NRA Blamed for Cultural Marxism
A column by Susan Goldberg from PJ Media should be studied with care by those eager to blame the gun rather than the criminal for the recent moral panic over gun crimes:
Now that the gun control advocates have had their fifteen minutes of fame, let’s start focusing on the real issues impacting the rise in school shootings since that infamous day in Columbine in 1999. Issue number one that no one in the mainstream media or government wants to acknowledge: fatherlessness. Specifically, the impact of fatherlessness on the boys who grew up to become school shooters.
Dr. Warren Farrell, author of the new book The Boy Crisis, explains:
Minimal or no father involvement, whether due to divorce, death, or imprisonment, is common to Adam Lanza, Elliott Rodgers, Dylan Roof and Stephen Paddock.
In the case of 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz, he was adopted at birth. His adoptive dad died when Nikolas was much younger, and doubtless the challenges of this fatherlessness was compounded by the death of his adoptive mom three and a half months ago.
The rate of mass shootings has tripled since 2011. We blame guns, violence in the media, violence in video games, and poor family values. Each is a plausible player. But our daughters live in the same homes, with the same access to the same guns, video games, and media, and are raised with the same family values. Our daughters are not killing. Our sons are.
But boys with significant father involvement are not doing these shootings. Without dads as role models, boys’ testosterone is not well channeled. The boy experiences a sense of purposelessness, a lack of boundary enforcement, rudderlessness, and often withdraws into video games and video porn. At worst, when boys’ testosterone is not well-channeled by an involved dad, boys become among the world’s most destructive forces. When boys’ testosterone is well channeled by an involved dad, boys become among the world’s most constructive forces.
As Terry Brennan, co-founder of Leading Women for Shared Parenting, notes:
72 percent of adolescent murderers grew up without fathers; the same for 60 percent of all rapists.
70 percent of juveniles in state institutions grew up in single- or no-parent situations
The number of single-parent households is a good predictor of violent crime in a community, while poverty rate is not.
Yet, despite the growing number of experts, pundits and commentators drawing attention to the impact of fatherlessness on school and community safety, the post-attack discussion inevitably reverts back to gun control. Instead of spending so much as fifteen minutes on fatherlessness we are forced to endure the same salacious headlines, the same provocative tweets, the same tired old memes about the evils of guns as if somehow a cold piece of metal convinced yet another boy to become a mass-murderer. We ignore the lack of adequate mental health services, the failure of law enforcement to effectively intercede, and the sickening impact fatherlessness has on each one of these tragic cases. Why? Because it is easier to ban a hunk of metal than it is to right systemic cultural wrongs.
Read the whole thing here:
https://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/will-guts-link-fatherlessness-school-shootings/
My comment:
There are only two approaches to any problem.
The first is to look honestly and objectively at the causes of the problem and study the costs and benefits of each feasible solution. That is the method used by a free and democratic people.
The second is to exploit the problem to create hysteria,to promise solutions that are likely to be counterproductive, and to demonize and libel any opposition. That is the method used by demagogues to create and orchestrate lynch mobs.
Remember, even if they consist of the self same individuals, the people and the mob are not the same. They are natural enemies. The people bind themselves with laws for their mutual self protection, and trust each other with a longsuffering faith to listen to reason, and find a common ground for common action. The mob trusts nothing but force and violence, listens to nothing but force and violence, accomplishes nothing but force and violence.
Hence. whoever attempts to stir up a mob is an enemy of the people, of the laws, of civility, of civilization.
Selecting a method selects one’s method of discussion. Examine the following make believe dialog, and ask yourself which side of the debate sounds like which:
First Side: “Both sides can agree that no one wants more gun crimes, and certainly we all want to prevent any further mass shootings. The first question to address is what options will have the most effect on lowering the crime rate, while minimizing negative side effects or undue burdens on law abiding citizens?”
Second Side: “You are a blood soaked barbarian, a demon who rejoices at the tears of widows and orphans, a sick and insane maniac, whose only motivation is pure evil.”
First Side: “Nonetheless, what do the facts show to be causes or correlations of low gun crime rates? Since 1950, ninety-eight percent of mass shootings have taken place in marked gun-free zones.
“Statistics show a direct correlation between gun ownership and lower gun crime rates. Gun confiscation is ineffective or counterproductive, even the much touted Australia buyback program. Lawful defensive gun use far outnumbers criminal gun use. The government has failed to protect us time and time again, and could not protect us even under the best of circumstances.
“Statistics show that in mass shootings stopped by police, on average, fourteen victims are shot and killed. In mass shooting stopped by an armed citizen on the scene, the average is between two and three. So disarming the victims increased the body count by four hundred to seven hundred percent.
“Therefore gun confiscation would be counterproductive: it would produce the opposite of the intended effect. Abolishing gun-free zones, on the other hand, may show a positive correlation.”
Second Side: “You are a white Christianist racist and anti-semite. Decent Americans must give you the heave-ho. You are an accomplice to murder.”
First Side: “But I want to be able to go out to buy milk from the corner store at midnight, without getting raped, so I would like to carry a firearm, as is my God-given right, which the government has no lawful power to infringe.
“Why would turning my neighborhood into a gun free zone make me or my children any safer than these other gun-free zones were all mass shooting occur?”
Second Side: “The Party of Trump hugs you close and kisses your mouth, which is stained from drinking the sacrificial blood of children.”
