A couple of days ago, I posted a quote of mine. Maybe someone said it before I did but I don’t remember hearing it. It looked like this:
I started thinking some more about it and decided that I should give it some additional attention.
We’ve all heard (and some of us have used) the argument that “Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.” That is 100% true. In the entirety of history, not a single gun has loaded itself, pointed itself at someone and pulled its own trigger. Every single gun-related death has been the result of an action taken by a person.
These days, the blame for bad behavior is placed everywhere except for the place it belongs. The person responsible for any particular bad act is the bad actor. Period. Don’t try to put the blame on society or anywhere else. The person responsible for doing bad things is the person who did the bad things. I don’t care if they’re black, white, brown, red, yellow or green.
I’m going to take a stand here and say that I believe there is such a thing as a defective person. There are people who, for whatever reason, are broken. Whether by disease, defect or simply learned behavior, some people don’t seem to have any understanding what it means to be civilized and live in a civilized world. There is something wrong with them. They are defective. Some of them can be fixed but a large number of them can’t. Some people are irreparably broken (I’ll talk more about that at a later time).
People who want to ban guns thinking it will somehow make the world a safer place are not looking at the real problem. The fact is that gun violence is the extreme end of the spectrum of bad behavior by broken people. There are tens of millions of defective people in the United States. Even if we got rid of the guns, there would still be murder, assault, rape, robbery, vandalism and host of other crimes. They’d just be committed by someone using a different weapon.
The real problem isn’t the guns, knives, pipes, ropes, wrenches or candlesticks. The real problem is the people. So, let’s stop pretending that everyone is a victim and not responsible for their own actions and let’s do something about the real problem.
Let’s make better people.
To get where we need to be, we can either make better people or make people better. Those are two different things. Making people better is really difficult because you have to change someone’s already-learned behavior/values. Making better people is easier because it involves teaching kids the difference between right and wrong before they learn other bad behaviors. So, let’s focus on the kids.
I realize there are a lot of fine people in the world and they’re raising a lot of great kids. But we also have a ridiculously large number of people who themselves don’t know right from wrong, or at least don’t demonstrate that they do, and they’re having kids too. And these murderers, thugs, thieves, rapists and vandals are raising their kids to have the same values that they have. We can’t rely on broken people to raise non-broken kids.
Our priorities need to change. Instead of teaching kids about things like diversity, systemic racism, white privilege, Black Lives Matter or some other victimized woke bullshit, we should be teaching a basic understanding of how to be a good person.
Here’s my suggested lesson plan:
- Do not harm yourself or others.
- Don’t take something that belongs to someone else. If you want something, earn it.
- Every action has an effect, and every effect has a result.
- Some results have consequences.
- You alone are responsible for the consequences of your actions. You are not a victim and there is no one else to blame for you doing stupid things.
- You are not entitled to anything. Hard work and determination are the keys to success.
- Show respect to authority. Even if you don’t respect them, you need to act like you do.
- If you need help, ask for it.
We need better people. But we’re not going to get them by teaching kids that they are a victim or that the deck is stacked against them or that the police are exterminating black men or that they’re entitled to “reparations” or that they should be ashamed because they have white skin. Because none of that is true.
We’re only going to get better people if we teach them to respect themselves and others, to work hard and do their best. We can build better people simply by teaching kids to make good decisions, and take responsibility for what happens when they don’t.
