The Best Explanation for Our Spate of Mass Shootings Is the Least Comforting

National Revies ^ | 5/18/2018 | David French

[MileHi]

School shootings sadly go back to the late 1700s in the US.
They peaked in 1970..

Where'd you get this?

[smokingfrog]

Also, the number of kids attending public schools has roughly doubled from about 25 million to 50 million since the baby boom years of the 40s & 50s.

[ealgeone]

Kinda takes that argument away doesn’t it.

[Valpal1]

Yes, people just want there to be a simple answer and a whipping boy. But it’s never that easy.

I do believe as our culture has become more narcissistic and trains children to externalize blame rather than internalize responsibility that these extreme acts will continue.

[Gene Eric]

>> teenage girls don’t give teenage boys ribbons of participation when they reject their dating advances.

Exactly.

Liberalism/Feminism insisted on unnatural, sheltered environments where children are rarely exposed to failure. As a consequence, the necessary check-valves for self-restraint are not fully developed.

Regarding Sante Fe, I understand the perp was humiliated in the presence of his buddies. Did not one of them tell the perp to blow if off and move on?

[Charles Martel]

That isn’t the root cause. Look deeper. Look at the rise of social media and the “Look at me!” generation that determines their self-worth off the number of “likes” their post on social media gets. And if they aren’t liked well, they are just as satisfied to get attention from negative publicity.

I believe the evolution and spread of social media is making things worse, certainly - I think of it as fanning the flames that heat the cauldron of societal witches' brew that already exists in this country. Before "social media", it was the spread of mass media (cable television, linking regional news across the entire country, with the "journalists gradually learning how to benefit from getting everybody in everybody else's business) that intensified the problem.

One of the the first widely-reported school shootings with a high number of casualties was Stockton, CA in 1989. There was another earlier bad one (in 1986) that didn't garner national attention on the same scale - I think it was because CNN wasn't "up to speed" yet. Even Columbine - a decade after Stockton - was at the dawn of the WI-FI era and was also before the cell phone evolved into a media platform - so no tablets, no smartphones could've really played a part.

I don't recall much about the Columbine shooters with regard to online attention-seeking (though IIRC, violent video games were mentioned a lot - not sure if it was in connection with the investigation or just people speculating).

For a long time now, we've been cranking out youngsters with no moral compasses - and because of out short regional TV broadcast ranges in the pre-cable days, we didn't see the problem as clearly (and the problematic people didn't see themselves mirrored elsewhere and draw inspiration to act). Morals have continued to spiral downward while media has grown ever more intrusive and omnipresent in our lives. There's no end in sight - and there's nothing mysterious about this problem to anyone who is paying attention to the world around us.

[Ancesthntr]

My uncle walked to school with his rifle in the early 1960s, when he was on the high school rifle team. He had ammo with him. The rifle and the ammo stayed together, in his locker. Ditto for every other member of his team. Pretty much ditto for every other similar team in his school district.

Oh, yeah, I almost forgot - the school district was the NYC school district.

NO ONE shot anyone else, despite the ready availability of loaded (or easily loadable) rifles. My uncle told me why - because, he said, we were more worried about what our fathers would do to us if we got in ANY trouble with the guns, let alone shot anyone.

You see, there was responsibility taught, and accountability for one’s actions. Also, most kids (yes, even in NYFC, believed in God, and therefor in the ultimate accountability. If they had a problem with Johnnie Smith, then they and Johnnie would have a fistfight and probably shake hands afterwards.

The liberals and Leftists took God out of the classroom and the public square; the liberals and Leftists took away the very idea of personal responsibility; the liberals and Leftists took away corporal punishment from not only the schools but also from the home (how many kids nowadays threaten to call CPS if Mom or Dad threatens to swat their spoiled little behinds?); the liberals and Leftists made taking psychotropic drugs the norm among children; and now the liberals and Leftists are SURPRISED that so many kids are acting like spoiled, rotten little bastards and acting out their fantasies?

Bring back God, corporal punishment and personal responsibility, and take away the psychotropic drugs from 95% of those school-aged kids who take them, and you’ll cut school shootings by at least 95%. Add to that better security for those few incidents that might occur, and you will virtually eliminate casualties.

[archy]

I agree- they succeeded in kicking God out of schools, and as a result kids became angrier- more violent more disrespectful etc- and what we are seeing is a direct result of liberals and their anti-God ideology

That's certainly one side of the coin. The other side being that if you treat the kids like criminals and prison inmates, pretty soon some of them will act like it.

Put the two together, and you have a problem similar to what the President of the United States had in US Postal facilities beginning around 1920:

Mail robbery had become a very lucrative business between 1919 and 1921. According to an article by Postal Historian George Corney, about $6 million was lost to mail robbery during these years. In terms of today’s dollars, that would be about $80 million. Train/postal robbery was a worthwhile endeavor back then because registered mail is how most businesses and persons transferred money from one location to another. The worst robbery of all took place in New York City —the loss of $2.4 million in five sacks of registered mail. Today, that would be about $31 million.

By the end of 1921, things had gotten so bad that Postmaster General Will H. Hays requested President Harding to direct the U.S. Marine Corps to help guard the mail. On November 7, the same day as the Paxton train robbery, the President sent the following terse letter to the U.S. Navy Secretary Edwin Denby:

My Dear Mr. Secretary:

You will detail as guards for the United States Mails a sufficient number of officers and men of the United States Marine Corps to protect the mails from depredations by robbers and bandits.

You will confer with the Postmaster General as to the details, and will issue the necessary instructions in regard to the performance of this duty.

Very truly yours,

/s/ Warren G. Harding