"We need to change our culture of violence while strengthening communal and family bonds. And we need to talk a lot less about “gun rights,” as if guns are people instead of tools that kill people, and much more about personal responsibility."
I think that this hits the nail on the head in identifying where the root of the problem lies. But how is it possible to "change the American culture of violence" when the governments, the media, the political party (What? You claim that there are two of them?), and even the churches (and synagogues, and mosques) are all devoted to cultivating hate? (Recommend Matt Tiabbi's collection, Hate, Inc. for a look at the depth of the media's hate-mongering for profit.)
i am prepared to argue that the bottom-line, bullet-hits-the-bone conclusion from all this is that the Human Right to Bear Arms and to own guns is directly related to the ultimate Human Right to Life and, when and as necessary, to Self-Defense and the protection of another Human Right: Property.
And that is the individual's Self-Defense of Person and Property against criminals who work either for themselves or for a crime syndicate owned and operated either privately or by the government.
The first question Your piece raised in my mind was: “How do we change our ‘culture of violence’ NON-VIOLENTLY?” Because America’s culture of violence is not going to be changed by more violence from private individuals, groups, and organizations, and/or, particularly, from government military and law enforcement institutions. All that will happen is that the current culture of violence will become even and ever more violent.
The second question raised was “How do we go about teaching young men ~ and women [it being only a matter of time before the mass shooter is a female] ~ that ‘killing isn’t cool’?” Especially when there is so much money to be made by our techno-infotainment-mind control Matrix showing, telling, and selling that killing IS cool, indeed.
The third question was “How do we go about strengthening those ‘communal and family bonds,’ and whose responsibility is it to see that that happens”? And whose example of communal and family bonds is to be used as the model for that strengthening?
And the fourth question was: “How big a business is the individual firearms industry in America?” How many people are making how much money keeping Americans [and others] with access to all the small arms weaponry they want? Is there anything like a Guns and Accessories Cartel at work here, much like there is an MICC driving American foreign policy? So it would seem… :
30+ STRIKING U.S. FIREARM INDUSTRY STATISTICS [2023]: HOW BIG IS THE US GUN INDUSTRY by Jack Flynn 112922
RESEARCH SUMMARY. Some people love them, some people hate them, but you can’t deny that legal firearm ownership sets the U.S. apart from any other country. From supplying the military to Walmart hunting shelves, the prevalence of firearms has created a huge industry. Knowing that, we’ve gathered some of the most compelling U.S. Firearm industry statistics:
Across the United States, 18.8 million firearms were sold in 2021.
The U.S. Firearm industry contributes $51.3 billion to the economy.
The firearms industry employs 169,523 people across the U.S.
42% of American households own at least one firearm.
The U.S. firearm industry is worth approximately $28 billion.
Mass shootings make the headlines but it's the day to day shootings in cities that are responsible for piling up the bodies. The mass media doesn't talk about that because there's a decidedly racial angle to it.
You always tell it like it is, Bill. I don't have to say or write any more than this; I just pass on your well written and clearly reasoned statements to the people I know.
There's nothing you or anyone can "do" about this tragic state of affairs but tell the truth, say it's disgusting, unnatural, inhuman, cruel, inexcusable, and overdue for radical change.
This tells me that changing our “culture of violence” is not going to be an easy sell to today’s teenagers, those who were born after 9/11 and endured The COVID Event… :
JUVENILE CRIME SURGES, REVERSING LONG DECLINE. ‘IT’S JUST KIDS KILLING KIDS.’ [Extracts] by Dan Frosch and Zusha Elinson 012323
Violence among children has soared across the country since 2020. One consequence: a mounting toll of young victims.
A 13-year-old boy ran through the Bronx streets one May afternoon last year, chased by two teens on a scooter. Surveillance video showed him frantically trying to open the doors of an assisted-living facility. The scooter peeled onto the sidewalk and sped toward him. A 15-year-old boy riding on the back pointed a handgun and fired multiple times, police say.
Nearby, 11-year-old Kyhara Tay stood outside a beauty salon after school, eating chicken wings and waiting for her friends to finish getting their nails done. A stray bullet struck the pavement in front of her, authorities say. Another pierced her stomach. She was rushed in critical condition to Lincoln Hospital 2 miles away, where she died that night.
Violence among children has soared across the country since 2020, a stark reversal of a decades long decline in juvenile crime.
In the U.S., homicides committed by juveniles acting alone rose 30% in 2020 from a year earlier, while those committed by multiple juveniles increased 66%. THE NUMBER OF KILLINGS COMMITTED BY CHILDREN UNDER 14 WAS THE HIGHEST IN TWO DECADES, ACCORDING TO THE MOST RECENT FEDERAL DATA.
One consequence is a mounting toll of young victims. THE NUMBER OF JUVENILES KILLING OTHER JUVENILES WAS THE HIGHEST IT HAS BEEN IN MORE THAN TWO DECADES, THE 2020 FEDERAL DATA SHOW.
Kyhara was one of 153 victims in New York City under the age of 18 shot in 2022, the most in at least six years and more than the 127 total minors shot in 2018 and 2019 combined, according to police data. The 13-year-old boy being pursued was unharmed, authorities say.
