What has changed

A ruthless killer massacred 58 people and wounded hundreds more. Predictably, political opportunists started the drumbeat for gun control before the carnage was cleared.

In 1970, my brother returned from Vietnam with a North Vietnamese rifle he recovered during the invasion of Cambodia. Our 15-year-old brother took the rifle on the school bus to New Berlin High School to show his classmates. No one was concerned. Today, the school would be in lockdown and my brother arrested. What’s changed?

Our society has been devolving for decades. A clear moral compass, personal accountability, hard work and self-sufficiency are being replaced by immorality, victimization, villainization, entitlement, dependence, coveting and taking.

We are immersed in immorality and violence masquerading as entertainment. Corruption is rampant and exposed in our politicians, our media, our corporations.

Society cannot compensate when the fundamental work of the family unit — teaching our children how to live — goes undone. Truth is easy to find. You have to look for it and be willing to see it.

Our right to bear arms is a critical safeguard against our government becoming tyrannical. That’s a threat that is as real today as it was in the 1700s. Guns have always been lethal weapons in the hands of killers.

That hasn’t changed. People have.

Joan Ellis Beglinger

Cross Plains