Predictably, close in the wake of the horrific school shooting in Uvalde comes the “do something!” crowd, soon followed by renewed attacks on the “gun lobby”. And all of this periodic outburst will again end in frustration until we develop the political courage to focus intently on the underlying cultural problems that are producing holes in the souls of more and more young people, mainly troubled young men. The Wall Street Journal editorial board hit the right notes today. Here is an excerpt:
“The recent proliferation of mass shootings suggests a deeper malady than gun laws can fix….that a teenager could look at a nine-year-old, aim a gun, and pull the trigger signals some larger social and cultural breakdown…..This cultural erosion will take years to repair, but a good start would be to admit that it plays a role in the increasing acts of insensate violence….We are fated to have another debate on gun control because half of American politics will insist on it. By all means have at it. But anyone who thinks gun laws will end mass shootings in America isn’t paying attention to the much larger problem of mental illness and the collapse of cultural guardrails”.
Right on Windham
And the AR discussion will reopen
So true, Jim.
The unwillingness of the left even to acknowledge the underlying social and cultural disease we face (truly of pandemic proportions) guarantees that this will go on and on.
We pass gun law after gun law, and each one makes no lasting difference. A big reason for that is that the authorities (typically left wing “prosecutors”) don’t vigorously enforce the penalties of the gun laws that we already have on the books! How about fully enforcing all the existing laws before promoting new ones?!
We know the reason they won’t. Leftists want to take guns away from everyone, including decent people who have good reasons to have guns and pose no threat to anyone, rather than simply and mainly keeping weapons away from the dangerous few who truly shouldn’t have access to them. Plus, the left would rather have the issue, which they believe helps them, rather than to be serious about attacking the problem.
They have no interest in what it will take to change the heart and mind and soul of the wayward who commit these awful acts violence. ON THAT THEY ARE TOTALLY LAISSEZ-FAIRE.
Shame on them and shame on all of us for allowing our society to get so far off the rails.
Sandy,
If only that crowd were capable of shame! Those who cannot acknowledge the natural order are not likely to see a transcendent arrangement of the good in our world. They cannot see a moral law laid down by our Creator. They have unwillingly, or otherwise, become minions of the dark forces at work in our world.
As John Adams said, “Our constitution was written for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” If we have not the moral restraint imperative to our living peacefully with one another, we are not capable of liberty.
The “hole in the soul ” that Jim references cannot be filled, nor healed by pop culture but must be addressed by the pulpits in our churches and the kitchen tables in our homes. There is no way for government to fix this excepting by force, and that will be at the price of our liberty.
Sandy, smaller clips are a great step. Reinstate the Clinton level of 10 rounds. I’d perfer 5 like my deer rifle. Bush let that expire in 2004. It isn’t true we’ve passed law after law. We passed a good one in 1994 and it got repealed.
Well said Jim! — and to speak a moment to the frenzied aftermath of reporting from the media and the comments of the self-aggrandizing politicians — why, won’t the media and the politicians give the folks that have first-hand knowledge of the events time to prepare an after-action report before, in frenzied fashion, they race to report anything and everything from anyone as to what supposedly happened, smoke from the carnage still hanging heavy in the air, only to express disdain and outrage when the smoke clears a day or two later that they we lied to by those from whom they sought comments early on.
You are 100% correct Jim. Dallas had 220 homicides in 2021. A great majority of these deaths victims were under 20 years of age and committed by under 20 year olds. Most was black on black young people. This is a tragedy for the families of the one who killed and family who lost their loved one.. We must do much more to address the mental, moral breakdown of our young people or we will never rid our society of Uvalde and Dallas and any other city big or small.
You are Right On, Jim. Our society is overwhelmed with Movies, T.V., and Gaming, all which promote vicious killing without any reason or remorse. Additionally, these perpetrators are almost all without a Father figure or a a family with values (not all, but most).
When will we as a country get back to our roots as Law Abiding Citizens seeking to better one another as well as our country, let alone a country of Faith. The “Left” has pushed most sanity and decency completely out the door.
The Uvalde shooter was terribly bullied. So was the Santa Fe High School shooter. There is no way to stop the bullying in schools the way education is provided today. There is a way forward.
What if we just cut through the morass of programs and take all the money being provided at the federal and state level and put it into individual student endowment accounts?
