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On Watermelons and Gun Control
Last Tuesday’s homework reading for my six-year-old was a Berenstain Bears story: The Dare. Brother Bear starts with good – if somewhat ill-advised – intentions, confronting Too-Tall Grizzly about a stolen jump rope. The gang is impressed with Brother’s fighting spirit, and he is talked into a series of poor decisions, culminating in a stolen watermelon and a lesson about sheep. With news of yet another murderous outburst, where a teenager walked into his school and killed several classmates, the idea of a stolen watermelon feels almost antiquated, even quaint. It feels like a time gone by, and listening to today’s conversation, it feels like a historical fantasy story of slingshots, baseball diamonds, nickel movies and watermelon-intrigue, in a world where we’ve discovered the awful power of guns, bombs, and genuine hatred. It feels silly, and almost foolish, to sit down with a six year old and talk to him about thinking for himself, when at any minute, he may be needing to help stack all the chairs against the locked classroom door before climbing out the window; when that “safety-protocol” drill is no longer a drill. What is morality, versus the primacy of life over death? How can we talk about watermelons when we need to be talking about guns?
The best conversation about guns is still, somehow, a conversation about Dads, and I’ll begin with my own Dad’s yearbook. There is a picture of my dad, tall and lanky, socially awkward and looking a bit too much like me, but wearing a uniform and holding a rifle. He is pictured next to most of the other males in his class, all upright, looking slightly older than teenagers, soberly staring into the camera, all holding their rifles. Each kid had the word Vietnam in his head, rattling around along with math, college, girls, music; my own dad was drafted just a few months before the war ended. But it’s hard to look at that picture and not see all of those guns, and, according to my dad, each teenage boy proficient in the disassembly and reassembly of not only those rifles, but their counterpart 1911 handguns, each at least somewhat proficient in their use. This was before “anti-bullying” campaigns, it was before the great micro-aggression awakening, before anyone was “woke” at all, it was in a time of social upheaval and a time when teen-angst carried with it the actual existential threat of war; and with a gun in every locker, it was a situation without all of today’s great progressive safeguards – a ticking time-bomb.
Spoiler alert: Farmer Ben catches Brother Bear in the watermelon patch, red-handed, and holding the biggest, juiciest watermelon he could find. He takes a walk with Brother, talking to him about sheep and about leadership and about thinking for yourself. He shows grace, and they share a slice of watermelon before Brother finally heads home, having learned an important lesson. But the most important lesson is really what was intended in the book as a comeuppance, and those things not really intended for any purpose at all, save atmosphere. Brother is again confronted by the gang, but this time he stands up to them, countering their “cluck-cluck” accusations of chicken with his own “baa-baa” reference to sheep, all cut short by the appearance of Too-Tall’s Dad, who, having been called by Farmer Ben, disperses the gang with an angry shout, and reduces Too-Tall to an embarrassed cub, about to be grounded.
In that little story, the message is not exactly subtle. But the moral of the story is rarely subtle; it is the norms that are subtle, and somehow far more important. In The Dare, it turns out that men are men, in virtually every respect. Too-tall and his gang exhibit a youthful manliness, a recklessness, a physicality, a basic might-directed social order. So does Brother, who hot-headedly sets off to confront the gang, but is then drawn in by something of a group instinct. And while the boys act like boys, we see the men acting like men. Father Bear is at work, and doesn’t factor into this story – it’s a matter of convenience, of course, and wholly unintentional that he is at work, rather than anywhere else. Farmer Ben, also at work, engages in the difficult task of the adult male; that of civilizing the youth. He exhibits grace and patience, and passes wisdom to Brother. Too-Tall’s father is also – most importantly – present, and in this case, shows discipline. And none of this is intentional, in a story whose message involves peer pressure and integrity. It is simply a setting, in that antiquated world where boys are barbarians, and men are civilizers.
