The kids have changed, not the guns, you can or could get a lot of firepower when you wanted to, especially back then. The AR platform has been around since the 60's What has changed...? It is not the guns, it is the kids or society in general that has changed, back then if you had issues with another kid, you handled it on the playground..and kids went to the playground to burn off excess energy. Some of my fondest memories of elementary school was playing soccer with my classmates and we went back into class feeling good because we burned off some of that excess energy that all kids have and we also bonded with our classmates. Now there is no playground and to control the natural energy, they push medication. Also back in the day kids knew their roles in society, now you have several generations of boys that are told that "they are evil" and that all the ills of society are their fault, I hear the term "Toxic Masculinity" used so much. Boys have no hope, when you are told since elementary school that you are "evil" and responsible for all the bad things of society and that you have to atone for all the imagined slights and sins of your gender and treated as a potential rapist and especially if you are a white boy, you have the added sin of your race to "atone" for..Boys can't be boys, girls want to be boys and you don't know which bathroom to use. That is a hell of a burden to dump on a kid.
You also have parents that no longer parent, but want to be "the kids best friend", that isn't our role as parents...our job is to prepare the next generation to succeed and to be honorable productive members of society. When I was in school, if I screwed up, the teacher notified my parents and I caught hell, I make jokes about being a wooden spoon survivor but today the parents will support the kid no matter what against the teacher and this erodes the authority of the teacher and the principal.
Kids today have not been taught to respect authority and to avoid repercussions of their decisions. This is a corrosive effect on the kids mental well being. a kid has to have definite boundaries set, that is the job of the parents to instill the"Rules to live by" in a polite society.
You have boys being raised by single moms because the destruction of the nuclear family which has been proven through generations of struggle is the most stable for raising kids. Now you have single moms raising kids because the fathers left and a big reason is that there is no longer a stigma attached to fathering kids and booking. Also there is no stigma for moms having multiple kids through multiple fathers for "benefits". This all is destructive and corrosive to the kids mental well being, you have a generation of feral boys running around with no positive male role model influence for the sons.
Now people will still "blame guns" because it is easier to blame an inanimate object that has no soul and no morality and the soul or morality of the use depends on the makeup of the user. This goes where blaming an individual for doing a bad thing is not acceptable anymore, it is easier to blame "something" rather than "someone" for the evil in their heart.
I call it "no longer believing in God", call it what you will, but when people no longer believe in a higher power than the here and now is all that matters and the future no longer is a concern. We as a society have fallen from grace and no longer believe and the results are in front of us. We as a society glorify poor behavior, disrespect for each other, violence to each other and poor manners.
I don't know what it will take to change it, but screaming "Gun control" ain't going to fix it, the problems are much deeper and slapping a band-aid on the problem will not solve it. The kid, I will not use his name broke a slew of laws and adding another one will not solve the problem and stop the evil in a persons heart.
Plenty of close range fire power in the M-1 Carbine, capable of handling both 15 and 30 round magazines. These carbines were sold by the US government to civilians in massive numbers in the early 1960s starting at around $25 a pop. Yet kids weren't mowing themselves down with them. What's changed? Responsibility and respect are not longer pillars of civilization taught in our schools (and in many of homes). We've bred generations who are easily offended, and who have been indoctrinated with the idea that acting on emotion is the highest form of behavior. Emotion can be a two edged sword, sometimes it compels for good, but at other times, emotion can cause a personality to give way to pure evil. What bugs me about Parkland situation is that students and other peers of the gunman made complaints to the school, offered a credible tip to the FBI, yet the supposed adults inside government-run bureaucracies shrugged. Despite knowing there was a potential shooter eyeing the school (if students knew it, surely teachers and administrators did as well), the school only had a single deputy as its SRO (and the sheriff's office has yet to be specific about where he was on campus at the time of the shooting). Other Broward County high schools have two SROs. Circumstances leading up to the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting don't show a need for more gun control. What they reveal is why people should be highly skeptical of trading their rights and liberties for the promise of more protection by government. If government won't effectively use mechanisms already in place, there's no reason to think additional layers of bureaucracy will be any more effective.
ReplyDeleteHey Doug;
DeleteI don't know what is up with the FBI, their reputation is in tatters. I suppose focusing energy on sticking it to Trump is more important. I have commented a lot that the powers that be don't care about the kids of the "dirt people" except as props for their agenda and my attitude hasn't changed.
Gun control is about control & it's not just guns. Abortion & recreational drugs are a couple of examples of someone wanting to control their neighbor. The control issue is common and as old as mankind.
ReplyDeleteThe issue with these mass killings is what causes this madness?
Drugs, pharmaceuticals are a big part of it I think. Google 'mass shooting drugs' and see what you think.
Hey Rob;
DeleteI read a statistic that all the mass shooters were on some kind of mind altering medication. To my it ain't the guns, but the control, the nanny state wanting to control the population for their own uses because there are people that like bossing their neighbors around because they get off on it.
We can’t fix the social problems over night that will take time and a lot of changes. But we can stop advertising schools as a target rich environment by telling every loon they are “gun free zones”. That something we can do and the shootings in schools will go down. This should be done as soon as posable. Notices most other government “gun free zones” have guards and almost no shootings. And if we allow CCW at schools you would have armed guards at no cost to the taxpayer with no ramp up time. CCW people are one of the most law abiding in the country.
