Posted on 12/15/2012 6:05:49 AM PST by Kaslin
It should come as no surprise that the rate of mass shootings at schools and in other public places is increasing. The surge has nothing to do with guns, which have been widely available in the U.S. for years. Gun control laws have been increasing. Instead, there is a direct correlation between the increase in violence and the gradual degradation of morals, ethics and parenting. We are cultivating mental illness in our society.
Parents are allowing television and video games to increasingly babysit their children, even though both have become full of gratuitous violence. A New York Times study of rampage killers found that six of them were into violent video games. Research shows that violent video games and television desensitize people and promote aggressive behavior, despite claims to the contrary. A research scientist at the University of Michigan found that television was responsible for 10% of youth violence. Parents today are neglecting their children, and when things don't go well, rushing to get divorced instead of trying to work things out first. Children suffer emotionally when their parents fight or split up. Parents are ignoring their children so much they don't even see the warning signs that something might be wrong. The New York Times study found that 63 of 100 rampage killers had made threats of violence before the event.
Parents are no longer taking their children to church, where they would learn stability and morals. Fewer than 20% of Americans now regularly attend church. Every year there are 3000 fewer churches across the U.S, even though the population is growing. God and morality have been taken out of the public schools and replaced with political correctness and non-judgmentalism. “Public virtues” are no longer taught in today's schools. People who do not attend church are more likely than churchgoers to have stress and to be less optimistic about the future. When parents split up and there is no father to take the children regularly to church, the children are much less likely to become regular churchgoers than if their mother regularly takes them.
The New York Times study found that at least half the killers in 100 rampage attacks showed signs of serious mental health problems. 48 killers were formally diagnosed with mental illness, often schizophrenia. The mentally ill used to be kept in hospitals, where they were not a danger to others. Beginning in the 1950s in California, the ACLU successfully filed lawsuits to take the mentally ill out of hospitals, known as “deinstitutionalization.” By the 1980s, most state-run mental health hospitals had closed.
Now, most of the mentally ill are out on the streets or in prison. The laws have been changed to state that the mentally ill cannot be hospitalized until they've already attacked someone. As a result, more mentally ill people are incarcerated than in hospitals, with the seriously mentally ill three times more likely to end up behind bars than hospitalized. More than half of all people in prison report that they have mental health problems, and more than 40 percent of the seriously mentally ill have been in jail or prison. A study at the University of South Florida found that the highest users of criminal justice and mental health services were 97 people who had been arrested 2,200 times. It is ludicrous that those 97 people are not contained for their safety and others in mental health hospitals.
The 22-year old Oregon shopping mall gunman who killed two people earlier this week is sadly typical of the rampage murderers the decay of society has spawned. He had this written on his Facebook page, "I'm the conductor of my choo choo train. I may be young but I have lived one crazy life so far." One of his friends said he raised himself; his mother died at childbirth, he never met his father, and he left his aunt's home at age 14.
The left will use the high level of emotion stirred up by this past week's two rampage killings to push through new gun control laws. Liberal New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg called upon President Obama to enact tougher gun control laws immediately after Friday's mass shooting at an elementary school in Connecticut. Yet demanding more gun control laws will not solve anything. Gun control advocates have already increased the number of laws around the country requiring background checks, waiting periods for purchases, and tracking of firearms. Many of the rampage killers obtained guns illegally. If they can't obtain guns, deranged individuals will find other ways to commit mass murders – by setting fires, making bombs or running people over with vehicles. One day after the shootings in Connecticut, a man in Beijing stabbed 22 primary school students with a knife.
The left should not be allowed to dominate the dialogue after these tragic events with a red herring argument for gun control, in order to sneakily distract Americans from blaming them for what they have wrought. Americans who believe in traditional values must speak up and denounce the degradation of society's morals as the root of the problem behind these rampages, or the tragedies will continue to escalate.
When I was young kids who were in the ‘gun club’ would carry their weapons to school - and you’d see them in the hallways walking with a rifle... No one ever thought they would shoot their fellow students.
It was a different time.
What made it different?
We’ve had guns in this country since the country was founded. But we haven’t had liberal ‘values’ taught by union teachers. We didn’t have liberal ‘values’ pushed on TV and in movies... And we didn’t have kids drugged out by antidepressants and other brain altering drugs. Mucking with brain chemistry at this time in our understanding is something that should be done with great care.
