Politics & Current Events
smerka
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Ben Carson needs a new advisor on gun issues
Sorry Ben fans, but he is really screwing the pooch this week. First he tells us that in active shooter situations people should just rush the shooter. Then he claims that the Nazis taking away the guns in Germany helped caused the Holocaust. WTF?
Re: Ben Carson needs a new advisor on gun issues
To be fair, most 1st world countries ban handguns and have substantially lower gun violence because of it (ie Canada, England, etc.). It has been that way for decades and none of them are dictatorships. True, not all guns are outlawed...shotguns and hunting rifles are allowed in both countries. And I think they are fairly easy to get in Canada, though quite a lot of red tape in England.
However, with all that said...while I wish we could go back in time and scourge our country of handguns like other countries have done...it is now too late. That genie has been out of the bottle too long and to ban hand guns now would only mean lawful citizens would give up their guns, but thugs and criminals would not.
With schools, the shooters are usually students themselves. While I certainly understand it is a tv show, the most recent Law and Order SVU had an episode that really delved into the differences that take place in a person's brain from childhood to adulthood. For example, generally speaking, adults have more impulse control. Children/teenagers also strike me as being more self-centered people...twist that with an already sociopathic/psychopathic brain chemistry...and it doesn't surprise me schools are so often the targets of these terrible shooting rampages.
But then, those differences between adults and teenagers/children have always been true.
Maybe it's like a vicious cycle. One shooting tragedy -->huge publicity, public outcry-->nationwide, even worldwide, fame for the perpetrators. That gives another sick individual the idea and/or the yearning for the same statement/fame. They commit a similar sensational shooting spree. Now shooting sprees are what everyone is talking about and plants those kind of seeds in the minds of many.
At least in our current times, I think absolutely the primary reason for violent crime is poverty.
If you basically look at list of the Top 10 cities with the highest violent crime rates and the Top 10 cities with the highest levels of poverty, those lists will have at least half the cities in common. I know, because I live in one that usually makes both of those lists.
Whereas I think of NH as being a fairly affluent state, relatively speaking. So it wouldn't surprise me at all for gun laws to be loose and lots of people to own guns, but the violent crime rate is fairly low. Correct me if I'm wrong! I 100% admit to saying that from general impression, but have never lived there or been there.
@BlueBirdMB, you have asked multiple times "what is wrong with our nation now that we have so many violent crimes?" Or, you have asked some variation of the question.
I think you are getting at the deeper issue behind the guns and even behind the mental illness/hatred/hate crimes.
DH is a commercial pilot. One of the guys he flew with a few times is also a volunteer fire fighter here in our town. He told DH that the main calls they get are car accidents and suicides - very rarely do they go out on true fire calls. He said that many times in suicide situations, they find the deceased in a room or home that is quite dirty and often times has, what many would call demonic writings on the walls and surfaces.
Now, we can go round and round all day on whether or not the supernatural good versus evil REALLY exists. But, for the sake of this discussion, let's just say that it does, in fact, exist.
If good (God) exists and He therefore protects people from evil, then the argument for WHY all this increased violence is that as we have removed the idea and the permission for a divine being to be in our homes, public square, or even mentioned in our schools. When we remove the divine good then people have nothing ABOVE themselves and they become the highest, most elevated being in their own lives. It just breeds selfishness, vanity, meanness, and evil.
Whether or not people believe in God, the actual or perceived presence of a divine, being in a society limits the tendencies toward evil behaviors, words, and actions. We can say that the absence of God/religion frees people and removes that "opiate of the masses," but maybe we actually need God or perception of Him in society to keep people in check.
Personally, I do believe in God and in Satan as well as in angels and demons. I have my own very personal and intellectual reasons for doing so. I accept that others do not share my beliefs.
All I am saying is that up until the 1980s, many/most of our population had a true, professed faith in a divine being. After this time period faith waned extremely, people became increasingly less-religious (and even increasingly violent and hate-filled toward the religious group). Prior to the 1980s we had less instances of violence and obscene troubles as a culture. Once in the 1980s we saw more troubles almost in every area of life - drugs, STDs, teen pregnancies, hatred, violence, divorce rates, break down of families, problems with TV, movies and media, etc..
