Mass shootings more common since 1960s
By MATT CRENSON,
NEW YORK – Mass public shootings have become such a part of American life in recent decades that the most dramatic of them can be evoked from the nation’s collective memory in a word or two: Luby’s. Jonesboro. Columbine.
And now, Virginia Tech.
Since Aug. 1, 1966, when Charles Whitman climbed a 27-story tower on the University of Texas campus and started picking people off, at least 100 Americans have gone on shooting sprees.
And all through those years, the same questions have been asked: What is it about modern-day America that provokes such random violence? Is it the decline of traditional morals? The depiction of violence in entertainment? The ready availability of lethal firepower? Northeastern University criminologist James Alan Fox blames guns, at least in part. He notes that seven of the eight deadliest mass public shootings have occurred in the past 25 years. “I know that there were high-powered guns before,” he said. “But this weaponry is just so much more pervasive than it was.”Australia had a spate of mass public shooting in the 1980s and ’90s, culminating in 1996, when Martin Bryant opened fire at the Port Arthur Historical Site in Tasmania with an AR-15 assault rifle, killing 35 people. Within two weeks the government had enacted strict gun control laws that included a ban on semiautomatic rifles. There has not been a mass shooting in Australia since.
Yet Grant Duwe, a criminologist with the Minnesota State Department of Corrections, said the availability of guns was not a factor in his exhaustive statistical study of mass murder during the 20th century. Duwe found that the prevalence of mass murders, defined as the killing of four or more people in a 24-hour period, tends to mirror that of homicide generally. The increase in mass killings during the 1960s was accompanied by a doubling in the overall murder rate after the relatively peaceful 1940s and ’50s.
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Well, I was not going to write about the Virginia Tech tragedy, as I do not want to politicize the senseless act, but since everybody else is, I thus feel free to add my two cents.
Well, if Mass shootings are more common since the 1960s, then what has changed…???
This is what has changed……
First, liberal politicians have removed God and Christian values from our society. I wonder what our Founding Fathers would have thought of a state school system that allows children to learn about homosexuality, and Islam but not Jesus? And what would have George Washington thought of a society where kids can get condoms in school but not Bibles? Even worse, the ability to discipline and raise children has been taken away from their parent in more ways then one.
Not only can a parent not discipline their child without it being called child abuse, but now many parents have a hard time even being home to raise their child. Unless one makes a sizable income, it is nearly impossible to afford a decent home on only one paycheck. Thus, too often, children lack proper parental guidence as both parents are working. It does not take a rocket scientist to imagine a society with smaller social programs (which many are not effective anyway) and thus lower taxes just might allow one parent to possibly stay at home and actually raise their kids for a change, as opposed to society raising the kids for them. (And what a wonderful job society does at that.)
But more then anything else it is the fact that a society based on the principles of moral relativism ultimately means there will be little morals, and thus little values, to govern society. And even worse, a liberal secular society takes away the common values and principles on good and evil that are based on Judeo-Christian beliefs. And it is in this moral vacuum that these tragedies happen. Why is it so surprising that a society that demeans life by practicing abortion on demand will have increased murder rate? Guns have been around BEFORE this country was created, but tragedies like this have only happened recently. (Got that Rosie, you Christian hating, terrorist loving a@@hole.) Our Society devalues life, devalues good and evil, devalues personal responsibility, and is then surprised when tragedies like this happens.
And for a final tragedy, for too many of our youth stuck in cold liberal madras that they call an educational system, Christian values have been replaced by secular teaching programs. And because of asses like the ACLU and other liberal groups these teachers cannot even mention God. So when tragedy strikes, kids have now been deprived even of a God to grieve to.
Liberals and your immoral beliefs, this is the society you have created!
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