I believe all of these school killers have been on anti-depressants.
To some of the ‘more learned’ here at FR, social conservatism is as evil as Obamunism.
Days like yesterday ought to convince us otherwise. We turned our backs on God so we should not wonder why we are falling into the abyss.
Allow me to suggest a notion that’s been cooking in my brain for some time now.
1. It is acknowledged by all that Islamics are able to recruit suicidists for their dirty work specifically to create terror for the express purpose of changing society, i.e., to advance the Islamic cause.
2. It is acknowledged by many conservatives that “Fast and Furious” was a nefarious government operation by gun haters specifically designed to advance the cause of gun control in the USA. In that plan, the intent was to secretly give guns to criminals in order that gun crimes be committed, and then the gun haters controlling government could point to those crimes and boldly proclaim “We need gun control!”
3. It is a matter of fact that the institutionalization of marginally insane and insane people is much harder to accomplish under current law.
4. It is also reality that our coarsened society glorifies in all forms of print and media horrendous acts of violence, immorality, and degradation of human beings. The effect on marginally sane people cannot be positive. Would it push people over the edge who in more moral times would have had the restraints of a moral society pushing them in more positive directions.
5. It is also reality that each instance of gun violence results in days/weeks of media coverage and “fame” for the perpetrator of the violence. They are instructed in the means to commit mass murder, they are shown the horror they can cause, and they are shown that they receive both instant and some kind of historic recognition.
6. Should our media culture and its glorification of these acts of violence not be questioned about their participation in possibly pushing marginal sane/evil persons over the edge?
7. Finally, would not this process play into the hands of those who promote the disarming of its citizenry?
Total nonsense. 99.99% of people who play those games and watch those movies/shows don’t kill anyone. There have always been, and will always be crazy people. What video games were Hitler, Pol Pot, Mao, Stalin, etc playing? Are you sure it wasn’t heavy metal ...or maybe Elvis?
I would say we have more rampage shootings because the media has increased the coverage of such events to push their agenda of gun control.
We've always have had psychos. Now we have psychos watching the increased coverage of the shootings on TV and it makes them more likely to plan and carry out their own.
And don’t forget cRap music. Hos, drugs, sex, and killing, it’s all there, even if you can’t understand the words.
I bet you're right.
Liberals systematically cleansed America’s “white-bread” Christian culture and the void has been filled. Like the Soviet Union, it can not abide by a character of freedom, inspiration, life and love. It’s the opposite; upsidedown.
Although America respected the nature of males and females; liberals hate it.
Although America respected the self control and common sense of high character, Liberals hate and punish it. They promote instant gratification and moral realitivity.
Although America derived pleasure and security from tight families, liberals hate families...likewise adorable human babies.
Although America had and honored a constitional Republic, liberals demand communism.
Although America was set up to respect each person’s bill of rights, liberals name us a collective without individual rights. They despise the nail that sticks up in excellence; love the nail that sticks of immoral and deviant.
Although most Americans turned to God for strength, Liberals demand they turn to them and government.
On and on...every aspect of humanity, culture and society has been tuned upsidedown.
Just down the road from Sandy Hook is a closed State institution where they did have crazy people incarcerated back till the late seventies. Beautiful buildings and campus all empty now.
A very good analogy. It is the exact thing that the liberals are suggesting doing to the 2nd Amendment.
The big difference is that the only one that would have any positive effect on reducing the violence would be an assault on 'Hollywood' 1st amendment rights to distribute filth.
What we need is not Gun control, but maybe we should start with Game Control. And then maybe Hollywood control.
Fill people with images of glorified slaughter and it makes it a lot easier for them to later act on evil thoughts and intentions.
We need to call Hollywood on the carpet. They are poisoning our children's minds with glorified senseless violence and then when something like this happens they go out and stand next to their armed body guards and give some speech about how they want to take away everyone's right to protect themselves from the evil they have planted.
I suspect this POS had a hundred different first person shooter games at home and was an expert in all of them. I suspect that if we looked in his house we would find all sorts of movies that glorify senseless killing (Quentin Tarrentino style movies) and other forms of violent Godless pornography and I would also bet that you would not find a single Bible that was used for anything other than a door stop in the house.
