This past weekend, Americans learned of another mass shooting, this time by an employee who decided to murder as many of the people he had worked with for years as possible. As of this writing, the murder toll is 12.
Every American asks: Why? What was the killer’s motive? When we read there is “no known motive,” we become frustrated. Human beings want to make sense of life, especially of evil.
Liberals are virtually united in ascribing these shootings to guns. Just this past weekend, in a speech in Brazil, former President Barack Obama told an audience: “Our gun laws in the United States don’t make much sense. Anybody can buy any weapon any time – without much, if any, regulation. They can buy [guns] over the Internet. They can buy machine guns.”
That the former president fabricated a series of falsehoods about the United States – and maligned, on foreign soil, the country that twice elected him president – speaks to his character and the character of the American news media that have been silent about these falsehoods. But the main point here is that Obama, like other liberals and leftists, blames mass shootings on guns.
Yet, America had plenty of guns when its mass murder rate was much lower. Grant Duwe, a Ph.D. in criminology and director of research and evaluation at the Minnesota Department of Corrections, gathered data going back 100 years in his 2007 book, Mass Murder in the United States: A History. Duwe’s data reveal that:
In the 20th century, every decade before the 1970s had fewer than 10 mass public shootings. In the 1950s, for example, there was one mass shooting. And then a steep rise began. In the 1960s, there were six mass shootings. In the 1970s, the number rose to 13. In the 1980s, the number increased 2 1/2 times, to 32. And it rose again in the 1990s, to 42. And since the turn of the century, the problem has only gotten worse.
Given that guns were ubiquitous throughout this whole period, wouldn’t the most productive question be: What, if anything, has changed since the 1960s and ’70s? Of course it would. And a great deal has changed. America is much more ethnically diverse and much less religious. Additionally, boys have far fewer male role models in their lives. Fewer men marry, and normal boy behavior is largely held in contempt by their feminist teachers, principals, and therapists.
Do any or all of those factors matter more than the availability of guns? Let’s briefly investigate each one.
Ethnic Diversity: The countries that not only have the fewest mass murders but the lowest homicide rates as well are the least ethnically diverse – e.g., Japan and nearly all European countries. So, too, the American states that have homicide rates as low as Western European countries are the least ethnically and racially diverse (the four lowest are New Hampshire, North Dakota, Maine, and Idaho).
Now, America, being the most ethnically and racially diverse country in the world, could still have low homicide rates if a) Americans were Americanized, and b) most black males grew up with fathers. (Unfortunately, though, leftists policies have “Balkanized” Americans and undermined black families.)
Religiosity: Christianity in America has been weakened due to attacks from the left. What percentage of American murderers attend church each week?
Boys’ Need for Fathers: In 2008, then-Sen. Obama told an audience: “Children who grow up without a father are five times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime; nine times more likely to drop out of schools; and 20 times more likely to end up in prison.”
Yet, the mainstream media constantly publishes columns and “studies” arguing for t he relative unimportance of fathers. Unfortunately, more and more educated women believe this dangerous nonsense.
Then there is marriage: Nearly all men who murder are single. And their number is increasing.
Finally, since the 1960s, we have been living in a culture of grievance. Whereas in the past people generally understood that life is hard and/or they have to work on themselves to improve their lives, for half a century the left has drummed into Americans’ minds the belief that their difficulties are caused by American society – in particular, its sexism, racism, and patriarchy. And the more aggrieved people are, the more dulled their consciences.
When you don’t ask intelligent questions, you cannot come up with intelligent answers. Until Americans stop allowing the left to ask the questions, we will have no intelligent answers to the rise of mass shootings in America.