I DO totally think there is a pattern here. More faith in a divine being tends to make people less prone to selfishness, meanness, and violence-prone. No, it is not an absolute. But, I think there is a pretty decent amount of evidence to more than suggest that the loss of faith in this nation has led to the increase of hate and violence.
@MommyLiberty5013, I found your answer intriguing and it really started me thinking. That does make a lot of sense to me that, when people believe in a Higher Power, they are more likely to behave themselves. Especially if their religion preaches a place like Hell, if they do not behave themselves. I mean really, that's why...whether God exists or not...religion is the opiate of the masses. I don't mean that in the negative way the statement was originally said, but in a practical way. A fear of Hell or God's wrath is much more powerful than the fear of even a long jail sentence.
However, I wasn't so sure I believed that religious belief has been waning in the last few decades. It doesn't feel that way to me, so I tried to look up those statistics. I probably didn't search hard enough or use the right key phrases...I'm notorious for that, lol...but I couldn't find much one way or the other.
Though this article says that religious beliefs have been waning around the world since 1991 (I know, not a super long time ago)
http://news.uchicago.edu/article/2012/04/18/belief-god-rises-age-even-atheist-nations
I also found it interesting that the percentage of people who definitely believed in God increased with the age bracket. I guess as one gets closer to "meeting their Maker", they start believing in a Maker that much more. Sort of like the old phrase "there are no atheists in a foxhole".
From that survey, 81% of Americans said they have always believed in God.
Assuming a waning in a belief in God is true, I think that would be part of the story, but I don't think it would be all of it. For example, France and Germany have some of the lowest rankings for belief in God...substantially lower than the U.S....but I feel like we are a more violent country, crime-wise. The Philippines has the highest percentage of people who have always believed in God (94%); however, that country has a high level of poverty and they are about middle of the road compared to other nations for violent crime.
Certainly complex reasons for "why" the increase in shooting sprees, which makes it tough to have a straightforward solution.
Saying you believe in God isn't the issue. Actually, making faith/religion an active role in life is the whole point. I know a lot of people who "believe" in God, but do not act like they do, they do not act like God matters, or even attend church or another religious meeting of some kind at all or more than 1-2 times per year.
The issue isn't beliefs being STATED (many, many people state belief in God when the survey people call and many, many people STATE they are Christians, etc. but in reality, they are not.) The issue is beliefs being acted upon in ways that positively affect people and their families, to translate to society as a whole. The beliefs people verbally profess are not being acted out. I think if they were, we'd see a society more like that of the pre-1980s with less violence and problems in relationships - divorce, STDs, teen pregnancy, etc..
The Barna Group is a serious, well-respected polling and surveying group that does work for churches, non-profits and businesses...
From them, "In 2014, Barna Group conducted a major study on the U.S. unchurched population, drawing on more than two decades of tracking data and reported in Churchless, a new book from veteran researchers George Barna and David Kinnaman. The study revealed that nearly two-fifths of the nation’s adult population (38%) now qualifies as post-Christian (measured by 15 different variables related to people’s identity, beliefs and behaviors; read more about Barna’s post-Christian metric here). That includes 10% of Americans who qualify as highly post-Christian. Another one-quarter is moderately post-Christian (28%). Examined over time, our research shows that the proportion of highly secularized individuals is growing slowly but steadily.
In other words, in spite of “Christian” self-descriptions, more than one-third of America’s adults are essentially secular in belief and practice. If nothing else, this helps explain why America has experienced a surge in unchurched people—and presages a continuing rise in this population.
As you might expect, the data show some striking generational differences when it comes to secularization. The pattern is indisputable: The younger the generation, the more post-Christian it is. Nearly half of Millennials (48%) qualify as post-Christian compared to two-fifths of Gen-Xers (40%), one-third of Boomers (35%) and one-quarter of Elders (28%)."
So, yes the nation is becoming "less-churched." Also, this looks like it's limited to "post-Christian," which also means it's not accounting for other faiths.
As a person who is in church 99% of the year's Sundays, I can tell you that most churches have their highest percentages of attendees and members in the older demographics. And, as a person who has been in church for most of my life, I also have witnessed a decline in the younger generations.