Part of it is cultural, I think. I grew up in a rural Midwestern county where nearly everyone owned guns, and that had one murder in 125 years until the 1970s. Then things began to change. But whether the issue is cultural or not, we have a gun problem in this country. Guns make it easier to wound or kill people. In a sense, they're like pouring gasoline on a fire.
Upon relflection I remember when I was about 12 that every boy that hunted was excused from school on the fist day of hunting season to go hunting with dad, grandpa, uncle, etc.
We could take a gun into school for "show and tell", the gun was inspected by the principal to ensure it wasn't loaded.
When I was about 16 I would walk a couple miles into the nearby small city to meet with a school mate.
We would walk thru town carrying our shotguns in plain sight to the other edge of town where we had permission
to hunt rabbits on an abandoned farm.
I grew up with guns in the home and hunting was part of our culture.
No one thought a thing of two boys walking thru town carrying a shotgun. No one called police.
I wouldn't want to do that these days.
Today gun sales are at record highs. People with concealed carry permits are considered kind of normal.
People carry guns because they are afraid of criminals and terrorists.
I think doing such creates a sense of false security.
Few people know that in the 1920's and early 30's a farmer (or anyone else) could by a Tommy gun from the local
hardware store with no paper work involved.
The Gun Control Act of 1968 was a knee jerk reaction to the assassination of President Kennedy.
Gun violence in American is at an all time high and growing. so are gun sales. Stats don't tell much but gun violence is often
black on black crime with Chicago leading the nation in blacks killing blacks.
If one were to map every city with very strict gun laws then draw a map of every city with a very high
gun crime rate the maps were overlap.
Still gun crimes rise in those cities despite strict gun laws.
I see the gun violence as a sign of a country with disintigrating moral values.
Most all
mass murders buy gun are committed by the seriously mentally ill that are either
undiagnosed or somehow "slipped thru the cracks" avoiding restrictions to keep the dangerously menally ill from
obtaining a firearm. The Sandy Hook horrible murders of little children was committed by a paranoid schizophrenic.
He was not permitted to even touch a firearm. So where did he get the thing?
His mother bought it for him and she was the first person he murdered.
I have no clear answers to this murder by gun problem but I get the feeling that family morality has
fallen by the wayside.
I hate to say "look at the parents" as it seems too simplistic, but look at the parents.
Lack of moral values are part of the problem.