The late 1970’s in the United States was a time of surprising deregulation. It was the beginning of the end for the telephone monopolies. Those inside the regulated industries, and the regulatory agencies, warned of doom and disaster if competition were allowed. The doomsayers were wrong. The free market provided solutions that were impossible to forecast.
Competition and the profit motive brought out the best that humans can create.
Communications solutions today are employing far more people than the old phone monopolies, and are delivering services never dreamed of in that era. The forecasts of disastrous unemployment and system collapse if the phone monopolies were opened to competition were totally and completely wrong.
K-12 is the phone monopoly of our time
This seems like the best time in years to truly reform K-12. However, the focus seems to be on charter schools, leaving behind thousands of students in poorly performing districts, and most proposed solutions leave out home schooling.
The fundamental problem is the lack of competition. There is a simple way to introduce it.
Instead of pouring money into the local school monopolies, the solution is to simply endow individual students. Open the door to the free market in a meaningful way.
We should create an individual educational endowment fund for each K-12 student. Student endowment funds would pay out annually for students who achieved minimum grade level knowledge, including to the parents of homeschooled students. The determination of minimum achievement would be through testing, with the tests also from free market providers.
Providers for students who did poorly would not be paid, leaving twice the annual amount available next year to educators who could catch them up. Seriously underperforming students would accrue several years of catch-up funding, providing extra incentive for the type of personalized attention that would benefit them. Military veteran servicemen and women teaching small groups of students, developing personal relationships, can change lost kids into enthusiastic young adults.
Opening educational services to the free market will allow for practical job related instruction, and college level courses, to be included as providers fight for market share.
Competition among educational providers will make full use of technology, will provide useful training for actual jobs, and will deliver far more education for the same money. Gamification will keep students involved in ways that existing K-12 material can’t touch.
Instead of leaving dropouts to fend for themselves, the funds should remain on deposit indefinitely, allowing those who get their act together after some time in the adult world to get an education.
Modeling the idea will show that existing school structures and transportation fleets will be used, more than with charter schools. Most school systems will continue as they are, but a new element of potential competition will focus their efforts.
A major early effect might be defunding some inner-city school systems, with the carry-over of endowment funds providing an incentive to corporate providers. These districts are a disgrace, but there is almost no way to change them now. Defunding poor performance in a way that will bring new providers could work.
The new providers will be renting space and transportation for their offerings in most cases from existing school districts. Just as with telecom deregulation, it will take several years to see the full impact, but requiring minimum accomplishment for payout will protect students and taxpayers as solutions evolve.
Home schooling pods will explode, but those kids will still participate on local sports teams, and transportation to practice (and back) will also be rented from existing fleets by their parents.
Special needs students would still have extra funding, but at an individual student level.
Let’s end the monopoly. Let’s open the door to competition.
Unleash technology, but pay only for results.
Homeschoolers would be an unstoppable force for reform if a realistic plan to pay them existed.
The endowment idea would do it.
I was radicalized on this issue by an experience with a black tow truck driver. When I was in the Army during the era of the draft, my platoon had a bunch of black guys from inner city Detroit. Our off-duty pastime in Germany with no English language TV was reading paperback novels. They were traded over and over and it was common to see everyone on his bunk with his head propped up reading. The black guys read effortlessly.
Recently I needed a tow and a black tow truck driver did a good job hooking me up and handling his equipment. He was a solid guy, the same type as the guys I knew in the Army. When we got to the destination he asked me to help him do the paperwork, and as we worked through it I discovered that he could hardly read. This is ridiculous. The schools are a disgrace. Here is a guy who will probably never be able to read effortlessly because of terrible, crappy inner-city schools he was stuck in.
The black guys in my platoon from inner city Detroit went to schools that didn’t have unions in the 1950’s and 1960’s. School management was adequate at that time to produce acceptable results. They became the Motown generation that led to ending segregation and providing great music that I still enjoy.
Preference falsification among Democrat Voters on K-12 has created a situation where explosive change can occur. The Overton Window can suddenly shift. K-12 seems to be that issue.
What is needed is a practical method. Endowment Accounts provide that method.
There is no way to fix the current K-12 situation beyond radical demonopolizing. I can see a future where school infrastructure is owned by large competitive providers in much the same way Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, etc. operate today, fighting for market share by providing educational services that work and that kids and parents want.
This is a great opportunity to apply technology and dramatically improve the way we educate our children.
