Addressing the Causes

You might hear some familiar chords in the take of the editors of the Wall Street Journal. After agreeing in principle with gun reform:

We aren’t opposed to sensible gun regulation if it is politically possible and might prevent such killings. So-called red-flag laws that give police the ability to deny guns to people who may pose a risk to the community have been useful in some cases. But they are hard to enforce, as we recently learned in Buffalo. New York state has a red-flag statute, and Payton Gendron was even referred for mental counseling. He still got a gun.

noting the shortcomings of that strategy they conclude:

The recent proliferation of mass shootings suggests a deeper malady than gun laws can fix. Firearm laws were few and weak before the 1970s. Yet only in recent decades have young men entered schools and supermarkets for the purpose of killing the innocent. That a teenager could look at a nine-year-old, aim a gun, and pull the trigger signals some larger social and cultural breakdown.

It also suggests that society may have to adapt by rethinking our hands-off attitudes to antisocial behavior and mental illness. Security at schools and churches will need to be enhanced. Big Data may help law enforcement identify potential risks, and we may need to give them freer rein to intervene in borderline cases. A return to more social sanction and intervention for antisocial behavior would also help the vulnerable and lost who most need help.

The modern welfare state is adept at writing checks, but not much else. Today’s young killers aren’t motivated by material deprivation. They are typically from middle-class families with access to smartphones and X-boxes. Their deficit is social and spiritual. The rise of family dysfunction and the decline of mediating institutions such as churches and social clubs have consequences.

This cultural erosion will take years to repair, but a good start would be to admit that it plays a role in the increasing acts of insensate violence. It would also help if someone brave enough to mention the problem—recall Joe Lieberman and Tipper Gore —isn’t derided as a cultural dinosaur.

As I said to my wife in the wake of the first reports of the shootings in Uvalde, the key to ending such tragedies isn’t by trying to make them impossible but to make them unthinkable. Guns are tools not toys or status symbols. They shouldn’t be romanticized and their use shouldn’t be glorified.

Admitting that there are social and cultural problems are key. Blaming the problem on those darned gun nuts may help you let off steam but it only addresses a tiny part of the problem. The diminution of all institutions other than the state, e.g. clubs, churches, marriage, the family, is part of the problem. Indeed, assuming more laws will correct the problem is part of the problem. It reminds me of Mussolini’s dictum: “All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.” Something else that should be considered is that if you want more laws, you necessarily want more law enforcement, and that in turn means more discrimination against blacks.