First Side: “Gun crime rates are actually on the decline, as are the number and severity of mass shootings. The press merely covers the matter to create the opposite impression. We already have many gun control regulations on the books, but they are irregularly enforced, and not all the states cooperate with the background check system. Eight of the last thirteen mass shooters were red flagged as potential threats, but which Federal law enforcement never followed up.
“Perhaps this was due to the Feds being overworked and undermanned. Or perhaps the Feds were too busy smuggling guns to drug dealing in Mexico in order to increase splashy gun crimes that could be manipulated into a press-led witch-hunt against the NRA. (That was, at least, what was alleged of the ‘Fast and Furious’ scandal, which, as yet, has been under-reported by the press, and not been followed up with serious investigation.) Oddly, a very similar press-led witch-hunt seems to be underway now, after another notorious failure by the FBI or local police to protect our children.
“Whether this Federal failure was due to accident, overwork, corruption, negligence or dereliction of duty does not matter: they cannot do the job by themselves. Why cannot armed, law-abiding citizens be free to aid in the efforts defend themselves and others, as they have in several mass shooting cases in times past?
“Confiscating guns has not, in the past, ever led to less gun crime. There is nothing alleged to be different this time around. Isn’t using the same means over again while expecting different results illogical?”
Second Side: “Burn her! Murderess! NO TRUMP! NO KKK! NO FASCIST USA! NO TRUMP! NO KKK! NO FASCIST USA!” (Followed by a bussed-in riot which burns the neighborhood to the ground. Black Lives Matter thugs assassinate cops. A Bernie supporter attempts a mass shooting of Republican Congressmen on a ball field.)
Now, in all fairness, does anyone reading these words think I indulge in exaggeration?
If so, please note that the quotes are not word for word, but I am repeating phrases from pro-gun-control columns, catcalls of the crowd orchestrated and publicized by CNN, and the words of hecklers shouting down conservative voices trying to speak politely and honestly on college campuses.
The First Side appeals to facts and seek solutions. The Second Side indulges in inflammatory character assassination, pulls fire alarms, lights their hair on fire, and runs in circles, shrieking like Maenads, slashing themselves with knives like votaries of Baal hoping to ignite his silent pyre.
The Second Side is the Press. The Fake News. They are the propaganda arm of the radical Left, and nothing more.
Myself, I believe the tide of public opinion is turning. The filthy behavior of CNN using the tears and bloodstains of child victims of their foolish social policies, their corrupt cops, and their “gun-free zone” idiocy as human props to shout down the voices of reason, and to blame the freedom Americans enjoy for the failures of the FBI, is clear enough for any with eyes to see.
Whether or not one or more of the children propped up before the cameras were to recite Leftwing talking points were hired, fed lines, or coached, remains to be seen. (Twitter and YouTube have been diligent to censor such allegations.) I myself would prefer not to believe any American capable of such cynical and manipulative evil as this: but then again, the evidence credibly makes the case that the Leftwing establishment was behind weaponizing the IRS, smuggling guns to drug dealers in Mexico, assassinating American citizens on foreign soil without due process, encouraging domestic terrorist groups like Black Lives Matter to shoot cops, bussing in mobs for race riots or to provoke violence at Trump rallies, and on and on. Political violence has been the hallmark of the Left for over a century. Why should the Neomarxists have more scruples than the Marxists?
Let not your hearts be troubled. This godless blithering nonsense cannot long stand.
We are hearing the death screams seeing the dying throes of the hydra-headed Empire of Lies which has flummoxed, flimflammed and deceived the American people for far too long.
No one with ammo shoots blanks. If the victim disarmament advocates had any sort of rational argument in favor of their position, they would offer it, rather than the same tired and unconvincing ad hominem and character assassination they always use.
Suppose, just suppose, that I am not an accomplice to murder because I support my God-given right to self-defense which no man may lawfully take away.
Suppose I am an innocent but gullible freethinker, who has been grossly deceived by these devilish accomplices to murder. These devils have trotted out facts and arguments, both logical and legal, that I have studied and contemplated and which honestly seem to me to carry the weight of the argument.
The defense has rested. Since the Constitution is not to be changed for light or transient reasons, the burden of proof rests, as it always does, on the prosecution.
Calling the jurors bad names is not helping the case for the prosecution.
“Gentlemen of the jury, you are all accomplices, if you do not find the defendant guilty!”
This is a remarkably unconvincing argument, especially if the charge is witchcraft.
If the theory is that there is a magical law that could and should be magically passed by a magical Congress, called the Unicorn Sparkling Rainbow Love and Life Protection Act, to prevent random murder boys from shooting up schools, and that the NRA with malice aforethought used evil hoodoo to mesmerize and befuddle the Congress and halt the Unicorn Sparkle Act, all I can say is that your legal theory is insufficient to show cause. It is the Constitution, not any NRA hoodoo, that prevents Congressional malfeasance, or should.
Have you, finally, truly, no counter-argument, my leftwing friends?
You argue that confiscation of firearms would lower the rate and severity of gun crimes. The facts show the opposite.
Even if the facts favored you, the act would be unconstitutional as a matter of law: one of the many things the federal government has not the lawful power to do.
Even if it were constitutional, it would be imprudent, since guns prevent crime more often than are used in crime.
Finally, as a matter of theology, the gun control argument is a heresy. Evil cannot be solved by Caesar, and believing Caesar to have the godlike power to quell evil by fiat is idolatry.
Believing that Caesar has the power to halt mass shootings, but Divine Caesar will grant this blessing only if we sacrifice our liberty, our manhood, and our Constitution on his altar, is a blasphemy in more than one sense of the word.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
