PA Bill Number: SB170
Title: In criminal history record information, further providing for juvenile records; and, in juvenile matters, further providing for powers and duties of ...
Description: In criminal history record information, further providing for juvenile records; and, in juvenile matters, further providing for powers and dutie ...
Last Action: Removed from table
Last Action Date: Oct 2, 2024
Not gun control, not mental health: the mass shooting problem goes far deeper than we think :: 02/16/2018
On Wednesday, February 14th, 2018--Valentine's Day--an 18 year old kid opened fire at his former high school in Parkland, Florida. Before the first brass casing hit the ground the entire Twitterverse was roaring with calls for the flaying death of all NRA members while people with #MAGA hats in their profile pictures chittered impotently about "b-b-but what about mental health".
But both the aposematic tumblrista with thick-rimmed problem glasses and the guy with a green frog avatar and the American flag emoji are both wrong when they try to diagnose the issue that has led to 18 school gun incidents this year alone.
GUN CONTROL
Did you know that at this moment in US History, we have more gun regulation than at any point previously with the sole exception of the Assault Weapons Ban during the Clinton years (a ban that, by the way, had no actual impact on gun violence lethality)?
Did you know that, prior to the Gun Control Act of 1968, you could order a fully automatic rifle out of a catalog?
We didn't have the violence we have now. We didn't have the carnage we have now.
To put gun violence into perspective in the United States, 73% of 2016's 17,250 murders were committed with a firearm. Around 1% of those murders occurred in incidents where more than four people were shot. Looking specifically at mass shootings when discussing gun violence in America is extremely foolish.
MENTAL HEALTH
Furthermore, "mental health" isn't the answer either. There is literally no reason to believe that the same mental health issues we face today were not extant in years past. While anxiety and depression are up now from years past, they've always existed and simply didn't have the same impact that they do now.
THE PROPOSED SOLUTIONS ARE ORWELLIAN
Both liberals and conservatives championing their own personal solutions to mass shootings in America almost universally propose absolute nonsense draconian government intervention when confronted with situations like Parkland or the Las Vegas massacre.
Were the left to get their way, we'd have a complete ban on guns. We would have law abiding gun owners forced into surrender while those who refuse to disarm go underground and resort to drastic measures to hold on to their weapons. And, like in the UK and Australia it would do essentially nothing for the overall murder rate. It would neuter defensive gun use--something that occurs between 500,000 to more than 3 million times a year, according to the Centers for Disease Control--condemning those who use guns for self defense to become victims of otherwise preventable circumstances.
Similarly, the right's proposals are just as Orwellian. Inviting the state into the home and classroom to micromanage and observe kids for signs of "mental illness"--an ambiguous term if there ever was one--and then "intervene" in some way, which almost always means dragging them off to some facility to be poked and prodded and accused of all manner of things. Punishing those who may not conform and throwing them into a padded room based on a subjective interpretation of their mental state and the speculation that they may become violent. That is not actually a world that I want to live in. That is a solution that is no solution at all.
While armed guards at schools would indeed reduce time-on-target during shooting incidents, the idea of sending our kids to schools that look more and more like prisons with each passing year is viscerally uncomfortable and doesn't actually address the cause of the violence (it is, nevertheless, the best of the frequently proposed solutions).
SOCIAL ROT
So what has happened? It's something else. Both the violence AND the mental health problems are indicative of a loss of social trust in this country. A breakdown of community. A world led by weak men terrified to put the world on their backs and have some responsibility for themselves and their communities.
Lets take a specific look at the black community--around 13% of the population of the United States--as a microcosm of a larger whole. Of the 17,250 murders that took place in the United States, roughly 52.6% of those arrested for murder were black Americans--the vast majority of whom killed other black Americans. These numbers are corroborated by FBI data and the National Crime Victimization Survey. A large body of social research over the past nearly 30 years has all come to the same conclusion: children who grow up in single parent homes are more likely to commit crimes than those that do not. With that in mind, is it a surprise that 72% of all black children in the United States are born to unwed single mothers?
Clearly, however, and especially when discussing mass shootings, we have to look at every single racial group in the US. School Shooters tend to be white. Between 1982 and November 2017, 54 out of 95 mass shootings were initiated by White shooters. 36% of white American children are born to unwed single mothers, up from around 5% in 1965.
The problem with social breakdown in this country impacts every single race and demographic within it. The commodification of sex has weakened men and disincentivized self improvement. Why marry when there is a giant catalog of willing sexual partners on Tinder? The formulation of our social welfare programs punish single mothers who marry by reducing benefits when a second income comes into the picture. These pressures and more eat away at the foundation that raised the generations before us. The foundation that built a world in which middle school kids could bring their rifles to school for after-school gun club without anyone being concerned over a massacre. The foundation that kept a relative peace despite the ability to buy automatic weapons in mail order catalogs.
This is not to blame the single mother. It takes two to tango. Fathers have failed. Men have failed. Men have historically opted to place society squarely upon their backs and build the families, communities, and foundation required for civilization itself to flourish. In this task, the modern man has failed. He has instead chosen a path of lazy destruction.
The decision makers above have failed. By destroying the American manufacturing industry that once employed so many with jobs that could raise and support a family in favor of global financial interests--they have sold the future of our children.
In a world not too long ago, the high school aged male knew that the community around him would support him. He knew that he could get a job scrubbing tables in high school without too much of a problem. He knew that when he graduated, there world be a job open at the local factory for him that would pay him a solid wage. He knew that the decision makers above him, the people who he voted for, had some legitimate concern for his well being and had a real desire to see him and people like him succeed.
Today's high school aged male knows virtually nobody in the community around him, and doesn't expect support. He has no idea what sort of future awaits him after high school. He could go to college, get saddled with debt, and still end up jobless. The manufacturing jobs are nearly gone and those that exist simply don't pay what they used to pay. The only thing he hears from decision makers and the media is that his era has passed, and that the future won't include people like him. He is inundated constantly by social media validating and enhancing the very worst of human vice and outright glorifying the men who step off the path and violently end their lives and the lives of so many others. How can we be expected to build a society when these are our men?
A world that has left men--yes, specifically men, and more specifically, young men--directionless and adrift. There is nothing for them but alienation.
