Let's be honest on guns: On violence, the enemy is us
I'm sure you've heard the big news: The U.S. Senate is considering some kind of gun restrictions. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Tex., says he's optimistic that the chamber will have the 60 votes needed to obviate a filibuster and pass some form of new limits on weapon purchases, despite our freewheeling attitude toward them. And House Democrats are pushing for enhanced background checks, incentives for states to pass red-flag laws, and investments in schools and mental health.
Meanwhile, President Joe
Biden is urging Congress to raise the minimum age to buy an assault weapon from 18 to 21.
Pardon my enthusiasm but, big whoop.
Reforms of any sort beat nothing. But if all the above were signed into law, we'd still be a long way from stanching the flow of blood from gun violence in this country. What we really need is a rebirth in which we reject the cowboy narrative and instead create a new version of ourselves.
Tall orders come easily to the muse. But, truly, we can't fix what ails us without a cultural overhaul that doesn't just punish violence after the fact but also makes violence a repugnant choice. We have to convey to the young that resorting to violence is something only morons would do. Sort of the way we tried to make smokers feel in the 1990s.
Our epidemic of violence is nothing short of an urgent public health issue and should be approached as such. Finding the cure will take time. Maybe decades. But recognizing and correctly naming a problem is always the first step.
It's the culture, my friends. And the culture is dripping with blood.
Most people reading this likely understand that banning a certain kind of gun or raising the minimum age to buy an assault weapon might help but isn't going to solve all our problems. The suspected Uvalde, Tex., shooter had just turned 18 and celebrated by buying himself an AR-15-style rifle, which he then used to slaughter 19 elementary schoolchildren and two teachers.
Would another three years of maturity have dissuaded him? Or would he have figured out how to navigate the black market for weapons? If we stopped selling just the AR-15 and rifles like it tomorrow, there would still be nearly 20 million others in private ownership. Are we going to somehow either confiscate or buy back all of those? Increased security at schools is essential, but we know we can't turn every school into Fort Knox. We need to understand we are at war with the culture of violence. To paraphrase cartoonist Walt Kelly: The enemy is us.
Thanks to media and entertainment companies that glorify violence, young children and teens today are privy to murder, mayhem – and even pornography – at tragically early ages. Yet, too many times, I've heard mainstream, late-night comedians make cracks about porn, dismissing it as no big deal – just another option on the remote. Sexual violence against women, which defines most porn, isn't funny.
When you think about the effect such diversions have on children, barbaric is too civilized a word for what we've tolerated and allowed ourselves to become.
How are younger generations supposed to know how to resolve differences, civilly, when they've never seen it done? How are boys and young men to channel their frustrations and anxieties without role models to show them? How are girls and young women to survive and thrive when their male counterparts are encouraged to be predators by the cultural effluvia they're immersed in daily?
Lots of energy has been expended trying to “prove” that exposure to fictional violence doesn't “cause” real violence. I'm sure the experts say the link is imaginary. But, the cumulative result of multiple exposures over time to violence can only be a toxic pediatric immersion, particularly in undeveloped young minds. The unformed male brain, which isn't fully developed until age 25, is nothing to mess around with.
The challenge of changing a culture, short of an autocratic takeover by clerics and priests, leads to what psychologists call “learned helplessness.” We think, “Oh, there's nothing we can do about it,” so, we do nothing. I'm putting my money on women and especially mothers. If Mothers Against Drunk Driving can get drinkers off the road, then we can apply the same pressures to cleansing the culture. Moms want more than red flags; they want the wholesale marketing of violence to the underage to end. Violence is NOT entertainment.
Better yet, let the fathers demand change. Government can't – and shouldn't try to – do the work of parents. But a culture that seeks to elevate the human experience can make the trash purveyors reexamine their priorities and their bottom lines. There are ways to compel good civic behavior: The big cigarette giants paid out billions for selling an unhealthy product and lying about its effects. Of course, science easily proved that primary smoking sharply increased risk of lung cancer.
We can't afford to wait for proof that marinating in violence is bad for kids, but we don't need to. We know it is.