Culture, Not Guns, to Blame in Kansas City Shooting
The culprits were children of a culture gone wrong, and conservatives share some of the blame
The parade for the Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs in downtown Kansas City Wednesday was marred by gunfire that resulted in one death and injuries, some critical, to 21 others. The culprits, it appears at this point, were two teens younger than 18 who were trying to settle a quarrel between them.
Politicians, especially those on the left, quickly blamed the guns for the violence and called for stricter laws. But were the guns really the issue?
Let’s consider what our country’s culture has become. Our culture:
• glorifies violence in movies, TV shows and video games.
• glorifies people who seek revenge on their opponents.
• glorifies people of certain skin colors as eternal victims not responsible for their actions.
• glorifies moral choices as an individual decision.
• glorifies and even promotes fatherlessness.
• glorifies TV sitcoms and advertisements that portray men, especially white men, as clueless buffoons who are irrelevant to society.
• glorifies preachers with shallow and often unbiblical messages because it fills huge churches with tithing followers.
• glorifies pseudoscience that alarms people into thinking the world will end soon and it’s our fault.
• vilifies 100 million law-abiding gun owners as being responsible for every unhinged person who uses a gun.
So, given that, is it any wonder that two teenage boys decided to settle an issue between them with a gun battle?
Making Some Assumptions
I don’t know anything about these boys other than, according to photos from the scene, it appears they are black. But just from that information alone we can make some assumptions based on our culture. If these boys in the pictures are the actual culprits we can assume from statistics that:
• they didn’t have fathers in the home, since 75 percent of black children are raised in homes without fathers.
• based on racist narratives in the media and in schools, they’ve been taught they’re victims and if they lash out they can’t be held responsible because of the melanin in their skin.
• they’ve been marginalized and even made to feel irrelevant because they’re male.
• they’ve been told what they choose to do morally is up to them.
• they’ve seen lots of violent movies and played violent video games.
• if they’ve heard any Bible message it’s that God loves them just the way they are.
• they’ve heard about the honor of revenge.
• they’ve heard that the world will end within years because of the climate.
Now, none of those things may be true. The actual culprits could be rich white kids from loving nuclear families with strong role models who are home-schooled and have never watched R-rated movies or played video games and who attend a fundamental, Bible-believing church each week. But you know the odds of that are well below 1 percent.
So why are people blaming the guns and asking for stricter laws? After all, the boys already broke multiple laws – too young to own a handgun, discharging a weapon within city limits, murder and attempted murder and probably possession of stolen guns. What new laws would have kept them from doing what was already unlawful?
Gun Owners are Easy Targets
The reason for placing the blame on the guns is that it allows politicians to look tough by vilifying people who probably won’t vote for them anyway while not tackling any tough issues of culture caused by their own liberal policies.
Guns, of course, commit no crimes. People do, with or without guns. If guns were the cause I’d be one of the top violent criminals in the country since I grew up around guns all my life because my dad collected guns. There’s a photo of me sitting on the floor, probably too young to walk, with a gun on my lap. I began shooting guns so young that I can’t even remember the first time.
But I’m not a violent criminal because along with teaching me how to shoot, my dad taught me gun safety. But even more, he came home every night, he taught me morality and respect for others, didn’t allow me to watch violent shows, showed me from his actions the importance of God and the Bible, and taught me how to think for myself so that I’m not influenced by culture.
So it’s not guns, but culture and liberal government policies that are to blame for what happened in Kansas City. But those of us on the conservative side deserve some of the blame, too.
Conservatives Need to Get Active in Changing Culture
We’ve allowed the culture to devolve with barely a whimper. We’ve chosen the see-no-evil, hear-no-evil approach. We’ve even adopted and conformed to some of these cultural norms, and even brought them into our churches and allowed them to influence our beliefs about God.
So while politicians tout gun reform, we should be just as vocal about culture reform. But rather than try to outlaw the bad things rampant in our culture, we need to create a new, positive culture to push out the bad and replace it.
That starts in our homes and our churches. We need to hold ourselves accountable to create the right values at home, even if that means turning off the TV and chucking the video games. It means holding our churches accountable to teach and preach what’s in the Bible to influence the culture rather than vice versa. And, of course, it does mean electing politicians to change the things only lawmakers can change.
It will require self-sacrifice to make this happen. But if we don’t, we’ll keep hearing more and more about disillusioned youth settling their differences with each other – and with us – by using violence.