Opinion
USA – -(Ammoland.com)- For years gun-control-groups and their supporters, as well as assorted politicians and their media allies have been proclaiming that the availability and “easy access” of guns that is the primary factor driving “gun violence” in the United States.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Of course, gun control as an ideology is as allergic to the truth as a vampire is to garlic.
The fact of the matter is that from the 1750’s up through the 1980’s, there were far fewer gun laws, and guns were more readily available to people, including kids, than they are today and yet Mass Shootings were reasonably rare events.
I grew up in the 70’s and 80’s and turned 18 in 1991. Like many kids of the era, we had both access to real firearms and a collection of incredibly realistic looking cap guns of various types. From the traditional style .38 Chiefs Special that took “ring caps” to the old “Cowboy” type revolvers that used paper “strip caps” to more modern types like 1911 pistols, replica’s of Walther PPK pistols, .357 Magnums, Luger’s and others and even full size copies of MP-5’s, Mini Uzi’s, AK-47’s
These newer types all used “magazines” that fed a plastic strip of caps into the “action,” they advertised on the packaging that they had functioning actions and even “ejected” the “spent rounds.”
It was a regular part of growing up than to spend summer days and or weekends when school was in session, running all over town or the woods with your friends from the neighborhood, playing “cops and robbers” or “war” or whatever people called it in their specific part of the Country.
The point being, 10 to 20 kids would spend all day playing and “shooting” at each other, and those same kids all had unfettered access to real firearms, yet the idea of actually shooting someone with a real gun never entered our minds!
We were able to differentiate between “play” or “make belief” and the real world but the two never mixed in our minds.
Kids also used to take their real guns to school for a variety of legitimate reasons, in all parts of the Country during the same period and again, mass and school shootings were rare events. The late Justice Scalia told a story of taking his rifle on the subway and El in NYC when he was growing up to shoot on the school shooting team, and no one blinked. Can you imagine the over the top response to something like that today?!
Some kids took their guns to school because they were, like Scalia, part of the school supported rifle or trap or skeet teams, some because they hunted before or after school. Some because they were in wood or metal shop and were doing repairs or making parts to get a grade in that class.
So what changed? Our culture did ! Hyper-violent movies, as well as video games, play at least some sort of role in this. But that's a topic for another column. But its clear to me that the availability of firearms is far from the primary factor in whats causing our current spate of mass shootings by kids.
More articles, commentary and information by D. Roberts available at That Every Man Be Armed.com
anti-2a grabbers of all “genders” should consider that…a lot of things can happen to dog s**t
Do these poor children know what you did? That vile act of manhood in your mouth? I hope you’re proud of yourself. You sure seemed to enjoy it. You are not stupid enough to be pranked. You were acting on true desire. Admit it. Your mouth is big enough to handle two at once. As you said. Or are you that stupid?
@Felicia, you got the wrong site sweetie, this is not Craigslist.
I’ve been watching violent movies since the 1960s and I have yet to see any guns create the violence, it was always the man or woman behind the instrument that caused it. That is in place in reality by every time that a bad guy loses a gun in a movie, they find another instrument to cause mayhem until they lose that instrument then they go on to find another. The same as the good guys do that try to defend themselves or the innocent. How many times in these movies that you see someone run out of ammunition or… Read more »
Id like to comment on/agree with an earlier comment or two. Quite a few years back, I worked as an LEO. I spent a few years working with at-risk minority kids. Most came from single parent “homes” ( one kid lived in the dilapidated old garage, in the winter, in the Northeast. His mom’s boyfriend didn’t like him!), and were gang affiliated. Many of the teenage boys, and some of the girls, told me they wanted to go to prison. The boys said their pops, or uncle Jimmy was in prison. It made them a man. The girls just wanted… Read more »
I agree 100% with everything you have said except for the part about the lazy parents. If you have the time and the stomach to spend time in the family custody courts you will find that the fathers are systematically ripped away from the “custody” of their children and transformed into the status of visitor Wichita society that the father must have done something wrong or he would have had custody there for no one supports the father in gaining access and his need to nurturing his child.
Yep, we played army, cowboys and Indians, (I am cherokee), cops and robbers, but if we had a real problem with someone, we would deal with it one on one, with our hands. Not one time did anytime think about shooting the other person or pull a gun out. But, man, deer, coyotes, quail, rabbits, raccoons, ducks, turkeys, wild game was in danger of it was in season. Yes we hunted and fished with our local game warden but we never wanted to break the laws, we wanted to be able to shoot game next year and eat. Today’s kids,… Read more »
In thelate 1960’s the Supreme Court of the US kicked God out of the government schools. There went any ties to morality. Thus cast adrift, the values and limits of society could be changed into anything. If you’ve ever read Lord of the Flies (we had to, in high school– it was repulsive. None of us had any idea thats where our culture was headed at the time, but looking back, here we are). Less than a decade later, that same “august body of judges” declared that human life can be ended at the whim of another, even whilst that… Read more »
@Tio, it was Mr. Justice Hugo Black. The case was Everson v. Board of Education. The year 1947. The state was New Jersey. Black hated religion, loathed Catholics, and saw Everson as a way to damage religious faith. Black rewrote history to fit his ideological goal of separating religion from anything that the government touched (which was never the intent of the founders or Jefferson). Black was overjoyed when the very next year he got another chance to strike at organized religion when he authored the opinion in McCollum v. Board of Ed. invalidating a program for voluntary religious education… Read more »
So….. retroactive abortion…. we can claim this instead of murder…. Obama was all for it, got to be good, right?
