{"id":81496,"date":"2022-05-26T16:58:57","date_gmt":"2022-05-26T21:58:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=81496"},"modified":"2022-05-26T17:01:07","modified_gmt":"2022-05-26T22:01:07","slug":"81496","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=81496","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nMeanwhile, our politicians and academics pit Americans against each other based on the color of their skin, while the media machine grants notoriety to cowardly killers whose names deserve to be forgotten. Add to that our social media-crazed culture\u2019s obsession with a few seconds of fame at any expense, and it\u2019s clear that the gun market isn\u2019t what\u2019s radically changed. We need to address the rot we\u2019ve sown for our children to grow up in, and no amount of blaming firearms for our culture\u2019s depravity is going to change that.<\/p>\n

Guns Aren\u2019t Radically Deadlier Than They Were 50 Years Ago, But Our Sick Culture Is.<\/a><\/p>\n

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Our culture has incubated a disdain for human life while preaching a gospel of indulging selfish urges, no matter how evil.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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After another school shooting \u2014 this one at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, leaving at least 21 victims dead \u2014 politicians like President Joe Biden are already capitalizing<\/a>\u00a0on the tragedy to push their anti-gun agenda. They\u2019ll tell you that the vague category of \u201cassault weapons\u201d has no place in American citizens\u2019 hands, or seize the moment to vilify \u201cthe semiautomatic weapons that terrorize us\u201d (as a New York Times\u00a0essay<\/a>\u00a0put it). But these firearms have been accessible for decades \u2014 far before school shootings were such an unfortunately common occurrence.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Various versions of the AR-15 are some of the popular firearms most relentlessly targeted by anti-gun lobbyists, with their semiautomatic capability (i.e., the ability to fire multiple rounds without manual reloading, while still requiring the pull of a trigger) blamed for the deadliness of many recent shootings. But Colt\u00a0sold<\/a>\u00a0an AR-15 SP1 Sporter Rifle starting in 1964, 58 years ago.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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As for semiautomatic handguns, one of the most iconic models dates back to 1911<\/a>. (The Colt M1911 held fewer rounds than many of today\u2019s handguns, but the 13-round Browning Hi-Power came on the market in 1935, and the 16-round Beretta Model 92\u00a0appeared<\/a>\u00a0in 1976.) The firearms that civilians have access to today are not significantly deadlier than the ones that were manufactured for civilian use over half a century ago. Furthermore, the number of Americans who possess a gun in their homes has overall been\u00a0lower<\/a>\u00a0in the last 30 years than it was from the 1960s to the 1990s.<\/p>\n

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Yet we\u2019ve seen a heartbreaking rise over the past several years in incidents where evil, disturbed cowards choose to target schools full of vulnerable children. Before Uvalde, there were Santa Fe High School and Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018, Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, and Red Lake High School in 2005 \u2014 and those are just some of the names you probably already know.<\/p>\n

Crimes committed by evil people are nothing new, of course, and schools in particular had experienced shootings and violence before these. In the 19th and 20th centuries, there were records of shooting deaths at schools caused by personal feuds, accidental shootings when guns were thought to be unloaded, arguments gone wrong, or disgruntled students or administrators seeking revenge on authorities.<\/p>\n

But until the late 1980s, the concept of a mass shooter walking into a school and arbitrarily targeting people was incredibly rare, if not completely unheard of. In 1988, a 19-year-old shooter fatally\u00a0shot<\/a>\u00a0two 8-year-olds and wounded nine other people at Oakland Elementary School in Greenwood, South Carolina. In the same year, a woman\u00a0fired<\/a>\u00a0on an elementary school classroom in Illinois as part of a bizarre crime spree. In 1989, a gunman\u00a0killed<\/a>\u00a0five children at Cleveland Elementary School in California. And in 1994, a 37-year-old\u00a0walked<\/a>\u00a0into Wickliffe Middle School and killed custodian Peter Christopher.<\/p>\n

Other shootings were perpetrated by disgruntled or troubled students, including at\u00a0Olean High School<\/a>\u00a0in New York in 1974;\u00a0Atlantic Shores Christian School<\/a>\u00a0in Virginia in 1988;\u00a0Lindhurst High School<\/a>\u00a0in California in 1992;\u00a0Bethel Regional High School<\/a>\u00a0in Alaska,\u00a0Heath High School<\/a>\u00a0in Kentucky, and\u00a0Pearl High School<\/a>\u00a0in Mississippi in 1997; and\u00a0Westside Middle School<\/a>\u00a0in Arkansas in 1998.<\/p>\n

The infamous shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado in 1999 shocked the national conscience and launched the concept of school shootings further forward as a growing and tragic problem. Since Columbine, American families have faced unimaginable tragedies at Santa Fe High, Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High, Sandy Hook Elementary, Red Lake High, as well as\u00a0Santana High School<\/a>\u00a0in California in 2001,\u00a0Rocori High School<\/a>\u00a0in Minnesota in 2003,\u00a0SuccessTech Academy<\/a>\u00a0in Ohio in 2007,\u00a0Chardon High School<\/a>\u00a0in Ohio in 2012,\u00a0Sparks Middle School<\/a>\u00a0in Nevada in 2013,\u00a0Marysville Pilchuck High School<\/a>\u00a0in Washington in 2014,\u00a0Townville Elementary School<\/a>\u00a0in South Carolina in 2016,\u00a0Aztec High School<\/a>\u00a0in New Mexico in 2017,\u00a0Marshall County High School<\/a>\u00a0in Kentucky in 2018,\u00a0Saugus High School<\/a>\u00a0in California in 2019,\u00a0Oxford High School<\/a>\u00a0in Michigan in 2021, and countless others.<\/p>\n

So if the guns in Americans\u2019 hands and homes haven\u2019t radically changed in the last few years, what has? As The Federalist\u2019s Mark Hemingway\u00a0noted<\/a>, we\u2019ve seen \u201cno big advances in firearm lethality compared to what citizens could own decades before we ever had regular mass shootings.\u201d<\/p>\n

While humanity has been fallen since Eden, the past 50 years have seen countless indicators of exponential cultural decline, not the least of which have been falling marriage rates and skyrocketing numbers of children who are denied the chance to live with both their mother and father. We\u2019re also seeing a pandemic of mental illness, which the years of mental angst and isolation caused by Covid school closures will certainly only worsen.<\/p>\n

Americans are\u00a0losing<\/a>\u00a0interest in the purpose and community that faith and church offer,\u00a0losing<\/a>\u00a0respect for the sanctity of human life, and losing sight of the notion that a higher moral good exists than immediate self-gratification. Instead, we live under a cultural ethic that\u00a0idolizes<\/a>\u00a0the indulgence of selfish desires even up to the point of taking the life of another.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, our politicians and academics pit Americans against each other based on the color of their skin, while the media machine grants notoriety to cowardly killers whose names deserve to be forgotten. Add to that our social media-crazed culture\u2019s obsession with a few seconds of fame at any expense, and it\u2019s clear that the gun market isn\u2019t what\u2019s radically changed. We need to address the rot we\u2019ve sown for our children to grow up in, and no amount of blaming firearms for our culture\u2019s depravity is going to change that.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BLUF Meanwhile, our politicians and academics pit Americans against each other based on the color of their skin, while the media machine grants notoriety to cowardly killers whose names deserve to be forgotten. Add to that our social media-crazed culture\u2019s obsession with a few seconds of fame at any expense, and it\u2019s clear that the … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,8,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-81496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-rkba","category-safety"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=81496"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81496\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81498,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81496\/revisions\/81498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=81496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=81496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=81496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}