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The Daily Signal
The Real Reason
We Have Mass Shootings
Walter E. Williams
March 21, 2018
One of the unavoidable tragedies of youth is the temptation to think
that what is seen today has always been. Nowhere is this more
noticeable than in our responses to the recent Parkland, Florida,
massacre.
Part of the responses to those murders are calls to raise the age to
purchase a gun and to have more thorough background checks—in a word,
to make gun purchases more difficult. That’s a vision that sees easy
gun availability as the problem; thus, the solution is to reduce that
availability.
The vision that sees “easy” availability as the problem ignores the
fact of U.S. history that guns were far more available yesteryear. With
truly easy gun availability, there was nowhere near the gun mayhem and
murder that we see today.
I’m tempted to ask those who believe that guns are today’s problem
whether they think that guns were nicer yesteryear.
What about the calls for bans on the AR-15 so-called assault rifle? It
turns out that, according to 2016 FBI statistics, rifles accounted for
368 of the 17,250 homicides in the U.S. that year. That means
restrictions on the purchase of rifles would do little or nothing for
the homicide rate.
Leaders of the gun control movement know this. Their calls for more
restrictive gun laws are part of a larger strategy to outlaw gun
ownership.
Gun ownership is not our problem. Our problem is a widespread decline
in moral values that has nothing to do with guns. That decline includes
disrespect for those in authority, disrespect for oneself, little
accountability for anti-social behavior, and a scuttling of religious
teachings that reinforced moral values.
Let’s examine elements of this decline.
If any of our great-grandparents or even grandparents who passed away
before 1960 were to return, they would not believe the kind of personal
behavior all too common today. They wouldn’t believe that youngsters
could get away with cursing and assaulting teachers. They wouldn’t
believe that some school districts, such as Philadelphia’s, employ more
than 400 school police officers.
During my primary and secondary schooling, from 1942 to 1954, the only
time one saw a policeman in school was during an assembly period where
we had to listen to a boring lecture on safety. Our ancestors also
wouldn’t believe that we’re now debating whether teachers should be
armed.
There are other forms of behavior that would have been deemed grossly
immoral yesteryear. There are companies such as National Debt Relief,
CuraDebt, and LendingTree, which advertise that they will help you to
avoid paying all the money you owe. So after you and a seller agree to
terms of a sale, if you fail to live up to your half of the bargain,
there are companies that will assist you in ripping off the seller.
There are companies that counsel senior citizens on how to shelter
their assets from nursing home care costs. For example, a surviving
spouse may own a completely paid-for home that’s worth $500,000. The
costs of nursing home care might run $50,000 a year.
By selling her house, she could pay the nursing home costs, but her
children wouldn’t inherit the house. There are firms that come in to
shelter her assets so that she can bequeath her home to her heirs and
leave taxpayers to foot the nursing home bill.
In my book, that’s immoral, but it is so common that most of us give it
no thought.
There is one moral failing that is devastating to the future of our
nation. That failing, which has wide acceptance by the American people,
is the idea that Congress has the authority to forcibly use one
American to serve the purposes of another American. That is nothing
less than legalized theft and accounts for roughly three-quarters of
federal spending.
For the Christians among us, we should consider that when God gave
Moses the commandment “Thou shalt not steal,” he probably didn’t mean
thou shalt not steal unless you get a majority vote in the Congress.
Read this and other articles at The Daily Signal
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