"THE NRA IS KILLING OUR KIDS" and other crazy comments out there

[zach14]

How about also looking to the parents....or lack there of.....

Between absetee fathers, children born out of wedlock, the rampant divorce rate, and living in social media 24/7, its no wonder a ton of kids are screwed up.

But its probably just Trump's fault, or an inanimate object's fault....

This^^^ The issue stems from the lack of a decent family life. No one wants to bring this issue up on either side, but this is the root of our problem here.

 

[NevadaZielmeister]

This^^^ The issue stems from the lack of a decent family life. No one wants to bring this issue up on either side, but this is the root of our problem here.

I am not so sure. Hasn't there been attacks on the typical family unit already in the media? I mean we see all kinds of things like women being pushed to hold off child rearing until their careers are in place, the blurring of gender roles, the constant encroachment of government into our family lives, and how "it takes a community to raise a child". I could see how these could be viewed by many as an attack on the family unit, couldn't you?

 

[Northernpiker]

Kevin,
In an earlier post, you say the average person perceives AR's with thousands of rounds of ammo as designed to kill people. Truth is they and their like were, basically. That is not how they are used by the lawful public as we have found other worthy ways for their employ.

Trouble is, those who could envision a time when the true reason for the second amendment is put in play, that firepower would be justified and necessary. If they are outlawed, tyranny would have the upper hand. That is the crux of the conundrum.

As one who comes at this from a 'never give an inch" viewpoint, I wish there was no need to have an AR. But there is. And we all know that taking away the AR will not stop the killing.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Remember during the Civil War when the Union came out with a killing machine, you could load it on Monday and shoot till Sunday, Lever Action. Like everything else...Advancements keep coming, Modern Sporting Rifle!

 

[Kevin Dill]

I tend to agree with NZ's post above. I believe it's too easy to blame child-rearing or deteriorating family values or whatever seems to be the current stereotype. LOTS of kids have been brought up in some very harsh and unfortunate settings with little love and guidance (go back to the beginning of the 1900s and look forward). The Walton's painted an idyllic picture of cohesive family life in the Great Depression, but completely outside the reality of those times. There were lots of guns then too, but the guns didn't cause kids to kill kids. There was simply little or no occurrence of children committing mass murder anywhere, let alone in schools.

I'm not smart enough to know precisely why (meaning all the contributing factors) this is happening now. I firmly believe it's a rather complex issue arising from a LOT of different factors that are more or less everywhere in our culture. I won't even try to list them all because I can't. None of them need result in mass killings, but for some reason it's become the way to lash out, seek revenge, find attention, 'pay-back' society, put your own pain onto others, etc. Those who say 'cultural changes' are 100% on the money in my book.

 

[LostArra]

I tend to agree with NZ's post above. I believe it's too easy to blame child-rearing or deteriorating family values or whatever seems to be the current stereotype. LOTS of kids have been brought up in some very harsh and unfortunate settings with little love and guidance (go back to the beginning of the 1900s and look forward). The Walton's painted an idyllic picture of cohesive family life in the Great Depression, but completely outside the reality of those times. There were lots of guns then too, but the guns didn't cause kids to kill kids. There was simply little or no occurrence of children committing mass murder anywhere, let alone in schools.

I'm not smart enough to know precisely why (meaning all the contributing factors) this is happening now. I firmly believe it's a rather complex issue arising from a LOT of different factors that are more or less everywhere in our culture. I won't even try to list them all because I can't. None of them need result in mass killings, but for some reason it's become the way to lash out, seek revenge, find attention, 'pay-back' society, put your own pain onto others, etc. Those who say 'cultural changes' are 100% on the money in my book.

+1 to Kevin. To add to "cultural changes", I don't think the Waltons were sitting around playing Mortal Kombat and Grand Theft Auto, machine gunning a few hundred folks on their ipads before doing the chores. I think people have become desensitized to violence inflicted on others and the consequences of depression and even death as seen in suicide numbers among teens.

 

[Wild Bob]

A lot of good points brought up in this thread IMHO.

I agree with the idea that all this has complex roots, but that being said, I still think the brunt of what's going on today has a lot to do with the lack of active, involved child rearing that isn't going on in our country. My wife has been a social worker that has worked with children for over 30 years and just the amount backsliding we've seen in that time is more than sobering.

And it's all over; I don't know about you guys, but I see it all the time at our church; a bunch of checked out self absorbed parents that just want to dump their kids off for someone else to deal with them while they go do whatever. Cripes! It's sad, and these are not down and out low in-come folks either. We had to put the screws down on parents, just to get them to have a relatively involved role in getting their kids through the Confirmation program.

I mean come on, society in general has gotten to the point that kids have to be 'taught' how to respect authority and follow simple directions so that they don't do something stupid like disregard an armed police officer's directive. Sad indeed, in my opinion.

 

[Kevin Dill]

Somebody has probably done this and knows the answer. On average...

How many hours a day does a 10-18 year old engage any form of media, like tv, Y-tube, Facebook, Snapchat, music, games, etc?

How many references to violence do they encounter (again on average) in all those hours? Subdivide that to find out how many references to 1) deadly violence and 2) deadly violence by firearm.

Now tally up the number of weekly media hours engaged. Calculate the per-week references to violence, deadly violence and deadly violence by firearm. Whatever the number, they're getting this much overall violent entertainment per week. Then x 52. It starts early in life, so how much exposure to violence after 5 and 10 years? Enough to indoctrinate? You decide. Kids in the 1960s went to bed at 9 or 10 o'clock and the worst violence they saw was a western movie or maybe a stylized detective show. Violent gaming then was a rousing board game of Battleship. How does that compare to today? You decide.

 

[Murdy]

Tough one, Kevin, does media cause or shape behavior? Hard to say. Commercial advertising only seems to work if you are pre-disposed to buy a product (I've never bought Depends (adult diaper), make-up, or countless other products that I have been inundated with advertising for probably all my life). Lots of kids play violent games and never commit violent acts themselves. So is it only those who are pre-disposed to violence for some other reason that games affect and shape their behavior toward a certain kind of violence rather than causing it in the first place?
I don't know. But I fear trying to pin it on violent media, or guns, or whatever runs the risks of oversimplifying the problem in the same way the war on drugs (let's just suppress the drug trade instead of trying to figure out why so many people want to engage in such self-destructive behavior) glosses over other problems in our society.

 

[Kevin Dill]

I'd just like to clarify: My previous post isn't intended to put the blame squarely on violence in media and our violent culture. I think it's one of many contributing factors. Is a smart phone a contributing factor? What about a Facebook account?

 

[Murdy]

Understood, and the answer is probably yes to all of the above, and a few more we haven't thought of.

Here's one of those I haven't seen mentioned here or elsewhere. My daughter, a teacher (who is very disturbed by the thought of having to harm one of her students to protect others), brought up the change in curriculum over the last 10-20 years. The emphasis now is math and science so schools can turn out technically proficient workers. This has come at the expense of things like reading, writing, history, and social studies. Could it be that kids don't understand their place in society and history, that they don't know how process the things that trouble them, and that they don't know how to adequately express their thoughts on these things -- I know, pretty touchy-feely, but it doesn't strike me as crazy and the change seems to coincide with about the same time we started having school shootings more frequently.