ReplyDeleteHey William,
DeleteI recall about 40 years ago the Israeli's armed their teachers and staff after a peace loving Palestinian decided to advance the cause of peace by killing a bunch of kids at a school. After that incident, there have been no more school shooting. But for some reason we don't do the same except leave a nice soft target for the nuts.
We would never have thought of using the gun(s) in our trucks... sigh
ReplyDeleteHey Old NFO;
DeleteAgreed, I guess we had morals, proper upbringing and respect for ourselves and each other. Something lacking on the modern generation...and there will be copycats....There always are.
+1 on OldNFO and amen to this post!
ReplyDeleteThank you Momma Fargo :) If something I post helps you out, feel free to use it in your schoolwork, :)
DeleteWhen I was in high school in the early 80's...
ReplyDeleteThis is the only part of the missive that I find incredible, and it's not that you attended high school - but early 80's? Don't you mean early '50s?
Ha!
Ha!Ha!
Ha!Ha!Ha!
What a hoot! I kill me.
You're right about the children changing, which is a reflection of changes in the nuclear family demographic. If you believe Thought Co, and it seems credible to me (I'm sober right now), I am a member of the Baby Boomer generation; I was raised by the Silent Generation (SG). The SGs lived through the Great Depression and World War II. Their major advantages were a stable extended family unit, health care, and clean running water. Check the divorce rate, marriage rate, and children born out of wedlock since 1950 - you'll see a trend. When I was growing up, the stigma of divorce had started to ease off a bit, but having a child out of wedlock would guarantee the mother a leading position in the societal pariah group. Abortion was illegal, but women still had them. Prophylactics, the most common method of birth control, were kept out of sight behind the pharmacy counter.
We, the Baby Boomers, generally lacked television. We played outside, and we had responsibilities. Somehow, one way or another, most of us grew up fairly well adjusted. The thought of going through school with a shotgun and killing people never occurred to any of us. At least, I would suppose it didn't. I'm no mind reader.
One item that crossed whatever remains of my mind is that some of the teachers in public school shouldn't have been there. A few were bullies; many abused their authority, which was absolute. Rules of conduct were arbitrary, as was punishment. The only other authority in a child's life were the parents, who never failed to side with the school teacher. School wasn't always pleasant.
Move ahead one generation.
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Hey Mad Jack;
DeleteWell yep the early 80's, I was in a very conservative "blue" state I guess the term was, Georgia didn't go red until the democrats started moving leftward and the people started voting republican. the democrats back then were more to the right than the GOP was now. The social stigma on out of wedlock births still were there, I lived in the bible belt. I did see some teachers that didn't deserve the name "teachers" and I did have a couple, but most of them really gave a damm about us and tried to instill the traditional values along with our parents.
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ReplyDeleteThe new parents are going to remember how things were back when they were in elementary school, and those few memories of the unfairness of the world will be vivid. They'll want a better experience for their child, and rightfully so. Now, when Mad Jack Junior acts up in fourth grade by stashing a live garter snake in his math teacher's top desk drawer, where she keeps her grade book, and where she is certain to discover it the hard way in the first three minutes of class, and screams and falls over her chair because she has a phobia about snakes (which no one knew until just then), instead of saying, "Jackie, what the hell is wrong with you? What, exactly, were you thinking?" the new parents will be concerned and ask what else has been going on in class that would cause their little innocent child to act out, whatever that means. The school teacher will escalate and confront the parents, who will raise even more hell and get the school principal involved, who will call the school shrink and get her crazy ass involved (and I know of one shrink who is certifiable, believe me).
You see where this goes?
Digging a lot deeper, which almost never happens, you'd find that there's more than one fox with feathers on his chops. It turns out that Jack's teacher is a real bitch, who will routinely throw out little comments such as, "Let's go to a costume party disguised as a horse. I'll go as the head, and you just go as yourself." followed by a rim shot and raucous laughter from the class. Or the teacher will casually walk past Jack's desk, pick up his books, and drop them on the floor with the rejoinder, "You dropped your books." Or keep Jack in during the noon recess to have a little discussion about his behavior, then bait him until he retaliates with a childish threat, at which point the teacher slaps him across the face. Nice, huh?
And no one will ever know about this kind of crap, because they don't dig for it and don't know how to ask.
Eventually, an unstable high school student who has been through a lifetime of this stable dressing, and who has no support group at home or outside the school, will snap. Many times they just drop out and start doing a lot of drugs, because for $20 you can feel better for a few hours. But then you get that one out of a thousand who wakes up one morning, loads his daddy's shotgun, and makes the headlines. I tend to think that's what happened here.
I have no real solution, but I'd like to point out that whatever it is the school system is doing now, isn't perfect. While the system will never be perfect, it could certainly be improved.
Hey Mad Jack;
DeleteWow your comments are blogpost in length. Garter snake in drawer, I got a chuckle out of that. I had a teacher when I was in the 5th grade in Germany while my Dad was stationed in Frankfurt, took a dislike to me and to punish me had me stand because she had a strong dislike for me for some reason, I was the only kid standing in the class everytime I went in there. I just accepted it and finally mentioned it to my dad in passing and he was pissed, he got the teachers name and did some digging, apparently she had some run in with my dad(he was CID) and used me to retaliate against him. Well she was gone shortly after that, and I got a good teacher after that.