By Randy Rossi -
The tragic shooting in Texas that killed 19 innocent children and 2 teachers is a heartbreaking example of how far our culture has declined. Sadly, instead of focusing on how and why our culture has fallen so far and so fast, many Americans, especially Democrats and the news media are trying to blame guns for this disaster, not that decline in our culture which is the real cause of that tragedy. Let me prove that statement with some hard facts. In Switzerland, every healthy man between the age of 19 and 34 is required to be in the military and they are allowed to keep their military automatic rifles and ammunition in their homes. That means that Switzerland has more military weapons in their homes than virtually any country on earth including America. In addition to that, any Swiss citizen can buy a semi-automatic hunting rifle in Switzerland without a permit. Switzerland has about the same number of guns per 100,000 people as America does but America has ten times more gun homicides per 100,000 people than Switzerland does. The bottom line is that the Swiss people have a lot of guns but Switzerland’s gun murder rate is nearly zero and they have not had a mass shooting in 18 years. If guns are the problem, how can that be?
America used to be that way too! Decades ago, virtually every home had guns and kids were taught to shoot and hunt and we had extremely low gun crimes. Every home in the rural area of our family farm had a loaded gun by the back door to shoot the fox in the hen house. In my lifetime, not one person has been murdered there by a gun. My grandmother on the farm had a double barrel shotgun to shoot the water moccasins and rattle snakes in the yard before the kids went out to play. My grandfather in Chicago had a lever action rifle that he used to hunt deer in Chicago to feed his family. I learned how to shoot a gun when I was ten years old in summer camp and since then I have shot thousands of rounds to put over 1,000 meals on our table. All my teenage friends had guns and we hunted together for years. My grandma, grandpa, friends, and I have never harmed a person with our guns. I realize people under 40 don’t understand this, but that is what America was like for well over 250 years!
Of course today guns are used every day to kill innocent people in America. Every major city in America has an innocent person murdered by guns virtually every day (especially Chicago!!!)! What happened? And how can so many gun murders happen in America which has strict rules to own guns? Chicago has some of the tightest gun laws in America yet people are killed by guns in Chicago every day. Sadly, the answer is very simple. The tragic decline in our culture and morals has caused this explosion of gun violence in America, not guns. Criminology was my major in college and we were taught that 70% of kids that are raised without a father live a life of crime or poverty. When I grew up many decades ago, the vast majority of kids in America were raised in a “traditional” family with a father and a mother. Today according to Pew Research, America has the highest rate of children raised in a single parent household in the world! According to Pew research studies, in 1960 73% of US kids were raised in a traditional family but sadly today less than half of US kids (43%) are raised in a two parent family. In Switzerland far more kids are raised in a traditional family than in America. That decline of our culture is the major reason why the gun crime rate in America has exploded. That is not happening in Switzerland!
As bad as that is, there is another tragic reason why gun crime rates are exploding in America. Sadly; thanks to social media, violent video games, and the internet; our kids are being bombarded by horrific violence, porn, and dangerous hatred every hour of every day. Even Genghis Kahn would be stunned with the barbaric stuff our kids watch every day on social media! To prove my point, a joint statement from the American Psychological Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Medical Association, and the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry declared, “At this time, well over 1,000 studies … point overwhelmingly to a causal connection between media violence and aggressive behavior in some children.”
To make that even worse, we kicked most kids out of school because of Covid hysteria for almost two years forcing them to hide in their basements while living in that disgusting social media world. They have lost their communication skills, their educations, and their sense of community. That has tremendously increased mental health problems for young people under 18. Suicides and violence for young people have exploded as a result. This is even causing massive mental health problems for adults that lost their jobs or work from home thanks to the Covid shutdowns. Why is anybody surprised that gun crimes and murders have gone through the roof? The real question is, do our politicians, the news media, and the average American have the courage to deal with this mess that we have created for ourselves? It is far easier to blame guns and attack our 2nd Amendment instead of the decline in our culture, but for those of us that grew up in the real world where guns were an important part of life, avoiding reality and blaming guns is pure cowardice and an attack on our 2nd Amendment rights. And even worse, it doesn’t solve the real problem.
