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.
About Dan Roberts
Dan Roberts is a grassroots supporter of gun rights that has chosen AmmoLand Shooting Sports News as the perfect outlet for his frank, ‘Jersey Attitude' filled articles on Guns and Gun Owner Rights. As a resident of the oppressive state of New Jersey, he is well placed to be able to discuss the abuses of government against our inalienable rights to keep and bear arms as he writes from deep behind NJ's Anti-Gun iron curtain. Read more from Dan Roberts .
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 to be tough. Another gang member boy was shot 9 times and survived! He went back to the gang when he recovered. We found his body 2 weeks later in a local pond. Shot dead. These are just a few of the many, many stories I could tell. The point is that these are the kind of kids we have been cultivating for 30+ years. The chickens have come home to roost. The do-good hippies from the sixties became therapists and politicians and brought their pie-in-the-sky ideals and methods, and we are paying the price for letting them mold our young people, instead of parents, who became too lazy to do their one true job on earth-RAISE THEIR KIDS TO BE RESPONSIBLE, SENSIBLE ADULTS!
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.
I really believe that it is time to protest the gun violence in movies and games . Does anyone know would the NRA and or GOA begin to organize such protest on a national basis?
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 the gun jams and they grabbed a steel pipe or a plank or some other kind of device to kill their opposition?
If you are truly a veteran than you were trained in hand-to-hand combat and in hand-to-hand combat a lot of times does not involve firearms. A helmet, a K-Bar, hell, even a rock or an e-tool did the job!
Quit blaming the device used and start blaming the mentality behind the device! As a Veteran you should know better!
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, they have had no father figure, or something went astray like a bent misfired synapse. The video games are not the p problem or even enough of one to even mention. When I worked gangs, they went after easy pickings, those needing discipline and father figure structure. They would recruit those types and require obedience as well as a specific crime to get in. When I left that job and went back to school, I decided to be there for any kid needing help. I have taught hundreds to shoot, we and safely. I taught shotguns to the wonderful lady that allowed illinois to get concealed carry. Sadly, she was nearly beaten to death and the Democrats violated the judges or are so instead of the constitutional carry, we have to still be subject to police powers in this state.
Sorry for that tangent, but I guess what I am saying is that it’s not a bit of video games but the thoughts these new breed of gangs have no respect for the lives of anyone not in their gang. I left dealing with gangs in 1995 and started seeing more and more of these hard core gang member. This was when la started recruiting felons to become cops. Now, we have runaway immigration, both legal and illegal, that do not assimilate into American type culture, but make enclaves of themselves.
We need to build the wall, stop all immigration, and declare ms13 a terrorist organization. All immigration fir st least 25 years. We did this after ww2, until the lying murdering teddy Kennedy pulled his commie crap and flooded us with undocumented voters. Ms13 and other criminal gangs flood our country, illegals from south America, China, middle east, then their chain migration allows brothunclecousindad come in with his new wives and 14 kids to immediately go on welfare. We cannot sustain our heritage as this American nation flooding it with so many cultures that do not, nor want to become what we were. They want to change us to their way of life, crime and all. And on top of all of this, we are told white or American black babies are bad for the ENVIRONMENT and we now need to let in all the other babies, with families attached, because we dont have progrowth baby production. I keep hoping to hear that really loud pop when the citizens pull their heads out from where they are and realize what a sham this stuff is. We need to turn off the bird feeder and take care of our country and more importantly, our own kids first. Take kids into the woods on hikes, let them see how wonderful nature is, take them to the range, teach them how to shoot safely and to use guns properly. Sponsor some kids so they can go to your local range on family or youth fest days, where NRA instructors one on one teach safety and sports shooting. (We have converted so many liberal journalistswhen they come out to cover kids and guns and we take the anchor through cowboy action, 3 gun, bullseye and other disciplines. Their eyes light up when they fire ar types, garlands, Quigley models etc… ). Take the kids hunting or fishing, that smile you get back is priceless.
Sorry so long, but I helped work juvenile gangs from Gary indianapolis, east chicago in the mid nineties juvenile DOC.
