The final ascendancy of such people–as combined with the Artificial Intelligence they seemingly fetishize, and perhaps will not be able to control– is the most pressing existential threat our children face. The liquidation of political freedom in our lifetime is a very real possibility, and it is clear that well placed, well organized, well funded and highly motivated people are trying to bring it about.
Given that, the presence of a well armed populace as a counterweight to the government–the 2nd Amendment CLEARLY being a part of the “checks and balances” system we all learned about in school–continues to be an absolute necessity. Yes, I get that technology at some point might make all our efforts in vain, but until that point–and it is hard to know where and when it might occur–it is absolutely vital that the citizenry be empowered by law to resist ACTUAL tyranny with force if necessary.
17 dead teenagers is a bad statistic, but consider, as one contextualizing statistic among many, that 2,820 teenagers died last year in car crashes. The entirety of mass shootings in the worst year ever–which may well be the past year–doesn’t come close to the car crashes, heroin overdoses (over 20,000), or even cancer (1,140 for ages 1-14)
And to my mind, the biggest issue here is the death of our cultural bonds, the death of communal feeling, the ease with which troubled minds can detach and attack their peers.
As I think about it, in the old days, it was always possible to find some conflict, some us versus them. The Dagos hated the Pollacks, and everybody else hated them. There was always some group your group could hate, could dehumanize, could attack verbally and sometimes physically. The Jews were a common target. Still are.
In an age where this instinct can find almost no expression, could we say that these shooters are creating their own tribe of one, that they are trying to create a sense of self through violence, as seems to be wired in us evolutionarily?
Where does the hate go, if we don’t process it, don’t get to the roots of it? You can indoctrinate kids not to hate, but what do they do? Patently, they hate people they mislabel haters. This is a willfully disingenuous ploy on the part of some, but most are quite sincere in their delusions. The problem has been masked and displaced, not solved.
It should be possible for every single living human being to have a gun on their hip, and still fear no one. That would be a civilized nation. Obviously, most would not feel the need to be armed if they feared no one, but the point remains.
The core issue that needs to be addressed, in my view, is the pervasiveness of emotional poverty.
What we don’t need is another marketing bonanza for AR-15 dealers.