Society – Not Guns – Is Our Problem

In Georgia, a 14-year-old boy killed four people in a school with a firearm. He appears to have had longstanding mental health issues known to police, educators, administrators, and his father, who gave him a loaded firearm. The boy and father face life in prison. This is altogether appropriate. The unasked question, or question behind the question, is how could this have been prevented?

Those on the left, even on the near left, who often have no familiarity with sidearms, shotguns, or rifles, who typically have never owned a gun, never tried to become proficient with a gun, have no interest in target shooting, hunting, or protection with a gun reflexively default to anger at the guns.

From Maine to California, despite the 2^nd Amendment guarantee that citizens may “keep and bear arms” and repeated Supreme Court affirmations of that right, the left advances ever more radical anti-gun restrictions, often pushed by Democrat governors and legislatures, including confiscation.

Seldom asked are the tougher questions. Given our constitutional right to gun ownership, intended by the nation’s founders to deter government overreach, how were we once far safer, saw less gun violence, despite higher levels of gun ownership? What were we doing then but not now?

As late as the 1970s, more than half of American families owned firearms. In the early 1960s, three-quarters owned a firearm. In 2019, barely a third of Americans owned a firearm.

While firearm homicide deaths have fallen since 1993, from seven to 3.7 per hundred thousand, most firearm deaths today (54 percent) are suicides.

Moreover, the overall trend of gun-related deaths from the 1950s is upward. In 1950, overall gun deaths in America were 7,500. In 2021, total gun deaths, the majority now suicides, were 48,830.

In the early 1970s, membership in youth civic groups, many teaching rifle marksmanship, and safety,  especially the Boy Scouts and 4-H, was at a high water mark, five million Boy Scouts, hundreds of thousands of 4-H members, all learning civic skills, responsibility, and life lessons.  

In 2024, we have barely a million boys in scouting, and 176,000 girls integrated into that program. Girl Scout and 4-H numbers are harder to nail down, although lessons are similar. Scouts and 4-H members still learn marksmanship, responsible firearm use – and how to care for each other.

Likewise in the 1970s, many American kids learned responsible gun use – just as we learned responsible driving, civic, moral, and health lessons – from parents and in schools, plus programs like NRA Safe Hunter training. We also learned how to treat people, peers included, with respect.

Speaking from personal experience, my youth included all those programs, Boys Scouts through Eagle, riflery merit badge at summer camp, weekly competitions with .22s, as well as 4-H fairs, competitions, and service lessons. We also had church school and NRA Safe Hunter training.

On the firearms side, friends and I learned – and practiced – with rifles and shotguns, many becoming expert marksmen by their mid-teens, high responsibility based on the expectations of our parents, grandparents, teachers, administrators, and law abiders. We knew to be careful.

When responsibility is taught, it becomes self-reinforcing. When others expected us to learn maturity, we started to think we owed it to ourselves. We felt trusted, knowledgeable, and responsible – first because they expected it of us, then because we expected it of ourselves.

So, what is not happening now that was back then? Adults taught kids to be their best, to learn from their mistakes, and to respect others. They taught civic responsibility, not judgment, how to trust and be trusted, and how to handle firearms as we handle cars, trucks, boats, tractors, snowmobiles, saws, axes, knives, and poisons of all sorts – with care and respect. We were taught respect by being respected, society-wide respect for laws, rules, and the lives of others.

How do we best prevent gun violence then? It is not about being angry at the guns, not about confiscation any more than confiscating cars, boats, saws, and the like for misuse makes sense.

The real answer is returning to respect, teaching what it means to be a good citizen, trite as that sounds. We now have 73 million Americans under 18, barely a million with firearms training.  We are teaching kids that guns are bad and should be feared, thus we throw the door wide for abuse.

The real answer to preventing gun violence – violence in general – is to reaffirm what it means to be a law-abiding citizen, responsible, looking out for others, living up to expectations set by adults, and setting them for ourselves. Adults have to model respect for laws, not the reverse.  Yes, we have to stop terrorists, watch for mental health issues, and stop drug trafficking, bullying, and demonizing – often tied to gun violence. But the real problem is bigger, and we need to say so and fix it. The answer is not being angry at guns. It is taking responsibility for the unhealthy state of our society, and resolving to restore ourselves to health. It can be done. We had it once.

Robert Charles is a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, former Reagan and Bush 41 White House staffer, attorney, and naval intelligence officer (USNR). He wrote “Narcotics and Terrorism” (2003), “Eagles and Evergreens” (2018), and is National Spokesman for AMAC.