Just after the slaughter in Las Vegas, Hillary Clinton (remember her?) took to Twitter to offer this tendentious and ignorant comment:
The crowd fled at the sound of gunshots.
Imagine the deaths if the shooter had a silencer, which the NRA wants to make easier to get.
In Ms. Clinton’s moated and wholly self-referential mind, a “silencer” — which, perhaps, she has seen in the movies — is a magical cylinder that turns the deafening report of a firearm into a barely audible puff. This is, simply put, false. (It is also the case that any “silencer” the Las Vegas shooter might have used would have melted to slag almost immediately.)
Want to learn the truth about what are correctly called “suppressors”? Then read this article by Larry Correia. (While you’re at it, see this item by David French in response to Jimmy Kimmel’s post-Vegas histrionics.)
I am 61 years old. I grew up in a rural area of west-central New Jersey. When I was a boy, all the households around me had a gun or two. We boys used to stack up hay-bales and put targets on them (a charcoal briquette was a favorite choice) to shoot at with a .22. Schools and scout-troops often had rifle ranges; I myself got a marksmanship Merit Badge while at summer camp with the Boy Scouts. I don’t recall being aware of any gun laws at all; you could buy ammo at the general store. (Gun safety was a big deal, though, and kids were taught to handle firearms carefully and respectfully.)
This was the state of normal (non-urban, middle-class, predominantly white) American culture half a century ago. Guns were an unexceptional part of that bygone world, and were easily accessible to all of us (you could order pretty much any gun you liked through the mail, by sending cash in an envelope!). Somehow, though, we hardly ever murdered each other, and mass shootings were very, very rare.
Something has changed, obviously. And it isn’t access to guns.
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David, being a Brit, puts it here where the change began. I think maybe a decade earlier with the policy driven removal of fathers from the home.
http://duffandnonsense.typepad.com/duff_nonsense/2017/10/tip-toe-through-the-tombstones.html
I think what has changed is a complete meltdown of our public education system.
Generations X, Y, and Z do not know about: math; English; social studies; personal finance; ethics; tradition; history; personal accountability; loyalty; honor; citizenship; basic human decency; not to mention science …
Simply put, American youth don’t know shit from Shinola. America’s future leaders are total ignoramuses. But they will have the right to vote for an evil bitch like HRC.
I feel sorry for my grandchildren.
I passed moments ago through America’s new and better multicultural Babylon of Houston’s airport security, and am now seated in the bad old days of America’s demographic past known as the premium lounge.
I sat and read Malcolm’s blog entry, and I studied my fellow travelers in the lounge and looked for the tell-tale signs of their politics. I wondered who amongst them had been aware of the demographic contrast between the lounge and the concourse. Had anyone else noticed that this was our future, for the fortunate, writ small? Everyone to a person is at work; the fellow next to me is a Goldman banker, speaking of hundreds of millions, the one in front looks to be an engineer. Tax donkeys, oblivious to their past and their future, but fixed to pay the bill. Has the world ever seen anything like this before? Would the Goldman fellow vote to separate me from my rifle? When he searched for “good schools” did he inspect the roof, the masonry and the terrazzo? Does anyone here in our little airport elyseum pause long enough from their emails and spreadsheets to see which way the wind is blowing?
Irony:
http://reason.com/blog/2017/10/04/black-lives-matter-students-shut-down-th
Robert,
Every time I think we have finally reached rock bottom …
It might have something to do with your fellow boomers attacking the idea of freedom of association, and promoting societal alienation through the destruction of homogeneous communities.
I mean, I like the Grateful Dead as much as any Millenial. But let’s not pretend that the destruction of sensible qualifications for voting and community standards was a victimless crime.
Robert, I consider Roe v. Wade another symptom, rather than a primary cause.
Good suggestions all. As you might imagine, I have some thoughts of my own, which I should organize into a post.