So what about the women? In 1973, this book was able to slip past the censors what today would have died in an editor’s room. Setting up the whole scenario is Sister’s damsel-in-distress routine, as her jump rope (yes, a jump rope! May as well have been a dolly or a play-apron!) is stolen by Too-Tall. Mother (with her 1950’s gown and bonnet) is standing in the front yard planting tomatoes and cleaning rugs. If the men were behaving like men, the women were behaving a bit too much like women. Which brings us, of course, to God.
There is an undeniable breakdown of the family, which has steadily been occurring since long before my dad’s high-school class of teenage barbarians ran around with guns like modern domestic terrorists and mass murderers. The Center for Vital Statistics, way back in 1980, published a graph that shows – to borrow from Jonah Goldberg – a hockey stick far more potent than anything Michael Mann ever dreamed up.
To the progressive, it may only be proof of my own sexism to observe that, presently, men are behaving less and less like men, and women are behaving less and less like women; that fatherhood is being divorced from manliness, and motherhood from femininity, just as quick as men and women are being divorced from one another.
If you have the time – and if you don’t have the time, then make the time – and you have not done so already, go out and get a copy of Jonah Goldberg’s fantastic book, Suicide of the West. In it, Jonah articulates the importance of maintaining ourselves against the social decay that would bring us closer to our natural state of being.
Jonah Goldberg makes the compelling case that barbarianism is in our nature, while civilization is in our breeding, and he does so without even quoting Malachi [referring to God’s anger, and the question of why]:
…Because the Lord was witness between you and the wife of your youth, to whom you have been faithless, though she is your companion and your wife by covenant. Did he not make them one, with a portion of the spirit in their union? And what was the one God seeking? Godly offspring. [emphasis mine]
As we trek further and further toward the logical conclusions of these ideas of sexuality that – though they may have been with us always – were popularized in the 1960’s, one strange realization has begun to manifest itself in hypocrisy or anger or, in some cases even a questioning of the progressive orthodoxy. That is, there is something distinct about males and about females.
The progressivism that manifested itself in the Sexual Revolution, took the form of a rebellion against constraints. Those rules and institutions that often feel like the adult version of someone telling you not to eat all of your Halloween candy in one sitting, but which operate a bit more like a bucket that holds a gallon of water in place, a rubber glove that protects us from bacteria, or a stomach lining, which stops our own digestive systems from killing us. Constraints are that learned behavior, the wisdom of traditions and social institutions, the adult behavior that civilizes children and keeps us all from reverting to a natural state of barbarianism. Malachi refers to these constraints as specifically given to us by God; Jonah points out that, whether or not you believe in God, you can see the fruits of his constraints.
On my drive home from work last Friday, I listened to an NPR segment about the most recent school shooting in Santa Fe, Texas. One journalist observed that Governor Abbot, in a statement following the shooting, made a comment about “making sure that this is the last school shooting in Texas.” Leaving aside the absurdity of that remark, akin to desires to “eradicate inequality” or “end racism,” the journalist asked his guest for commentary on the statement. The guest talked about the vagueness of the remark, the hopefulness that Abbot may be open to “solutions,” and the Governor’s hope to “keep guns away from the mentally ill.” He pointed out that these statements were made in spite of the Governor’s association with the NRA, and he lamented the fact that very little was said about gun control. More and more, we are hearing from the hyperventilating left about the bogeyman that is the NRA. We have begun questioning the wisdom of the 2nd Amendment; we are hearing demands for “common-sense” compromises, increased regulations, reductions in liberty with respect to guns – measures designed with the understanding that, while we may not be able to eliminate the Second Amendment, at least we can try to weaken it. I am inclined to view the Second Amendment as another of those constitutionally-provided constraints on human nature.
