Guns and Schools Revisited

Guns and Schools – Part 3

By: George Noga – January 17, 2013

      My recent miniseries on guns and schools was among the most forwarded of all time; reader response was incredibly favorable (thank you) and heavy. Given the strong reader interest, I am reprising the topic for what I trust is the final time. I covered much ground in the prior posts whereas in this one I hone in on the quintessence of the issue.
“The greatest cause of school killings is untreated mental illness
which exists for one reason, and one reason only: liberal dogma.”
      Far and away, the greatest causal factor in mass school killings is untreated severe mental illness  particularly of those prone to violence. Mental health experts estimate there are 70,000 such people in the USA today. This situation exists for one reason only: liberal dogma. Progressive groups, led by the ACLU, prevent states from passing laws that force treatment or, if necessary, institutionalize the severely mentally ill. Connecticut is among the very worst.
      It wasn’t always this way. Due to some bona fide concerns about abuses in mental facilities, but mainly due to a twisted and perverted notion about individual rights that became a canon of progressivism in the 1960s, mental hospitals were emptied. Since that time, beds in public psychiatric hospitals have shrunk by 90% despite an increase of 140 million people. Another byproduct of compliance with this liberal shibboleth is homelessness; a vast majority of which are comprised of such unfortunate souls; the same is largely true of prisons.
     Rich Lowry, editor of National Review, framed the issue in a compelling manner; he said, “Imagine the national outrage if people with Alzheimer’s were permitted to wander about the streets uncared for. But, by some perverse logic, it’s considered okay for schizophrenics.” Let’s sum up. The severely (potentially violent) mentally ill go untreated, wander among the general population, become homeless, populate our prisons and are condemned to tortured, miserable lives – all in obeisance to the liberal religion. Oh yes, and when there is a school shooting by one of these tortured souls, they blame it all on guns – also in obeisance to liberal religion.
“The severely mentally ill go untreated, wander the streets, become homeless, populate our prisons and are condemned to tortured, miserable lives – and all in obeisance to the liberal religion.”
      The second greatest causal factor in school killings is the copycat effect. Most people don’t understand just how real this phenomenon is. In fact, it is about as old as the media itself. In 1774 Goethe wrote his classic “The Sorrows of Young Werther” in which the hero committed suicide in a certain manner. Following publication, there was a spate of identical suicides throughout Europe – and this at a time of low population when few read and news was local and moved glacially. Today there are over 7 billion people (all interconnected), the media is global and pervasive and news moves at the speed of light. Oh yes, and when there is a copycat school killing, the media blame it all on guns – all the while flogging the story for all it’s worth.
      Yes, there also are some other causes (see the first two parts of this series), although guns is not one of them. Nevertheless, untreated severe mental illness and the copycat effect are, by a large measure, the two leading causes. Both result directly from the liberal religious creed and are propagated by liberal institutions. That explains why they reflexively point to guns as the cause – to shift opprobrium from themselves and onto a standard liberal demon – guns.
     All the while, they fully understand the flap over guns is an ephemeron and that there will be no changes to gun laws. One of the few, if any, bipartisan consensuses in Congress today is about guns – specifically opposing any new restrictions on firearms. The identical pattern repeats every time. First, there is a tragedy followed by demands for more gun laws. Second, after a predictable interval the clamor subsides, no new laws are passed and everything is exactly as it was before. So it is this time and so it will be again the next time.