The talk of “gun control” is everywhere, and very tiresome.

From what I see, the fruitless, angry debates going on are all fury and no substance.

It also seems to me as though we’re intent on getting better quality blinds for the windows as the house burns down.

It feels like the “why” that dare not be spoken:

Why are our children so violent, so unfeeling, so callous toward human life these days? Why are our children so bereft of compassion and virtue that they feel no compunction at all about committing mass murder, or just prodding another child to commit suicide? Why are they so filled with darkness? What has happened to their souls?

Not all of our children, no. But far too many. Kids are killing kids. Kids are tormenting and goading other kids into suicide.

It never occurred to my brothers, or to me, or any of my friends to bring a rifle to school and go on a killing spree. I may have endured some mean girls in school, but no one ever taunted me to go kill myself.

Something has changed drastically in the last 40 years. Is America honest and brave enough to talk about that?

What’s Poisoning Our Children?

What is creating such violent, heartless, furious young people? Are we ready yet to turn the microscope on ourselves and our culture at large? We need a ruthless and candid evaluation of our society and our values.

Why do so many young teens seem to lack even the smallest measure of charity? Why are so many children full of despair? Why are so many children physically harming themselves or taking their own lives? Why has the rate of suicide among children doubled since 2000?

How can we deny the serious spiritual malady here?

Depravity Right in Their Hands

Today’s bullies and mean girls see their “power” and influence grow with the steroid-kick of social media. The victim of their cruelty is known to everyone and the ability to ostracize and humiliate knows almost no bounds. They quickly cease to see one another as human beings worthy of love and respect. They become hardened to the pain of another person.

Today an angry teen doesn’t just go to his room to sulk. He gets on the internet and consumes the violent rages of a thousand other angry people and grows even angrier. He learns how to obtain a rifle and ammunition and plan an attack, or how to construct a homemade bomb.

He can gorge himself on pornography until his immature brain and nervous system feels nothing worthy at all towards a girl. His idea of sexual relations is warped and inhuman. He has no comprehension of what pure romantic interaction is, or how to experience it or why he should want to. He has lost all concept of real beauty. The statistics about boys and pornography are truly chilling. It is a genuine public health and moral crisis if ever there was one.

How I wish our desire to ban things included pornography! Why have we not? What is stopping us?

Fractured Families

For millions of boys, his father isn’t around to talk to because his parents are divorced and the foundation of his life was fractured. Or his dad was never around to begin with because he was born out of wedlock. Whatever the reason, there’s no loving man in the house to show him what it means to be a good man.

Broken homes and absent fathers leave our daughters suffering dangerously as well. Yet America refuses to own the unprecedented disaster that is our epidemic of divorce and fatherlessness.

The Kids Haven’t Done This

The kids haven’t created the society they’re growing up in. The adults have. The kids haven’t torn apart their own homes and families. The adults have. The kids haven’t failed to learn respect for authority. The adults have failed to teach and require it.

The kids haven’t surrendered their innocence. The adults have allowed it to be stolen from them.

The kids are supposed to be “fine” and “resilient.” Clearly, they are not. Clearly, a self-focused and hedonistic culture is not fostering virtue and honor, nor giving our children a reason to live.

It’s not that we shouldn’t enact measures to protect our children from being shot and killed at school. In fact, why are our kids less deserving of protection than our local courtrooms or our senators? Arm the good guys today, and secure our schools. We don’t need an act of Congress to accomplish that.

If we don’t turn the same passionate scrutiny on our society and our choices that we’re turning on our gun laws, then we really are just arguing about window treatments while the house goes up in flames.