GUNS AND GENERATIONS

There were two guns in the house, one in one drawer, one in another.

Dad was a policeman. One gun was his service revolver, the other one was for off-duty wear. I'm sure somewhere along the line I was told to stay away from them, and for the most part I did. I do remember once picking up his 38 service revolver and thinking how heavy it was and putting it back immediately. After all I was told by my dad to stay away from it.

I have heard stories about kids who grew up in rural areas coming to school in their pickup trucks with their rifles secured in the seemingly required rifle rack and even comparing their rifles with their teachers' rifles.

Today, if a gun is not kept in a safe, the parent could face charges. Any kid bringing a rifle within 3 miles of a school would require the deployment of the closest SWAT team.

Same pistol, same rifle, different times.

The times have changed and yet a certain segment of society (the heart), rather than looking at the changes in society, seem to believe the problem is with the gun, which is the same hunk of metal it has always been, just today the gun lives in a different world.

The element of American society which, I believe, produced the activator of gun violence is the continuing decline in our respect for authority.

I respected my parents. I trusted them to lead me in the right direction, to have my well being in their every action. I, of course, never articulated that, but looking back, it was who they were. Even as young people we knew, at some level, when we were doing right or wrong, good or bad. We knew if our actions were acceptable or not acceptable. We trusted our parents to verify those beliefs by demonstrating their love to reinforce, or by "punishment" to express displeasure and redirect future behaviors.

Did anything in that last paragraph tweak a nerve? If so, let me guess--the word "punishment." We have reached a point in our society where anything that would make our children "uncomfortable" must be strongly mitigated or completely eliminated lest children begin to think of themselves as fallible. The more "heart centered" (Liberal) among us may say, "When a parent removes love from a child for doing something "wrong" that means the parent,s love is conditional to be applied only when the child does what the parent wants." That’s stated as if it's a bad thing. We "head centered" (Conservatives) believe the parent doesn't actually stop loving a child for attempting to stuff a cantaloupe down the toilet but does remove an expression of their love regardless of the potential of hurting the child's delicate feelings. When a horse you are riding is headed off a cliff, you correct by pulling on the reins. I'm sure the horse would just rather keep galloping in the direction it's heading and feels the pulling of the reins a "punishment," but unless the rider and his trusting steed are interested in doing a Thelma and Louise, there is a time for punishment.

In a Ted Cruz campaign stop in Indiana, a 10-11-year-old boy shouted from the crowd, "You suck!"

Cruz responded, Hopefully someone has told you children should speak with respect. ... In my household when a child behaves like that they get a spanking. Social media lit up. How dare he suggest punishment, and a physical one at that. (Pulling the child's reins?) In my wildest dreams I couldn't imagine doing something like that boy did. If his "parents," and I use the term lightly, have a gun in their house, I strongly suggest they get an industrial-strength safe.

I didn’t play with my father's gun. I didn't play with it because I knew what was right and wrong and the ramifications of that knowledge. The gun had nothing to do with it.

Guns are guns; society transformed (After all "fundamental transformation" is the objective isn't it?) and "loosened" up. The heart side of our society sees that as progress. The head side of our society, not so much.

Over the years younger people's respect for authority has been severely undermined. This set back in societal evolution has come initially, and unfortunately, from children's ultimate authority figure, his/her parents The heart's desire for equality is mistakenly imposed on the children. The child is not the equal of the parent. The child is not the buddy of the parent. The child has enough friends, but only one set of parents. In schools we have children who are going free-range MMA on teachers with just minimal, if any consequences. The authority of police has been sabotaged by no less than the President of the US, and we have religion scorned and laughed at in the media and suppressed in actual practice.

We're growing a generation of children who do not respect the authority of parents, teachers, law enforcement and/or clergy. Where are our young people getting their role models? Will today’s marching orders, "If it feels good, do it," or "They are going to do it anyway," serve them well in the real world?

The head knows we are not all equal, but the heart is so mistakenly obsessed with equality that any activity that smacks of competition is stifled. Try to find a good old game of Musical Chairs. We have kids' rooms with shelves full of participation trophies. What happens to those ships that "never leave the harbor," when they get into high seas? What happens when our younger generations meet real physical adversity?

What happens when they can't win an argument of words? Why would they be able to engage in friendly discourse when they are rarely exposed to dissenting views, and if a dissenting view might be lingering in the air like the smell of rotting flesh, they can hopefully make it to their "safe place" until evil dissent is gone. If they can't effectively debate the issue, they could try getting physical to get their point across. My guess, with so little practice in the art of pugilism, (because that usually results in winners and losers) that won't end well. Knowing they have never lost in their lives, how is it possible other people don't see the world as they do? Time to move on to throwing rocks and bottles believing that will prove the validity of their beliefs. If they still can't get their way there is always a gun. A gun is a good final choice. They believe when they get caught, or if they off themselves from this meaningless world, the media will publicize them and their plight and will portray them as poor underprivileged kids that America (founded on racism and genocide) has failed. They will be famous, thereby justifying their over-inflated self-esteem.

We have to understand a gun is only a problem if it's in the hands of someone with a problem. What social structure are we establishing for a person to make an intelligent decision concerning their place in the world, understanding their personal pros and cons inventory and experiencing a realistic belief of what they have to offer and what they have to give? Where do they go for the truth? Are we, under the guise of helping, setting up our young people so the only way they can find validation and a sense of self-worth is in shooting up a school, church or movie house?

Let's stop wasting time trying to "control" guns. A Glock, in itself, is as dangerous as a Glockenspiel. Let's work on the environment the gun exists in. I'm confident if we refuse to ride the horse in the direction it's going and do our personal best to regenerate respect for parents, teachers, law enforcement, and clergy, the guns will control themselves.