Op-Ed: It’s not a gun problem, it’s a people problem

Another mass shooting, and yet another call for more gun control — the same old broken record. Despite the statistical fact that some of America’s most violent cities also have the toughest gun control laws, too many people still believe the anti-gun rhetoric. History tells me a different story.

Until the 1968 passage of a bill prohibiting interstate transfers to individuals, there were virtually no federal gun laws affecting firearms purchases, except machine guns, by non-felons. Until the Brady bill was passed in 1993, there were no required background checks for firearms purchases. The mass shootings and national gun hysteria mostly started after gun control laws were implemented.

Let’s look at how things used to be. When I was a boy in southern Ohio, you could buy all the guns you wanted at the local hardware store. Some kids took their guns to school in hunting season and kept them in their locker all day in order to go hunting after school. Boys carried pocket knives and played games with them during recess. No fear, no hysteria, and no violence.

We were taught to respect others, including parents, teachers, the police, and our peers. Messing up at school sometimes resulted in a spanking, and then another one when we arrived home. We were taught the golden rule, which most kids today probably have never heard of, and we read the bible and prayed at school. Each classroom held over forty students in two grades, and the teacher alternated teaching time between the two. There were no school counselors or psychologists, and no special classes for slow learners. There were no bullying problems, since any would be bully would find out what real bullying was when he arrived at the principal’s office.

Somehow, despite all of the above factors that educators of today would insist could never work, the school consistently turned out students who could read, write, accept responsibility, and hold a job.

Click here to read the entire op-ed at LimaOhio.com.