Perfectly said by the Wall Street Journal editors as they do so often. The Wall Street Journal Editorial report at 2:00 pm CST on Saturday is the best one hour of reporting on TV each week. If I had one hour a week to get my news there is where I would go.
Decline and in too many cases the complete failure of the nuclear family. Deline of the church in too many households. Movies, and especially videos, desensitizing and glorifying violence. The trash presented to our youth in the way of advertisement and music. Public disregard of and encouragement of disrespect of important public and social institutions. Flagrant untruths publicly espoused by public figures. And the too often accepted lack of personal responsibility.
It is nauseating for some to politically make hay over the deaths of little children. I’ve been astounded by the sanctimonious comments by people. With Ds controlling the presidency and both houses where has the legislation been to make the changes they believe will make a difference? Will it come now? I can’t imagine Rs invoking a filibuster to stop after such a tragedy. It almost seems like the preference is to have it as an issue. Then, there’s the cognitive dissonance where stricter laws have been enacted in blue states and mass shootings (Columbine and Sandy Hook come to mind) and murder rates are still high. Uvalde is second to Sandy Hook. Finally, we have a boy problem in this country. They lag in educational outcomes; many fail to launch; and they are the ones responsible for the mass killings. While we’ve been paying attention to our girls, we haven’t noticed we’ve lost too many of our boys. All this said, in my view, Texas made some foolish decisions last session. Lowering the age of gun ownership from 21 to 18. For those of you with sons, you know car insurance premiums are higher for much longer. I think insurance companies have a point based on actuarial data. Texas also adopted carry without a permit. We didn’t need these changes. Jim, I also agree we have to take a much closer look and try to fill the holes in the soul.
The 2004 lifting of the assault ban has been mentioned. A Boston College historian has stated the following: “In 2004 a ten year federal ban on assault weapons expired and since then mass shootings have tripled. Zusha Elinson, who is writing a history of the bestselling AR 15militarystyle weapons used in many mass shootings, notes that there were about 400000 AR 15 style rifles in America before the assault weapons ban went into effect in 1994. Today there are 20 million”. In2012 after Sandy Hook Manchin and Toomey tried to pass an expanded background check bill but the Republican blocked it. Around 90% of Americans want this but the big bad NRA is against it and Republicans are scared of the NRA. They need courage.
This is a complicated problem but our country has far more mass shootings than any other country. We have 4% of the people in the world and 44%of the guns in the world. I do not need an AR 15 to kill a deer or bird and no one does. One of the folks responding above says that the left “has pushed most sanity and decency completely out the door”. I am on the left and take offense. If what I have said is not decent give me a call to explain. I am David Redford at 7134166952.
I see this entirely diffent than you. Millions have been killed in countries that have gun control—if you don’t like guns does not mean that you are mentally balances and, in fact, jut the opposite is true. The mentally unbalanced don’t want to be shot, so, they only can have guns.
It is time for those who know the words of scripture, and those words of Jesus Himself, to express in terms that will appear fanatical that these violent actions are satanic. We as a nation have shown God our Creator the door and He has politely left, leaving it open for satan to enter with his lies. Let’s name it for what it really is: a spiritual battle. It cannot be fought with political postruring and guns or no guns. Our problem is not racism nor white supremacy, but a lack of the knowledge of God. May God have mercy and grant us another Great Awakening.
You’re exactly right, Ann, this problem is not primarily about guns, it’s about who we are.
Ann, no truer words written. The return to the Father is the only solution for all issues. Perhaps just before the Great Awakening there must come a painful reckoning, the birth pains we are witnessing all around us. Put on the full armor of God. Stand fast and speak truth in love at all times and in all things to those in worldly power and leadership.
No one has called me to say what I said was not sane or decent including my old friend Ann. Yes “who we are” is the problem. We have many people with hate in their heart and many deadly weapons around they can use to express their hate. It is getting worse by the day and there are many future copy cats to go along with the scaredy cats who want to ignore any solutions or even discuss it. Call me Ann or Jim if you want to discuss it
There is not much to add, David. We have covered most of the ground of the problem and as usual our friend Ann has nailed it: it’s a spiritual battle.
This shooting hits close to home. Our second home/ranch is near there. Uvalde is a peaceful, country town with good citizens. Being close to the border has recently created huge problems for the town with Biden’s open border position. There were mobs of illegals breaking into business’s and attacking the citizens before Governor Abbot stepped in with help from the DPS. Now this. The town does need our prayers.