Feminism and the “Women’s Equality Movement” shredded the Father / Child relationships through women being convinced they would be better off alone with the children and a child support check rather than the love, discipline and nurturing of the fathers. Then, because the feminists couldn’t properly run their, “women’s crisis centers” in a lucrative manner as was developed by Erin Pizzy of the United Kindom, that had to turn to junkyard dog tactics with these women and convince them to create false allegations of abused against the fathers in order to force the family courts to immediately give child custody… Read more »
I am a 61 year old feminist, no children by choice due health issues. Although I agree that some feminists have gone overboard with women’s rights, some of us do not view men as the enemy. God made us male and female for a reason and it is ideal for both parents to be there for their children. What floors me is how many young women have unintended pregnancies with no reliable male in sight, especially with all the different birth control methods available. I would never ask a woman to have an abortion just because she’s single but we… Read more »
If you were already a woman what made you think that you had to step outside of that realm to become a feminist?
And if what you say is true then why are you not heading up an organization to to reverse the damage that feminism has caused our society?
Great answer and thanks.
You can point to any statistic you want, but when you boil it all down, it comes to a lack of quality parenting. We, as a society, have chosen to excuse parents from the responsibility of raising their kids, as it was the easiest solution. So the sociopaths raised their children to be sociopaths, and they raised their children to be sociopaths. Now they are on the streets, free from conscience and only caring about themselves, wrecking havoc. If you want to change this, you need but make the parents stand in court when their child disrupts or misses class… Read more »
“Standing up in court” That’s one of the main problems! Either the courts dismiss the situations as frivolous or the parents hire attorneys that handle the case for them and it boils down to a slap on the wrist! Courts across the country systematically tossing out case after case of situations regarding social change or justice. They even throw out cases of improper lane changes, not using your turn signals properly, following to close, speedi,g in excess of the LIMITS. The police forces and prosecutors and courts won’t even bother getting involved with these types of cases anymore unless there… Read more »
Stop and THINK about when ALL of these mass school shootings really started……. how about with the CURRENT generation of kids…then so called millennials.. … when I was in school 40+ years ago, we had Guns in our trunks or gun racks while at school during hunting season….. and when a teacher asked for a knife to use, 1/2 the class would offer him one.
What is WRONG with today’s generation ????
Ever hear of the book or movie, “Valley of the Dolls”? Pretty much based on all the housewives and all the narcotics they had in the home medicine cabinet that they survived on all day along with alcohol and everything else that they would do while Daddy’s off to work making money to pay for the household circus! If you look back at the sitcoms of the 50’s and 60’s, like Father’s Knows Best, Leave it to Beaver, My Three Sons, Hazel, there was always so.done who had a drink in thier hand, somebody was smoking a cigarette, women were… Read more »
I remember those exact same days. You are definitely on point.
The whole notion of violent video games and movies being a cause for shootings is wrong. I have played this violent video games my whole life and never had any thoughts about committing these acts and that is the same with movies. There are very rare cases of kids killing because what they see in movies and games. All these shooters are just copying what past shooters have done in the the past because of the media.
James Carney and a whole slew of PROFESSIONAL HOLLYWOOD ELIETES FROM TJE 30’s, 40’s, 50’s and 60’s would AGREE!
That was supposed to be, James CAGNEY. But let’s not leave out all the blood and guts violence and shredding of humans throughout the Bible… I mean just where would the liberals and feminists go on their crusades without history to support them?
The lack of restraint by both teachers and students by a total lack of discipline in the schools, is the only education most kids get. Just like a prison, where most are headed, get too violent off to solitary. Until you cool off. Forty years ago we were educating cogs for industry. Now we are educating inmates. With the same homicidal and suicidal tendencies.
We Played the Same (War) Games as You ! Possibly to the More Extreme ! A Friend Grew up , an Army Brat, He Had Real (non Functioning) , Practice Grenades and Machine gun belts & brass rounds .We Would Camp out on the Weekends ! Play till Sunday Night. NONE of Us Became Any Type , of Killer or Mass Shooter . Guns Were Common in Almost , Every Households of Our Friends. We Didn’t Sneek them Out. Or Mess With Them. Some of Us Had Real Guns . But Play , Was Play, No Real Guns Came Out.… Read more »
We are also in the time of psyc drugs where they are handed out like candy to make boys quiet like little girls.
Mommy’s always had their medicine cabinet filled full of Darvon, Valium and any other narcotic the doctor would give them because of their, “special time of the month”. And that’s exactly where the kids went to go get their “candy” back in the fifties and sixties so don’t act like it’s something new. Especially all the junior high and high school girls… ALWAYS had some of Mommy’s dope in their purses, trying to act all grown up as they started trying on their makeup, nylons TRYING to act and looking like what they thought were “women”…. then they run face-first… Read more »
What has changed is the lack of education of our young.Through the Leftist’s and it’s organization the NEA,history,Civics and the Constitution have stopped being taught as those subjects once were.
If the young do not know their history and what their rights are it makes for a more compliant group of slaves,In order to have control,the U S must have Gun Control,for a disarmed population,It’s About Control.