OPINION:
I have a 1908 Sears catalog listing 35 pages of guns that could be bought by mail order. When I was growing up in the 1950s and ’60s, anyone could go to a hardware store and buy a gun off the shelf. There were no waiting periods and no background checks. High schools had shooting clubs; students who drove to school kept their guns locked in the trunks of their cars. Children’s TV programs carried ads for toy guns.
Yet in those days the public could not conceive of the mass shootings that seem to now take place with regularity. Back then, the Second Amendment was the armed bodyguard of the rest of the Bill of Rights. Groups like the National Rifle Association and Gun Owners of America taught gun safety and responsible gun ownership back then, as they do today. What’s changed?
In those days, most people went to church on Sunday — unless they were Jewish or Seventh Day Adventists, in which case they likely went to services on Saturday. While America was never a Christian nation in the sense that everyone was born again, the general consensus of the public was that the biblical way was the correct way to live, and cultural institutions reenforced that viewpoint.
Over the past half-century, however, the Marxist left has worked to gain control of the institutes that transmit the culture. Our “public” schools have taught that there are no absolute truths or values; each person must individually decide what is right or wrong depending on circumstances. The country has been flooded with people who do not understand our history, values or system of government, and have no interest in learning. Children are being traumatized with nonsense about how modern life is supposedly destroying the planet. They are also taught that they are not responsible for their own actions.
So the problem is not guns or their availability. The problem is Marxist leftism/”progressivism” and the false philosophy it teaches. If at all possible, parents should remove their children from the government schools and find alternatives.
THOMAS M. CRAWFORD
Laurel, Maryland
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