OUR AMERICAN GUN CULTURE
(…appears to be moving back to the ways of the wild, wild, west)

The almost hourly reporting of another mass shooting, somewhere in America, would make it appear that our society is rapidly losing its grip on being a civil and generally law-abiding one.

Perhaps, but we think there is another factor involved here. Our American gun culture… appears to be moving back to the ways of the wild, wild, west. A time in our history when the rule of the gun was the only law, and resolving even the most minor of stupid conflicts or contentions between parties was to haul out a weapon…and blast away at the cause of that conflict. The only constraints which our society imposed in such cases was that both parties had to be armed with guns in hand to make the matter a case of mutual self-defense, and thus legally immune from any kind of penalty.

Many of today’s incidents seem to be perpetrated mostly by young males, the only common denominator about them being their youth…not their ethnic or racial background. That suggests that the real causative root of our problem with this level of gun violence in America today…comes primarily from their family environments rather than from any external influences.

To be blunt about it most of these youths seem to come from dysfunctional family environments. Environments where there are no effective or missing adult male role models to relate to. Male models which might otherwise provide the guidance, the indoctrination, and the self-discipline they need to properly cope with whatever situations they might encounter, rather than resorting with immediate and violent reaction to these. In short how to be a properly contributing member of a civil society.

Aggravating the situation is the virtual flood of weapons flowing all around them, readily and easily bought with little or no restrictions, especially since most weapons used in these kinds of incidents aren’t acquired through normal business channels subject to some forms of control, but rather from a free-wheeling black market on the streets, where incredibly high capacity high-powered military weaponry is just as available as any old style Saturday Night Special handguns. Worse yet, there are also today much stronger gang-banger and criminal elements compounding and intensifying all these negative factors and influences.

How then can we reasonably be expected to believe that things should be different under such circumstances? They can’t…and probably won’t ever be…until we as a society decide to do something effective about these causal factors at the root of the situation.

What this means is we have to focus more on ways and means to reduce such causal factors, rather than continuing with extreme wrangling about how to add more and more restrictive gun controls. That is simply equivalent to grabbing the wrong end of a heated iron rod…an example of symptomatic medicine at its worst…rather than seeking a true cure.

There are some who believe the best way to solve the problem is to really go back to the ways of the wild, wild west, when everyone openly carried a firearm on their hip. Some jurisdictions have actually tried that, and, we have to admit, gun violence in those places did seem to have dropped because, knowing other people were just as well armed as oneself, tended to make one think twice about getting into confrontations that might require resorting to one’s own weapon… with the possibility that the other person might be quicker on the draw…and a better shot besides. In this day and age, and with gun technology being what it is now, that approach may not work too well applied on a national scale.

There has to be a better way.

CENTURION