You reap what you sow, and Hollywood and the Game industry clearly have sown the seeds of Evil in this nation. But it will be the guns that are blamed and not the evil POS who did this or the Greedy Hollywood hypocrites who sowed the seeds of violence in this monster's black heart.
And in this way the destruction of moral society ties into the elitists plan to disarm a free people.
This week here in Tampa, A female social worker went to a mentally challenged black mans home to help him with some legal papers.... he chased her down the street and stabbed her to death with a 10 inch butchers knife multiple times.... The media.... He couldn't help himself, he was off his meds.... Oh and he had a violent past....
I am not so sure that "filth" was ever intended to be protected by the first amendment. And neither were obscene or gratuitously violent images.
The first Amendment was instituted to mainly protect political and religious speech. It was not instituted to protect every kind of "artistic expression". But the protections of the first amendment when it comes to pornography and other soul destroying imagery has been expanded whereas the right to religious expression and the right to bear arms to protect yourself from monsters has been slowly but surely limited.
If Hollywood is going to lecture America on the Evils of guns, then we need to lecture Hollywood on the Evils of violent imagery and lay the blame for this tragedy at their feet.
Oh, dont get me wrong, that’s my view as well. I just wanted to point out how the sacred cow of the left (the entertainment industry) could easily be pegged for incidents like this because people can just blame those mediums for making killing seem so easy, but you will never hear one Dem raise a finger at them.
Leftists now want to confiscate guns. But they refuse to examine other, possibly greater factors such as moral decay and use of psych drugs as a substitute for parenting. According to them, everyone should have free access to whatever medications a parent blindly chooses to have prescribed to their kids.
From a recent web blog:
“Here are the sad results. Eric Harris was on Luvox before taking part in the shooting at Columbine High School in April 1999. Fifteen-year-old Shawn Cooper fired on students and high school staff in Notus, Idaho in April 1999. He was taking an SSRI. Thirteen-year-old Chris Fetters of Iowa killed her favorite aunt. She was on Prozac. Kip Kinkel, a 15-year-old, first shot his parents, then killed two and wounded 22 fellow students at Thurston High School in Oregon. He was taking Prozac.
Joseph Wesbecker was on Prozac when he killed seven people at a printing plant in Kentucky, before taking his own life. In September 1999, Buford O’Neal Furrow, Jr. fired 70 rounds at the North Valley Jewish Community Center in Los Angeles wounding 5 people. A month earlier Mark Barton murdered his wife and two children and then methodically gunned down 21 people in two brokerage firms in Atlanta.
Jeff Weise was another school killer in Red lake, Minnesota. His dose of Prozac had just been increased to 60 mg daily. The story is the same - those involved were taking SSRI drugs. Since 1998, eight of the thirteen ‘school shooters’ were on psychiatric drugs. The records on the remaining five are sealed. Did the drugs cause the violence?
Ann Blake Tracy, PhD has studied Prozac for ten years. She researched 32 murder cases involving women and their children. In 24 of the cases, the women were taking Prozac or another SSRI.
Why isn’t this on the news? Perhaps because drug company advertising supports most TV and radio stations, newspapers and medical journals. Drug companies spend $11 billion a year on advertising. An article in California Lawyer, Dec. 1998, reported that Eli Lilly, manufacturer of Prozac, settled nearly a dozen cases involving Prozac out of court in one year. They did this to avoid unwanted publicity that would unleash an avalanche of Prozac horror stories.”
When you combine violent imagery, moral depravity/evil, marginal sanity, AND a 24/7 news cycle glorifying the perpetrator and providing him with lasting infamy, then you have a recipe that will insure these events are repeated.
And if you’re hoping to end the ownership of guns, hoping for the disarming of a free people, then you have a recipe for eventually accomplishing that, and you can accomplish it without fingerprints and with plausible deniability.
You are exactly right. It is as if Satan himself was pulling the trigger. You cannot give an earthly explanation or motive for evil like this.
And in this season of Advent, the ONLY word to say is ... REPENT!
AND (apologies for the tangent) .... a federal law, which defines 'Marriage' as between a man and a woman, historically "self evident to all but the intentionally or ignorantly blind", should also pass Consitutional muster.
... "stop government at all levels from imposing the absurd instead of protecting the proven". FReeper DBeers
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