Thursday, February 22, 2018

It's Not the Guns

The Parkland school shooting in Florida has once again triggered the demands for gun control.  However, the gun is not the problem.  The 2nd Amendment is not the problem.  Semi-automatic weapons have been around for more than a century.  The 2nd Amendment has been around for 230 years.  Where were the school shootings?  When I was in high school in the 80s, there weren't school shootings.  Almost every school shooting has happened in the last 20 years.  The obvious thing is to examine what has changed not blame something that has remained static.
 
Maybe the internet is to blame.  Social media?  The 24/7 news cycle?  Violent and surprisingly realistic video games?  Profanity-laced music?  Changes in parenting?  Kids raised in the last 25 years have had a dramatically different experience than those raised in previous eras.  Some change, maybe a combination of changes, is what has led to these school shootings.  If it was the guns and the 2nd Amendment, there would be school shootings dating back 100 years or more.

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