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NEAL KNOX REPORT Barely an hour after I heard about it a Wall Street Journal reporter called wanting to know if I thought it would have "an impact" on pending legislation, particularly the Colorado bills to broaden the concealed carry laws or preempt local gun laws. Of course it will have an impact, I told her, though it shouldn't, and probably won't, affect final passage because neither of those bills could have had any effect to cause or prevent what happened. (It may have even more impact in Washington for a flood of emails, calls and faxes demanding that Congress "do something" about guns has already started). Colorado's new Republican governor had insisted that the bill prohibit licensed adults from carrying their guns on school property, eliminating the possibility that a teacher or citizen could have stopped the leisurely killing spree by those teenagers. I told her that Luke Woodham's murderous foray at Pearl, Miss., High School had been cut short, and his reported plans to kill others at the pizza parlor where he worked had been foiled by Assistant Principal Joel Myrick -- with the help of a .45 pistol retrieved from his pickup on the school parking lot (in violation of the "Gun-Free Schools Act"). We still know very little about how or with what the Columbine killers were armed, but I told the reporter there was one thing I knew: That the school shootings were not caused by the frequently claimed "increased availability of guns." Because of the many laws passed since I was in high school, guns are far less available today. When I was a teenager we had the functional equivalent of anything now available to adults--.22 through .45 handguns, 15 or 30-shot M1 Carbines, and any type shotgun or high-powered rifle. And we could anonymously mail-order super-cheap military surplus rifles and handguns, or an occasional bayonet-equipped riot shotgun. But we didn't shoot each other. In my North Texas high school, it wasn't just 55% of seniors who knew how to get a gun -- as hysterical pollsters last year reported -- but at least 99%. It wasn't at all unusual for those of us hunting before or after school to leave our guns in our cars. And, I told her, my yearbook contains a snapshot of classmate "Hungry" Ancel's shotgun strapped to the dash of his old Chevy--not because of the gun, but because he had stuck his senior ring on its barrel. Hungry's car was parked unlocked just outside the east door of Vernon High School every day. No, availability of guns hasn't increased. So what has changed? Some blame the violence on gory video games, vicious rap music lyrics, and movies like "Basketball Diaries," which featured a high school kid in a long black coat killing teachers and tormenters (which was supposedly imitated by Michael Carneal at West Paducah). Parents of three children who Carneal had killed during a pre-school prayer group recently sued the purveyors of such entertainment. But it's too simplistic to blame evil acts on something else or anyone other than the perpetrator. While gun availability has decreased, so has the sense of right and wrong. And both Carneal, who attacked the prayer group, and Springfield, Ore., school killer Kip Kinkel, were reported in the July 6, 1998 Time Magazine to be followers of the drug-fed, devil-worshiping, counter-culture led by rockers Kurt Cobain and Marilyn Manson. Columbine High School classmates said the weird black-dressed "Trench Coat Mafia" killers wore "Ban Religion" symbols and were also adherents of Marilyn Manson. I'm not claiming "The devil made them do it." But at least some of those kids think so. Woodham, according to Time, claimed he was visited by a demon the night before the Pearl murders; Carneal heard voices before he shot the praying kids; Kinkel, said he "had no choice" but to kill his parents and fellow students. The counter-culture's belief in Satan may not explain the evil in the hearts of
those kids, but it makes more sense than the nonsense of "increased gun
availability." |
