There are calls for banning gun sales to end these tragic killings. Guns don’t kill people. It’s the people pulling the gun trigger that kills people. The problem isn’t the guns; the mentally disturbed person pulling the trigger is the problem. We had a troublesome shortstop on my little -league team named Cory. We had to have been in about fifth grade when Cory told me how to make a pipe bomb.

I have no idea why Cory told me. Nor did I understand what it was. Had I been smarter, I might have waned someone. I didn’t, and Cory blew off half his hand before the season ended. No one needs a gun. A simple pipe bomb that even a fifth grader living on their allowance can produce can be deadly in a school setting. The facts are that 67% of the death attributed to guns are suicides. The solution to gun violence is solving mental problems. I believe it all stems from the family life of the disturbed violator. Bring a child up knowing right from wrong and respecting life in general, and that child won’t kill. At the very least, parental supervisors will be around to forewarn authorities when the child goes ballistic. Raising children with a good helping of religion never hurt, either. Raising children in a single-parent home is too tough on the single parent and bound to affect the child negatively.

These killing sprees have come to light in the last twenty years as we have moved away from a rural society dependent on the central family unit and religion. Rural communities depended on the tight family unit to work the farm. These families created the “greatest generation” that came together to win World War Two. We didn’t have mass murders in the fifties and sixties. However, after society began disintegrating with rioters in the 1970s, mass murders like the Manson family became more common. I wanted to blame this on divorce rates, but they’ve declined recently. Single-parent homes are increasing, however, as more women do it alone.

My wife grew up on a farm family of ten children taught religion and a healthy respect for the guns they used for hunting. They were taught this respect for people and weapons by a father who’d seen death in World War Two and a mother who’d experienced the targeted death of a child. They raised all their children to be productive members who worked till retirement, increasing their families with no children and becoming mass murderers.

My parents were hardly pillars of society, and while they taught their two children right from wrong, not everyone learned their lessons. I believe that my sibling will spend eternity in hell for their sins. I was using my family as an example. My mother had two sisters. Ruth, the excellent sister who always visited often, cared for her parents in their old age and raised three girls right. Her sister Mary was the sister with a broken family through multiple divorces. One daughter died robbing a drug store. A son did time after killing a drug dealer. Broken families lead to broken children.

We must look to the family unit to solve our violent crime problems and police mental health. The government could help by establishing parent education programs to train new parents. Many of my friends are becoming grandparents. They’re amazed they have to take grandparenting classes to learn new parenting techniques when some have raised five or six children. If worse comes to worst, we can mandate such parent training and begin to hold the parents accountable for murderous children. Such measures and government involvement will be more successful than banning gun sales, an ineffective method of controlling gun usage. Banning guns won’t stop a determined or crazed killer. There are many ways to kill. It’s easier to make a pipe bomb than get an illegal weapon. We need to stop the killers from becoming that way from the start with a proper and loving upbringing.

One major problem is education. Kids aren’t learning to read or write because poor teachers aren’t held accountable for not teaching results. Kids who can’t read or report can’t get a job. They turn to crime to support themselves. Parents need the right to school choice while providing them with vouchers for their education taxes paid. Parents will have to demand these changes themselves through the ballot box. The teacher’s union owns the politicians who never approve of school choice.

There is no doubt that the lack of law enforcement these days is a contributor to the violence. Lawbreakers must be punished to the fullest extent of the law, not set free to break the law again. We need to support, respect, and refund our police departments. I read a statement the other day that bears repeating. We kill dogs for harming children. We should do the same with pedophiles. Gun control and education start with parenting and uncorrupted politicians who value the family unit.