Within a couple days of the Connecticut massacre, the secular left raised their predictable demand for gun control. While most people would have thought that respect for the dead—even more so because most of them were children—and their families would have inhibited political commentary and clamoring for legislation so soon, the left was not deterred. It seemed to be another situation of not letting a crisis go to waste; it was a prime opportunity to promote an ideological and policy agenda. To its credit, the major organizational opponent of gun control, the National Rifle Association, held its tongue for a week before stepping up to call for armed security guards in all public schools. Even then, it seemed reluctant to get a full-scale debate going that soon after the tragedy by refusing to answer media questions at its press conference.
Indeed, it seems as if gun control is the left’s singular solution. Yet, they never seem to address the question of why this should be in light of experience. American cities with the strictest gun control ordinances, such as Chicago and Washington, D.C., have some of the highest rates of violent—including gun—crime. Countries with the toughest gun laws have seen increases in gun crime. Such columnists as Thomas Sowell and Joseph Farah recount various cases in the news in recent years where armed citizens stopped murderous criminals and mass murders in the making.
With all this, one asks the question: Why does the left fixate on gun control? Part of the reason may just be groupthink. This has been the position of the left for decades, so this is what a “progressive” should believe. At a deeper level, the readiness to blame guns for shooting rampages reflects the left’s general tendency not to view people as responsible for their actions. Just as corrupted and unenlightened institutions are the cause of all evil and human problems, so guns are seen as the cause of murders instead of the person using them. It also represents a domestic version of the attitude that the great international politics scholar Hans J. Morgenthau said typifies the simplistic, abstract-type thinking of many people about the problem of international peace. Just as some think that abiding peace will follow merely if certain changes are made to international law and organizations and if social science principles are properly refined and applied, so others think that gun violence and criminality will largely cease with good gun control legislation. If we—in our unlimited human wisdom—just tinker with things enough, we can solve even deep-seated, perennial problems.
While we can never truly understand evil—the eminent priest-sociologist Paul Hanly Furfey spoke of “the mystery of iniquity”—it is not difficult to pinpoint the basic, broad causes of outrages such as the one in Connecticut. Five sweeping cultural developments of the past fifty or so years are crucial: the rejection of traditional religion, the subversion of sound morality, the breakdown of the family, the dissolution of solid communities that provided reference points and restraining and helping forces, and the proliferation of destructive, illicit drugs. During that period of time in America, mass murders—although not unknown before that—have become all too frequent occurrences.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to The Faith Explorer RSS feed!
