Excellent op-ed from Scott Lingamfelter in today’s Richmond Times-Dispatch on the current debate on restricting firearms and gun control after the Florida mass shooting event:
It’s nauseating, but so too is the political response to this most recent massacre. The demand for more gun-control laws is little more than a nostrum frequently served up by politically motivated and opportunistic politicians who know full well that the issue is not gun control.
The issue is self control, and we need leaders from all quarters to be honest and say so. It’s not time to rearrange the deck chairs on the sinking ocean liner we call our culture.
It’s time to acknowledge that our nation is in a debilitating state of self-denial about our deadly cultural illness: nihilism, the rejection of fundamental religious and moral precepts.
The prescription for today’s modern social disease? Isn’t more rules and regulation, argues Lingamfelter, but a return to the tried and true:
The impact of throw-away marriages, disrespect for human life, sexual promiscuity, addictive drug use, and the ubiquitous presence of violence in the media all combine to produce what Greek historian Polybius called “a corruption of customs.”
When virtue, that very thing our Founders felt we needed to undergird our customs, is subordinated to debauchery, our culture becomes one conducive to abhorrent violence. The result is the snuffing out of our youth in our schools, in our inner cities, in our drug-infested homes, and in the dark places where sexual deviancy and exploitation ruin young lives.
If there were ever a time for strong families with engaged fathers and mothers committed to one another and to loving, raising, and — when necessary — administering firm but loving discipline to children, that time is now.
Well stated and well argued. Read it all.
