This is a direct response to our many politicians who want to eliminate “gun” violence by disarming the public.

The Big Picture

When you disarm the public, the result is that the most effective agent of violence becomes the police and military. This has been done in many places, and the results are usually the same, the whittling away of the rights of the public to the point of oppression, genocide, subjugation.

And often when governments disarm, it is with the express purpose of clamping down or removing people's rights. This was done in Zimbabwe to the white farmer, destroying a large part of the country's agricultural base. This was done in Germany before World War II to disarm the Jews. Canada has been restricting rights to possess firearms. At the same time, it has been clamping down on protests (ask their truckers), and using the full force of the government to address behaviors the demented left does not like. Ask the Chinese if their government tolerates armed citizens, or protest, or the North Koreans. You'll see certain rights go together.

There is no need to fear a citizen when a government acts justly.

The government has plenty of power to oppress already. Ask anyone whose bank account has been locked down, or whose charity has been targeted by the IRS, or who just followed the crowd and thought he was strolling through the capital on January 6, let alone those who have just had an unwelcome exchange with someone wearing a badge.

President Biden put it clearly enough: he has an F-15 to my AR-15. It is true that our institutions of government can bring overwhelming force to many situations, but when our government exceeds certain bounds, the people—or even a small, motivated subset thereof—united, should have the ability to push back. Again, this is a power only to be feared by those who would act unjustly toward our citizens.

But this doesn't make our streets safer.

That formula is relatively simple, but will not be easy:

1. Prioritize Family: A father and a mother raising their common children, at the right time, will do more to alleviate poverty than just about any other intervention a government could dream up.
2. Prioritize G-d: We got here because of our adherence to Judaeo-Christian values. Church (in my case synagogue) orients us towards higher values and the future. Pride is a sin, maybe “the” sin. Get over it.
3. Prioritize Mental Health:
   
   • Prioritize Truth: Refrain from indoctrinating children in alternate realities: All a child needs to know is that a dangle down there means you are a boy, the absence of one is a girl. Children can't appreciate a sexual identity at least until they hit puberty; so don't go there.
   • Prioritize Agency: Do not lay on children the responsibility for fixing a world “in crisis.” If you believe the world to be “in crisis,” take concrete steps, yourself, locally to address this. Maybe that way, you will instead teach our children that anything the world throws at them, they can adapt to handle. It's a much better lesson.
   • Provide a lot of freedom inside very clearly defined borders: You can't think outside of a box without the box.
4. Prioritize the Norms inherent in the above: This means celebrating what got us here, which is mostly a bunch of white men, the G-d that inspired them, mostly looking Christian, and the foundation of family and society they built: a liberal republic, overlapping communities willing to work out their kinks in civil discourse.

This is not to suggest there isn't a place for the freaks. G-d loves them too. But we should not be celebrating perversion and sickness and normalizing that at the expense of the rest of society, especially as we've got enough problems without going there.

I started this piece to talk about guns. The thing is when healthy kids brought their guns to school (for rifle team, or to go hunting after), we weren't experiencing the violence we experience today.

But we've taken our kids out of church. We've drugged them. We've bubble-wrapped them. We have given them devices.

And we don't demand the best of them. As Jim Rohn suggested: “The Price is Easy if the Promise is Clear.” Our kids are willing to put in the work. Most people are, if they are clear that it will move them in the right direction.

And if that's how we orient our people, the violence will abate, and the use of guns to commit that violence will follow.