In New York City, police said 124 juveniles committed shootings during 2022, up from 62 in 2020 and 48 in 2019.
“THE TRAGEDY HERE IS THAT WE’RE TALKING ABOUT A GUNMAN WHO IS TOO YOUNG TO BE CALLED A GUNMAN BECAUSE HE’S 15 YEARS OLD,” said Bronx District Attorney Darcel D. Clark after Kyhara’s death. “These ages make you weep.”
The jump comes amid an overall wave of violent crime in the first two years of the pandemic—particularly homicides and shootings—that swept through urban and rural areas alike.
Police, prosecutors and community groups ATTRIBUTE MUCH OF THE YOUTH VIOLENCE TO BROAD DISRUPTIONS THAT STARTED WITH THE PANDEMIC AND LOCKDOWNS. SCHOOLS SHUT DOWN, DEPRIVING STUDENTS OF STRUCTURE IN DAILY LIFE, AS DID SERVICES FOR TROUBLED CHILDREN. INCREASED STRESS COMPOUNDED A SWELLING MENTAL-HEALTH CRISIS. SOCIAL-MEDIA CONFLICTS INCREASINGLY TURNED DEADLY.
Dora Villarreal, the top prosecutor in Rock Island County, Ill., said she has never seen such young teens so frequently involved in shootings and firearms cases in her county of about 143,000. “During Covid, without school being a constant kind of stabilizing structure for many of our kids, that has helped lead unfortunately to this rise in violent crime,” she said… .
… Fourteen-year-old K’Mya Marshall could see the changes among the young people she knew in her West Philadelphia neighborhood over the past two years.
After months of isolation, teens became less able to cope with conflict and more frequently lashed out over small disputes, she said. With less to do, many also drifted deeper into social-media circles where guns and crime were glamorized.
Firearms were seemingly everywhere, as gun sales skyrocketed during the pandemic. Kids got them from family members, purchased them on Instagram for a few hundred dollars, or bought homemade ghost guns from other teens.
“They think it’s cool,” said K’Mya, a team leader at the Young Chances Foundation, a community organization that seeks to prevent violence. “They want that gun to define themselves and for people to be scared of them.”
"We need to change our culture of violence while strengthening communal and family bonds. And we need to talk a lot less about “gun rights,” as if guns are people instead of tools that kill people, and much more about personal responsibility."
I think that this hits the nail on the head in identifying where the root of the problem lies. But how is it possible to "change the American culture of violence" when the governments, the media, the political party (What? You claim that there are two of them?), and even the churches (and synagogues, and mosques) are all devoted to cultivating hate? (Recommend Matt Tiabbi's collection, Hate, Inc. for a look at the depth of the media's hate-mongering for profit.)
And another.... . In California, which has among the strictest gun control laws in the nation.
And apparently it's not just young White guys who have this problem with guns; old Yellow and Brown guys seem to be equally affected.
i am prepared to argue that the bottom-line, bullet-hits-the-bone conclusion from all this is that the Human Right to Bear Arms and to own guns is directly related to the ultimate Human Right to Life and, when and as necessary, to Self-Defense and the protection of another Human Right: Property.
And that is the individual's Self-Defense of Person and Property against criminals who work either for themselves or for a crime syndicate owned and operated either privately or by the government.
“What can we do?”, indeed, Bill.
The first question Your piece raised in my mind was: “How do we change our ‘culture of violence’ NON-VIOLENTLY?” Because America’s culture of violence is not going to be changed by more violence from private individuals, groups, and organizations, and/or, particularly, from government military and law enforcement institutions. All that will happen is that the current culture of violence will become even and ever more violent.
The second question raised was “How do we go about teaching young men ~ and women [it being only a matter of time before the mass shooter is a female] ~ that ‘killing isn’t cool’?” Especially when there is so much money to be made by our techno-infotainment-mind control Matrix showing, telling, and selling that killing IS cool, indeed.
The third question was “How do we go about strengthening those ‘communal and family bonds,’ and whose responsibility is it to see that that happens”? And whose example of communal and family bonds is to be used as the model for that strengthening?
And the fourth question was: “How big a business is the individual firearms industry in America?” How many people are making how much money keeping Americans [and others] with access to all the small arms weaponry they want? Is there anything like a Guns and Accessories Cartel at work here, much like there is an MICC driving American foreign policy? So it would seem… :
30+ STRIKING U.S. FIREARM INDUSTRY STATISTICS [2023]: HOW BIG IS THE US GUN INDUSTRY by Jack Flynn 112922
RESEARCH SUMMARY. Some people love them, some people hate them, but you can’t deny that legal firearm ownership sets the U.S. apart from any other country. From supplying the military to Walmart hunting shelves, the prevalence of firearms has created a huge industry. Knowing that, we’ve gathered some of the most compelling U.S. Firearm industry statistics:
Across the United States, 18.8 million firearms were sold in 2021.
The U.S. Firearm industry contributes $51.3 billion to the economy.