It is said that during a tornado or a hurricane, you can see a straw pushed cleanly into the flesh of a healthy tree. We may all look at a straw embedded in that tree and agree that such things should not happen. The question is whether our focus should be on the straw or the wind. What I am not arguing is that fatherhood, marriage, and family, are the sole factors that should claim responsibility for school shootings. We could analyze each individual murderer in order to assess whether there ever was a Father to show the importance of hard work and self-worth, or a Farmer Ben to direct instinctive male attributes toward healthy ends; we could ask, like those who asked Malachi, whether God has turned his back and ignored our pleas. All of these inquiries may be just as valuable as questions about the sufficiency of background checks, the ability of school counselors to identify and appropriately address “red flags,” or the time it takes to reload a firearm with a 10-round magazine, vs. one with a 30-round magazine. Every one of these analyses discusses the specific nature of a particular straw, which is now either dead or in custody.
I do not know whether each school shooter has had a father and a mother; I don’t know the nature of their involvement in his life or the extent of their efforts to civilize him. I do know that we have lately begun to discuss, with ever-increasing frequency, the role of “mental health,” not just in murders and suicides, but in issues ranging from drug abuse to children not paying attention in school. In some obvious cases, mental health is a physical occurrence, measurable and attributable to a chemical imbalance or deficiency. Far more commonly, though, and ominously, it simply refers to behavior that does not conform to our notions of what that behavior ought to be; something about which we no longer agree. Still, the focus is on the individual, who can never truly be representative of the whole, and as with any bureaucratic solution, the answers can only address problems that have already happened.
I do not know whether the Santa Fe shooter came from a healthy family – but what I do know is that he, along with a great many other individuals his age, has grown up in a society that does not any longer possess a common language to aid us in defining what exactly a healthy family is; in defining even what a family is. We disagree on whether one should exist at all; what a woman is, what a man is, whether they are different – whether one is superior to the other, or whether they are necessarily and mutually symbiotic. We disagree on whether they have anything meaningful to pass along to children, to civilize barbarians, or whether those barbarians are really noble savages, and fine on their own.
I hope it is not too controversial for me to say that Malachi possessed a deeper and greater wisdom than the prophet David Hogg, though certainly his prescription is far more difficult and less immediate than simply rewriting our constitution to eliminate the destructive power of modern-day guns. Even rewriting our constitution is based on a false assumption, that these problems can be solved, as one might repair a short circuit or a broken levy. I do not claim that my dad’s high school years were a golden era, or that there ever was a golden era. Quite the opposite. Violence was with us then, and a hundred, a thousand years prior to that. Human nature may only be a problem that can be mitigated, not solved. But I suggest that we look to Malachi while we scratch our heads in wonder at the latest mass murder, or at the next.
Someone asked, in a poignant expression representative of a national response to something that appears to now be taking us by surprise. He asks to see solutions from his “2nd Amendment friends.” What could you support? What can we agree on? Or are the school shootings the price we have to pay for the 2nd Amendment?
They are not the price we have to pay for the Second Amendment. They are the price we have to pay for something else. This was something that our founders recognized when they drafted the Constitution, full of constraints – and the Second Amendment is one – on our natural desire to have it. This is something that we are presently demanding.
Published in General
This deserves wider distribution than Ricochet.
Yep.
There is not one social ill that would not be improved if divorce went down. People used to stay married for the kids.
So good. What a great post.
I don’t know about the Santa Fe shooter, but almost all (if not all) of the recent (since 1999) school shooters have not had their biological father in the home.
I find it interesting that that we were given Ten Commandments, just ten. Yet God is looked upon as a tyrant. We now have hundreds of law makers, and they have given us far more than ten simple rules. I’m not sure why this is. People that cannot obey ten commandments will have no problem breaking hundreds of laws.
This is not a new problem. Even though the original commandments were inscribed on two stone tablets I don’t see how laws written upon thousands of pages of paper will change human nature.
Indeed, you are right. Ten can be understood, known and followed. Thousands can’t, and do not constitute the rule of law. Such proliferations of laws and rules require permission, which is their purpose in the first place. It’s much clearer to see how it works in nations where this has always been the approach. Requiring permission empowers those who control the levers of the administrative state. Such power pays well up and down he bureaucracy and is the reason for the existence of the deep state and why the political default position is more laws and regulations even though every one of them moves us further away from the rule of law.
