Current Circumstances
There have been many conversations about gun control in recent weeks, due to mass shootings in Uvalde, Texas and Buffalo, New York. Some wonder why this current trend is happening. If you ask someone on the left, they’ll echo the need for stricter gun control, while those on the right will echo gun rights. Personally, I’d lean right and share in the small voices that believe we need less gun control, not more. Innocent lives were lost, and I believe we ought to embolden the “good guys” to protect them. There is a reason why we never hear of mass shootings at police headquarters. That said, this is a complicated issue that deserves to be treated as such, despite the bias one may have.
I think we can all agree that a gun does not have consciousness. It is an amoral object, neither good nor evil. It will not wake up and decide to take an innocent life one day. The conscious human is the one that we need to be observing. Why are conscious humans deciding to kill innocent lives in massive numbers? This paradigm allows people to see the issue as a mass killing problem, rather than a mass shooting problem. Look at the U.K or China—their individual citizens do not have the same gun ownership rights as Americans, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have mass killing problems. Instead, they have mass stabbing problems. Thus, it does not matter if you ban guns outright, if the society doesn’t value human life. So how did America get to this point?
Clues
Once upon a time, believe it or not, it wasn’t unusual to walk into a student parking lot at high school where a firearm was visibly present in a vehicle. However, there wasn’t a mass killing problem. At that time, there was a consensus that the taking of innocent life was immoral. And you may think that is still true today; however, these mass killings are becoming more frequent in suburban neighborhoods. Notice the wording I chose. Mass killings aren’t a new phenomenon. The Black community in urban cities has been experiencing this for generations. Most suburban communities do not hold a majority demographic of African-Americans. What we are seeing is the problem being expanded beyond the Black community. Thus, we must investigate the parallels between the creation of the problem in urban America, and it seeping into the suburbs.
The era when students were allowed to possess a firearm on school grounds was a time when the nuclear family structure was mainstream—that is, the minor growing up with the father and mother present in the home. Black children predominantly grew up in this structure, with only 25% growing up in single-parent homes in 1960. Currently this number sits at 64%, with 1/3 growing up without the father being present. This is the highest of all racial demographics, outpacing everyone else. That said, when you observe all racial groups, the number has significantly increased since 1960, when single-parent households hovered in single-digit percentages. Today, 34% of children will grow up in a single-parent home, the bulk being matriarchal (15.3 million vs. 3.2 million). 24% are non-Hispanic White, 52% are Indigenous, 42% are Hispanic, and 40% are multi-racial. And you may ask yourself what the association of single-parent homes with the father’s absence has to do with mass killings. Remember the statement earlier about mass killings having been an issue in urban America for generations?
The psychological effects of growing up without a father are damaging. And we must understand how this affects the mind, because most of the time thoughts manifest into actions, benevolent or malevolent. There are six themes with this demographic; however, probably the most important theme is that individuals with “daddy issues” are more aggressive. Understand that aggression by itself isn’t inherently evil. In fact, it is important to utilize it when asserting your position against evil. What happens, though, when the child doesn’t know how to healthily channel that aggression? Especially boys, who are naturally more aggressive in nature? Many violent crimes and successful suicides are committed by males. Notice that the Black community has the highest rate of incarceration of men committing violent crime, from homicides to mass killings to sexual assault. Notice that the increasing rate of mass killings covered by the media are committed by men. White men have the highest rate of suicide; however, one cannot ignore the increase of mass shootings being committed by white men. Granted, some of these killers shown by the media did have a father in the home; however, this gets into another question of how strong the father’s involvement was in their life. If their father was active in their life, it has been psychologically shown that “fathers provide a positive male role model for their children and help to promote/reinforce good behaviors. As a result, children with more involved fathers tend to have fewer behavioral and impulse control problems, longer attention spans and a higher level of sociability.”
Another theme we must investigate is mental health. Children growing up in absent-father homes have higher levels of depression, which can lead to being prescribed medication. There is legal medication that has “homicidal tendencies” as a side effect. Many of the perpetrators of mass killings were on psychotropic drugs. Yet, that is not a conversation or consequence that is being explored with the fallout from the diminished role of the father in the household. That said, there are other themes that need to be explored with the fallout. However, with the given information, the next question becomes: what led to the fallout?
This is where this gets subjective, because it depends on your worldview. However, another theme that was mainstream in the era when students could have a firearm in a vehicle on campus was reliance on Christianity as the guide to morality, compounded with natural law. As society became more secular, morality became more relative and more hostile towards natural law. When Americans began to diminish the importance of God’s role in the home, this transcended into the deconstruction of the nuclear family, because it was this structure that pushed for having the mother and father home when raising minors. This religious influence emphasized the role of the father in raising his family. The Black community was the guinea pig, but it has caught up with other racial groups in America, hence the increase in occurrences of mass killings in suburban America. This can be a clue as to the main symptom of mass killings. Religious influence can create a culture that values life, regardless of the gun restrictions (or lack of restrictions) an area may have. And there can be legislation to embolden those with that religious influence to protect against evil, although it would become irrelevant if God and natural law were welcomed back, starting in the home. Americans cannot rely on the government to fix this issue. Americans must look within themselves and wonder if we have created this culture. There is a reason the first Commandment of the Ten is, “Do not have any other gods before me.”
Author’s Note: Anything underlined is a link for you to click on if desired. Readers are encouraged to educate themselves and seek other sources for information.