The firearms industry employs 169,523 people across the U.S.
42% of American households own at least one firearm.
The U.S. firearm industry is worth approximately $28 billion.
For further analysis, we broke down the data in the following ways: Types | Trends and Projections | Location | Gun Owners | Gun Safety. Continued at https://www.zippia.com/advice/firearm-industry-statistics/ .
Mass shootings make the headlines but it's the day to day shootings in cities that are responsible for piling up the bodies. The mass media doesn't talk about that because there's a decidedly racial angle to it.
You always tell it like it is, Bill. I don't have to say or write any more than this; I just pass on your well written and clearly reasoned statements to the people I know.
There's nothing you or anyone can "do" about this tragic state of affairs but tell the truth, say it's disgusting, unnatural, inhuman, cruel, inexcusable, and overdue for radical change.
Good luck! And keep up the good work!
This tells me that changing our “culture of violence” is not going to be an easy sell to today’s teenagers, those who were born after 9/11 and endured The COVID Event… :
JUVENILE CRIME SURGES, REVERSING LONG DECLINE. ‘IT’S JUST KIDS KILLING KIDS.’ [Extracts] by Dan Frosch and Zusha Elinson 012323
Violence among children has soared across the country since 2020. One consequence: a mounting toll of young victims.
A 13-year-old boy ran through the Bronx streets one May afternoon last year, chased by two teens on a scooter. Surveillance video showed him frantically trying to open the doors of an assisted-living facility. The scooter peeled onto the sidewalk and sped toward him. A 15-year-old boy riding on the back pointed a handgun and fired multiple times, police say.
Nearby, 11-year-old Kyhara Tay stood outside a beauty salon after school, eating chicken wings and waiting for her friends to finish getting their nails done. A stray bullet struck the pavement in front of her, authorities say. Another pierced her stomach. She was rushed in critical condition to Lincoln Hospital 2 miles away, where she died that night.
Violence among children has soared across the country since 2020, a stark reversal of a decades long decline in juvenile crime.
In the U.S., homicides committed by juveniles acting alone rose 30% in 2020 from a year earlier, while those committed by multiple juveniles increased 66%. THE NUMBER OF KILLINGS COMMITTED BY CHILDREN UNDER 14 WAS THE HIGHEST IN TWO DECADES, ACCORDING TO THE MOST RECENT FEDERAL DATA.
One consequence is a mounting toll of young victims. THE NUMBER OF JUVENILES KILLING OTHER JUVENILES WAS THE HIGHEST IT HAS BEEN IN MORE THAN TWO DECADES, THE 2020 FEDERAL DATA SHOW.
Kyhara was one of 153 victims in New York City under the age of 18 shot in 2022, the most in at least six years and more than the 127 total minors shot in 2018 and 2019 combined, according to police data. The 13-year-old boy being pursued was unharmed, authorities say.
In New York City, police said 124 juveniles committed shootings during 2022, up from 62 in 2020 and 48 in 2019.
“THE TRAGEDY HERE IS THAT WE’RE TALKING ABOUT A GUNMAN WHO IS TOO YOUNG TO BE CALLED A GUNMAN BECAUSE HE’S 15 YEARS OLD,” said Bronx District Attorney Darcel D. Clark after Kyhara’s death. “These ages make you weep.”
The jump comes amid an overall wave of violent crime in the first two years of the pandemic—particularly homicides and shootings—that swept through urban and rural areas alike.
Police, prosecutors and community groups ATTRIBUTE MUCH OF THE YOUTH VIOLENCE TO BROAD DISRUPTIONS THAT STARTED WITH THE PANDEMIC AND LOCKDOWNS. SCHOOLS SHUT DOWN, DEPRIVING STUDENTS OF STRUCTURE IN DAILY LIFE, AS DID SERVICES FOR TROUBLED CHILDREN. INCREASED STRESS COMPOUNDED A SWELLING MENTAL-HEALTH CRISIS. SOCIAL-MEDIA CONFLICTS INCREASINGLY TURNED DEADLY.
Dora Villarreal, the top prosecutor in Rock Island County, Ill., said she has never seen such young teens so frequently involved in shootings and firearms cases in her county of about 143,000. “During Covid, without school being a constant kind of stabilizing structure for many of our kids, that has helped lead unfortunately to this rise in violent crime,” she said… .
… Fourteen-year-old K’Mya Marshall could see the changes among the young people she knew in her West Philadelphia neighborhood over the past two years.
After months of isolation, teens became less able to cope with conflict and more frequently lashed out over small disputes, she said. With less to do, many also drifted deeper into social-media circles where guns and crime were glamorized.
Firearms were seemingly everywhere, as gun sales skyrocketed during the pandemic. Kids got them from family members, purchased them on Instagram for a few hundred dollars, or bought homemade ghost guns from other teens.
“They think it’s cool,” said K’Mya, a team leader at the Young Chances Foundation, a community organization that seeks to prevent violence. “They want that gun to define themselves and for people to be scared of them.”
Full article at https://www.wsj.com/articles/violent-crime-rate-juvenile-11674485556 [EMPHASES added.]