Fathers are the general problem, the state of our mental health system is the other. My 50 plus year old niece was just released again onto the streets where she will be a danger to herself and others. My sister has struggled for 40 years to get the girl in some system where it is possible to keep her on her medications without which she is totally out of control. She’s been arrested and mistreated, briefly institutionalized where, since they could keep her on her medications she appeared normal, and could convince them she was and would be released to begin the process all over again. It’s as if the professional staffs had never dealt with a schizophrenic. She will remain out of any system until she harms someone and gets arrested again. The story is long and complicated but the bottom line is the people who pay attention, the parents and relatives are powerless and also the people most threatened, and the state mental health system, in this case Florida, doesn’t care.
I am sorry to hear about that – although I think it is a little more complicated than an unwillingness or inability to deal with mental health. If you think about the dangers of involuntary treatment, I think you would likely come down on the side of liberty. In the case of your niece, it may be cut and dry – an obvious harm and an obvious illness. But open the door to incarceration, and you’re giving police power to a pretty small group of “professionals.”
I think it is somewhat clear that the solution to this problem should not involve greater consolidation of power and further infringements on liberty; it is less clear what the source of the problem really is. I am inclined to suspect that much of this problem has to do with the fact that “the state” (I’m borrowing from Jonah, again) has unintentionally choked out institutions that can effectively deal with these sorts of things. For instance, by establishing a financial safety net that exists without much accountability, and seemingly in perpetuity, the social structures (like Family) are de-fanged. I am not saying that your niece would be better off if she had to turn to family and community for aid instead of turning to the government – there are individual exceptions to everything – but as a general social trend, the accountability of family and community is objectively better, more knowledgeable, more caring, more personal, and ultimately more firm.
Mental health is a serious issue; it is one that we cannot fully resolve even individually, on a small scale. But it is one that is virtually always made worse when we try to resolve it at the state level.
Amen! I’ve only just read to this point, and I don’t yet know the OP’s thesis, but BLUF – yes, yes, YES!
I was thoroughly baffled this morning in a church men’s group discussion (pertaining to poverty, not gun issues) when one of my friends pushed back hard on the idea that the absence of fathers was a major factor in many problems around the USA. He was demanding detailed data. I (and some of the other guys) had thought that the connections between fatherless households and social problems had been so well established that it was almost universally recognized – at least in the church. Apparently not.
I got in trouble in Bible Study for saying other Religions were false.
This is a problem I’ve run into in my home church as well. I have raised the question with the church elders and pastor: what is the purpose of ‘men’s ministry’? I have suggested that our congregation’s men’s ministry programs should be focused upon three sequential goals: 1. Raising boys to be men of faith. 2. Training men of faith to be Christ-like husbands (to love their wives as Christ loves the Church) 3. Preparing and sustaining husbands to be Godly fathers. Regretfully, I have not yet been successful in conveying such a vision among my brothers at church. Thus far, the church leader with responsibility for men’s ministry oversight has expressed the opinion that my vision is too old-fashioned, and stuck in the “Leave it to Beaver” past.
Perhaps my church elder is correct. But I can not help but be convicted that building and sustaining strong men’s ministries are the key to success in this arena.
Men are charged to be the spiritual heads of their households. That is in the bible and clear as day.
Stats show that children respond far more to their fathers going to church than their mothers.
But, I would wager, here on Ricochet, we could find people who think two moms is just a good as a mom and a dad.
That (as with Bryan’s and Full Sized Tabby’s accounts) is astonishing.
Perhaps. But I would rather have that discussion than talk about things that have no bearing on the underlying problem whatsoever.
The state puts money where interests matter to it. These people don’t vote and have no income. Parents have no power. Some parents would just lock them away and forget them, some would just ignore the problem until we get a shooting, but fear of human failings is no reason to take power away from all parents, all people who might care. It should be an issue of who pays and how much and by what mechanism but parents have to be in the center not some remote state apparatus.