From: James Daugherty (daugh@home.msen.com)
Date: Mon Jun 07 1999 - 15:22:37 MDT
To: prj@mail.msen.com
Message-ID: <85256789.00412B76.00@lngodd03.notes.chrysler.com>
Date: Mon, 7 Jun 1999 07:56:25 -0400
Subject: PRJ Save a kids life
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FROM MOUNTAIN MEDIA
THE LIBERTARIAN
Copyright By Vin Suprynowicz
It's called propaganda: Simplify your lie down to an easily
recalled slogan, repeat it often enough, and people will
ventually get it down by heart and accept it as fact.
Take: "The cause of all these school shootings is the too
easy availability of guns."
Prior to the National Firearms Act of 1933, there was no
law to discourage a veteran of the Great War from keeping a
fully-operational souvenir machine gun in the bedroom closet.
There were few towns in America where the local lads didn't
know the location of at least one such weapon. Yet none was
ever used in a "school shooting."
As late as the 1960s, it was not unusual in rural America
for young boys to carry their .22 rifles to school with them,
parking them in the principal's office until needed for the
target matches after school. At age 49 I am no doddering old
timer, but I can remember young lads walking the country roads
of Ohio and Connecticut after school with their rifles (or
bicycling home with the weapons across their handlebars),
hoping to pick off some predatory bird with the full
encouragement of area farmers. A neighbor might chide you
about watching where your bullets went if you missed, but
no one ever called the police to report "The Jones boy is
heading down the road with his gun; come arrest him!"
When I went away to Eaglebrook School in Massachusetts (yes,
"Own a gun, go to jail" Massachusetts) in 1962 at the age of
12, I took my rifle. We fired for accuracy at the range on
Saturdays. I daresay we could have snuck them out of the
lockers down at the gym for some mayhem if it ever crossed
our minds ... but it never did.
The violent media? Today's TV offers nothing like "The
Rifleman" or "Wanted Dead or Alive," programs of the early
1960s in which Chuck Connors and Steve McQueen ended every
episode by mowing down some reprobate who had kicked the
town dog or insulted Millie down at the general store, in
McQueen's case using a sawed-off Winchester which it's now
a federal felony even to recreate for a museum.
This focus on "the availability of guns" -- ignoring the
fact they were far more accessible only 40 years ago, when
you could order a 20-mm Lahti anti-tank gun through the mail
from an ad in the back of a comic book -- is intended not
only to advance the prior agenda of those who want a disarmed
and enslaved citizenry, but also to distract us from asking
what it is about the mandatory behavior modification labs
(public schools) which creates such rage and frustration
in our incarcerated adolescent males. We don't see these
shoot-em-ups in the private schools, or among home-schoolers.
It also diverts attention from the perfectly relevant
question of how many of these shooters had been on drugs
known to affect the judgment, like Ritalin and Luvox,
"prescribed and administered by their government wardens".
In the face of all this misdirection, isn't it too bad the
government has never conducted an actual scientific study
on how it affects a child's likelihood of committing crimes
if his parents buy him a gun?
Um, actually ... they have.
The study was conducted from 1993-1995 by the U.S. Department
of Justice's Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency
Prevention. Child psychologists tracked 4,000 boys and girls
aged 6 to 15 in Denver, Pittsburgh, and Rochester, N.Y. Their
findings?
Children who get guns from their parents don't commit gun
crimes (0 percent) while children who get guns illegally are
quite likely to do so (21 percent).
Children who get guns from parents are less likely to commit
any kind of street crime (14 percent) than children who have
no gun in the house (24 percent) -- and are dramatically less
likely to do so than children who acquire an illegal gun
(74 percent.)
Children who get guns from parents are less likely to use
banned drugs (13 percent) than children who get illegal guns
(41 percent.)
Most strikingly, the study found: "Boys who own legal firearms
have much lower rates of delinquency and drug use (than boys
who own illegal guns) and are even slightly less delinquent
than non-owners of guns."
This wouldn't have surprised anyone before the rise of the
modern welfare state. It used to be common knowledge that
the best way to get kids to act "responsibly" was precisely
to give them some "responsibility." Why would we assume a
child taught by his parents to use a gun responsibly wouldn't
also be more responsible in his other behaviors?
"Want to dramatically reduce the chance that your child
will commit a gun-related crime or -- heaven forbid -- go
on a shooting spree?" asked the national Libertarian Party
in a May 21 news release detailing these study results.
"Buy your youngster a gun."
"Politicians are apparently more interested in demonizing
guns than they are in facts," commented LP national director
Steve Dasbach, himself an Indiana government schoolteacher.
But "The evidence is in: The simplest way to reduce firearm
related violence among children is to buy them a gun and
teach them how to use it responsibly."
James
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