1919-1932 should have taught everyone that prohibiting something does not make it go away. Western civilization put some rules down in stone, oh lets see, must have been more than 2200 years ago and people continue to break them to this day.

Legislators, Judges and Police are poor substitutes for good parenting. Children need to be taught, guided, coached. They need to be supervised until they have internalized good behaviors. I have four children, all grown up now. I would have trusted any of them with a firearm at 14. There are lots of their friends I would have trusted with firearms, and some other local kids I wouldn't trust with a steak knife at 44.

My wife and brother in law, who grew up not terribly far from here' took Civilian Marksmanship Classes (sponsored by the NRA) IN THEIR HIGH SCHOOL DURING SCHOOL HOURS (and got physical education credit for doing so). Today their old school would go on lockdown if someone THOUGHT they saw a gun.

I bet we have 3 or 4 times as many laws on the books as we did when I was growing up. Probably have 300% 400% more of the population incarcerated as well. Are we safer.

Mental health is in decline as well. While there are certainly parents who are actually too sick or disabled or overworked to take care of and teach their kids. There are exponentially more who don't have a clue*, don't care, are too lazy, want someone else to do the 'dirty' work, are too selfish, are too busy extending THEIR childhood at the expense of their children.

These kids grow up and are a menace to society BECAUSE they feel unwanted. They feel unwanted, because, well, they are, at least by those who are responsible for their existence. That is a pretty heavy burden to put on a developing brain. So they act out, but not in safe ways that they may learn from. In ways that make CNN's rolling news leader.

*On a brighter note, if the kids parent(s) are clueless, friends and neighbors can help by modeling behaviors and including them. Our family sorta semi-adopted several kids over the years. Given time these kids saw there was something better out there.

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Certified Curmudgeon