parents of kids killed that day, and some usually rock-ribbed legislators have been worn down by the emotional impact of hearing the pleas of grieving parents seeking to “do something” to “make a difference” so that there can finally be “action to address the problem.”

The Uvalde parents deserve our prayers, our good wishes, and our attention to their unspeakable loss. Yet one can truly grieve with them while also believing that gun control is just not the answer—and would sadly not prevent another massacre from taking more children from their parents. Unfortunately, bad policy does not become good policy simply because it is desired by a sympathetic community.

This doesn’t stop the gun-grabbing Left from pushing what it likes to call “common sense” solutions, which always curiously involve telling law-abiding gun owners what they will no longer be able to do and excoriating politicians who “refuse to act.”

In fact, our lawmakers are acting. They have withstood the latest assault on constitutional rights of the type that spring from every shooting.

These assaults on our rights are a tricky business because they come in the wake of real, deadly assaults, often on our children. And that pain, epitomized by the Uvalde grief that touched us all, can sometimes erode the clarity of even staunch gun rights advocates. It’s then that bad and useless ideas flow freely, from red flag laws which mangle due process to age restrictions that deny basic rights to adults.

The truth is, we do not have a gun problem in Texas—or anywhere else in America. We have a people problem. Increasingly fatherless households, a deepening cultural rot, and a generational penchant for long, damaging hours at computer screens have combined to form a legion of young men untethered from the values that used to inform the American journey to manhood— work hard, get good grades, make something of yourself, cultivate a healthy social life, get married, have kids, and if you choose, spend your Sundays in church.

Mass shooters do not come from the ranks of people who do those things. They emerge from cauldrons of dysfunction and despair that we have largely helped create in an America that has lost its way.

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And of course instead of blaming the person who did this they prefer to blame Guns Gun Owners the Gun Lobby and Gun Stores they never lay the blame on the shooters they just look for scapegoats

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Last edited 11 months ago by hepsolodre

There is much that could be done, but the very people who are the problem refuse to participate. First, the whole spectrum of entertainment media could begin sending the message that drug abuse is bad, harmful, dangerous and deadly. Drug problems instigate many of the shootings we see. Along with the drug culture comes the gun culture, a culture that glorifies the threatening power of wielding a gun, not the sporting or self-defense purposes.

The left should also work on figuring out how they can support their beloved abortion without rendering the value of human life worthless. Anyone that cares to engage their brain knows that at some point in a pregnancy, life commences, yet the far left, who controls everything on the left, refuses to let a small matter like murdering infant life stand in the way of doing what they want when they want to do it the way they want to do it.

The left’s rhetoric should also be modified so they don’t feel they have to vilify their opponents to make their points. Maybe if they had a better record, better ideas, fewer failures and more responsible, mainstream positions, they wouldn’t have to characterize the opposition as terrorists, traitors or existential threats.

While red flag laws would be great, if some way could be imagined that would not allow Democrats to abuse the system, but the steps above would eliminate, eventually, most that would wind up on any red flag lists.

Those that demand an answer for mass shootings truly don’t understand the problem or refuse to see it. Or, worse, they merely exploit tragedies to pursue their political goals. The answer is in modifying human behavior, changing character back to what was more prevalent decades ago, where people actually cared about other people instead of thinking killing someone is a viable method of carrying out an argument.