I am a 53-year-old lawyer who lives in a trendy neighborhood in a large diverse city with my wife and three kids. I have never owned a gun. In fact, even though I grew up in Louisiana ("Sportsman's Paradise"), I have never even pulled the trigger of any weapon except a BB gun.
Yet, last week, I became a proud member of the NRA for the first time. I did so because the anti-gun hysteria that I've witnessed is dangerous, alarming, and ignores the facts. I've joined the NRA to stand up for them when they are viciously attacked, since the organization is a convenient scapegoat, not a cause of what happened in Florida.
I’m fed up. Here’s what I have discovered.
During the 1970s there were years between school shootings. Today the average is around five school shootings a year. In the early 1980s, violent video games first hit the streets (I remember -- I was a teenager in the early 80s), and since then school mass shootings have steadily increased. (The Columbine shooters reportedly loved “Doom.”) Our entertainment culture – movies and TV -- also are increasingly violent. I believe it is hypocritical that Hollywood hates guns in the hands of law abiding citizens, but glamorizes and profits from gun violence in their productions.
Many school shooters (and other mass shooters) have mental health issues, a point that is generally unaddressed in any of the demands of gun control advocates. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently reported as many as 20% of children aged three to 17 have, in any given year, have a mental or emotional illness. The Center for Prisoner Health and Human Rights reports that the percentage of prison inmates with serious mental illness rose from less than 1% in 1880 to 21% in 2005. Deinstitutionalization swept health care starting in the 1960s, meaning the mentally ill now live among us. Elliot Rodger, who killed six and wounded 13 during a 2014 killing spree near a California college, had legally purchased three guns and passed a federal background check. He also met several other requirements in a state with among the toughest gun control laws in the country. Yet California has some of the weakest laws in the country when it comes to treating and committing mentally ill persons. As such, despite being reported to a county mental health agency and police for posting alarming videos on YouTube, Rodger was not committed. So in his case, it wasn't the gun laws, it was the lack of common sense mental commitment laws, that led to tragedy.
Additionally, shooters are being raised in a violent society. For example, taxpayer-funded abortions on demand are routine. Just two months ago, the U.S. Senate blocked a bill that would have banned most abortions (except for rape, incest, and the life of the mother) after 20 weeks. In many western European countries, abortion is only allowed in the first
