The WRight Way
By Ron Wright
(Cazenovia, NY – Jan. 2013
) Twenty-something males are often the perpetrators. I’ll follow with more suggested causes, effects and commentary, but first: Over the last two or three generations, our country and certainly other nations have experienced the increasing spiritual, emotional and mental emasculation of its male population.
Here I am NOT particularly referring to sexual orientation or to the relative physical stature or physical ability of any particular male. For example, a male could be a quad in a wheelchair or a so-called “90-pound weakling” or someone who never handled a firearm or perhaps is a women’s fashion designer and not suffer from the aforementioned emasculations.
What I am talking about is attitude, responsibility, character, initiative, work ethic, respect for others and being a protector of women and children and the weak. And possessing self-confidence while not being arrogant or a spoiled brat or a narcissist or placing oneself on a pedestal.
Background causes of violence, mayhem and deadly outbursts can include but are not limited to: The pampered male from early childhood on, where mommy or daddy protected him from any and all unpleasant situations and experiences or bailed him out as a rule. In some cases, the lack of a positive male role model is lacking or totally absent. The father may be AWOL. Is the real biological father even known to the young man?
Include the heart-rending breakup of families as a relatively high factor on the list.
School systems that spend more time on soft subjects, cultural revisions, indoctrination and the politicization of young people rather than on the tough sciences, math and history including civics. School systems that continue to tolerate bullying.
Allowing one’s mind to become mesmerized and hypnotized by video games of most any description.
If we are so convinced a child will insist on eating a sugary cereal after seeing a 30-second commercial, how will the young, impressionable mind be altered by staring at and participating in endless hours of wanton computer game violence?
While pouring out reams of anti-firearm regulations our respective state and federal governments seem to be playing just lip service, so far, to the primary source of what is good and bad in any society: the human mind.
I’ve written before about this depressingly common scenario: A woman is employed out of the home. The shiftless non-working boyfriend is babysitting for her child. The boyfriend gets annoyed when the child has needs and disrupts a computer game or whatever. Said boyfriend hits/beats/molests/kills the child.
Two main points here: First, a furtherance of the examples included in the previous paragraph. Second, the frequent death of another innocent individual. If you can’t follow the linkage, I am sorry for you.
While we are talking about the killing of innocents, let us be very frank and clear about something. Whether a person is killed with a knife, a gun, a baseball bat, a drunk driver, by a beating with fists, by intentional poisoning, by strangulation or any other means, those people are equally dead.
Digressing for a moment: Or by being aborted. Want to talk about big numbers of preventable deaths of young people? The number one cause in the last 40 years. De-sensitization is one word for it.
Then there are organizations with a title like Mothers Against Gun Violence. Question: Where are the fathers? A better title: Parents Against All Unlawful Violence. Do fathers, even those not in wedlock, not care that their children are being killed? And accounting for the substantial percentage of homicides that result from the use of sharp and blunt instruments, why are these fatalities not as significant as those caused by firearms?
Hedonistic stimuli: Who would disagree that many individuals are adversely impacted by being hyper-stimulated? Whether it is video games, much of TV, certain music, chemical (legal and illegal) misuse, the list goes on. Frequently the advertisements for contemporary musical groups will show the artists arrayed in grotesque positions with maniacal and angry or hateful expressions and gestures. What message are they intending to illustrate?
Yes, we all know they want to sell their recordings and their concert tickets, but when an impressionable child or teen looks at this sort of display, can you imagine what they are thinking? Again, the over-the-top stimuli that magnifies the emotional extremes of anger, hatred, lust, envy, vengeance, simulated assaults, screaming, cursing, etc. Someone may be having a bad day or a bad life experience, and this type of repeated negative exposure surely will do nothing to calm them down and make them less hostile.
How can you expect your brain, nerves and sensory receptors to remain intact, if as equivalents, you keep staring into a welders arc with unprotected eyes, allow an un-muffled chain saw to rev next to your ear for hours, scarf down a witch’s brew of unknown pills from who knows where and witness endless carnage on a video screen where the dead actors on the screen can be killed a thousand times over? Trained soldiers when captured often succumb to brainwashing by more subtle mental assaults than these.
And regarding the truly mentally ill: Most agree the great majority of the sufferers are not harmful to others. Probably there are thousands of identified and unidentified conditions, degrees and combinations thereof. In all this, we need to be careful not to stigmatize but remain aware some small percentage of people are ticking time bombs. Let’s go careful here but some legislation may have a place.
And what to do about the known sociopaths and psychopaths who are not institutionalized?
And what about those who are out and about (again) after their 20th, 25th or 30th convictions for felonies and violent offenses? Unfortunately some individuals are too dangerous to society to ever be let loose.
And orders of protection. There’s a good one. Talk about something not worth the paper it is printed on. An estranged spouse is ordered to stay 1,000 feet away from the victim of his threats of violence and also not possess a firearm. But it is OK for the perpetrator to have a drawer full of kitchen knives, for example.
And the victim may often be denied permission to have a hand gun.
Another variation of the angry boyfriend scenario mentioned above.
And the newspapers gear up for another tragic story.
Gun buy-backs: When done, the score generally works out to the Good Guys have fewer guns and the Bad Guys have the same. So who comes out (total number of guns out there) ahead percentage-wise in a buy-back situation? Ever see some of the stuff turned in? An old cowboy pistol with a broken handle maybe or a Civil War muzzle-loader? Does this make you feel good? Yes both could probably be made to fire, but how many of these are used by your average bank robber and shopping mall mass shooter?
To be continued.
Ron Wright of Cazenovia is a retiree with keen interest in his family, history, politics and his church. He began putting his thoughts on paper a little over a decade ago to share with family and friends. Ron, whose column appears the third edition each month, may be reached at madnews@m3pmedia.com.