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 life is yet in its mother’s womb. don’t think that’s significant? Think again. School kids today KNOW that tens of milions of their peers have been snuffed out for the simplebreason they were “inconvenient”. So what’s the REAL difference between killing soeone IN the womn and waiting till that same one is outside the womb? Not much.
Refer back to the earlier SCOTUS proclamation removing God (and all He stands for) from the school system. Later that same “august body” of powermongers in black nighties ruled similarly in Lawrence, and more recently Obergefell.
And WE THE PEOPLE have sat by silently and let them carry off this total restructuring of society Soon enough they may well declare that we none of us have “the right” to defend our own lives and those of our loved ones. This will put the a-moral lawless ones in charge.
@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 class taught on public school property.
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 to the wayward mothers Then the feminists promised these women protection and support in thier crisis centers whereas the feminist centers were able to turn in a headcount of crisis cases or, “victims” of the false allegations and the beginning of the societal structure of father/child gun culture amongst so many other traits, traditions and such generally passed down father to son and daughter diminished from then on.
Ever since, for a father to even,mention a firearm while having the children during his, “visitation” with them just fueled the fires of yet more false allegations and so goes the destruction of our fundamentals of society.
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 women need to take precautions until we’ve met Mr. Right. Marriages can work with two equal partners if they pool their strengths and help each other with their weaknesses. The children would benefit greatly from an old style household that includes both parents.
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?
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 a certain amount of times. You can’t make a sociopath care about their children, but you can make them stand up and take responsibility for them!
“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 is a significant accident with injuries or death. This in turn further errodes the fundamental values and principles once established to maintain the foundation of our nation. All because of the time and money strain it puts on court and staff.
It’s that liberal, “Oh well? It is what it is” tripe!
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 always going off to the special place because they had discomfort once a month then they would start with the Carbon painkillers and Valium and all kinds of Narcotics mixed with alcohol to cover up… You figure if you go through that extent killing whatever brain says you have there’s not going to be many left pass along to the younger generation. But it was the Hands-On discipline that kept people running straight boys and girls alike. How many of you didn’t have the fear of God strike you in those days when the street lights went on and you weren’t home yet?
Now days a kid will tell you that f*** off then call social services and turn you in and get you busted for hurting their feelings.
We lost control of the schools back in the 60s because you always had the single person that bitched and moaned about having to pay taxes for the school system when he didn’t have any kids so they upgraded it to federal control and we all know what happens when the dumbass federal government gets involved trying to take over anyting? Remember Katrina? FEMA taking 5 days to get water to the Super Dome?
When you look at the bottom line of anything of this magnitude the responsibility and the duty will always fall back upon the individual citizen stepping up to the plate and writing what is wrong!
People that want to sit back and wait for an election to get rid of a corrupt official are one of the biggest problems we face because they, ( WE, The People) openly admit there’s a high crime being committed by an official yet they, ( WE, The People) ALLOW the official to carry on doing the same crime over and over again waiting for election day rather than them, (WE, The People) applying the power that WE derive from within our state constitutions to move toward grand jury indictment and removal of the corrupt officials immediately!
IT’S ALWAYS OUR OWN DAMN FAULT FOR SITTING ON OUR ASSES AND NOT YANKING THESE CORRUPT BASTARDS AND BITCHES OUT OF OFFICE NOW! YOU DO NOT CONDONE CORRUPTION AND MALFEASANCE BY ALLOWING IT TO CONTINUE AFTER YOU DISCOVER It!
Waiting to vote a criminal out of office means you have, 1) Discovered their crime. 2) By waiting you CONDONE the crime and thetefore, 3) ENJOIN THE CRIME!
To the citizens of the United States; either grow a pair and start ripping the cancers out of our nation without mercy or suffer the further losses of our FREEDOMS, LIBERTIES and OUR SOVEREIGNTY!
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. We All Grew Up With ,
COMMON SENSE ! We Respected Life , God & Country !
All But a Few Ended Up in the Military, some By Draft or Like Me ,
Enlisted . To This Day ! We Aren’t Mass Shooters or Killers !
Spare the Rod , Spoil the Child – Make a Nut Case !
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 right into the feminist movement!
BOOM FROM THE WHOMB for generations. Somebody, ANYBODY…. PROVE ME WRONG!
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.