Kentucky Gov. Bevin: We Have to Look at What Has Changed in Society; It Isn’t the Gun

(CNSNews.com) – As calls grow louder for gun control, even outright repeal of the Second Amendment on some social media threads, Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin (R) said those arguments miss the point.

Guns have been with us since the nation’s founding, but school shootings are a relatively recent phenomenon. So it’s not the gun, it’s the culture that’s changed, Gov. Bevin told Fox News’s Tucker Carlson Monday night:

There are more gun restrictions now. There are more rules about who can and can’t own a gun or how a gun might be acquired then there were 50 and 100 years ago. And yet, 50 and 100 years ago, children did not slaughter other children at school. What has changed? It isn’t the gun.

So something culturally has changed. And I would submit that we have become significantly desensitized to death and to violence. And we are training children whether we intend to or not, whether it’s anyone’s desire or not, through video games, through movies, through musical lyrics, through television shows, increasingly during prime time,, eve, the amount of violence it is increasingly realistic, increasingly graphic. And there is a cost to this.

You couple that with the number of psychiatric drugs that children and adults for that matter are on. And the number of warnings about depression and suicidal thoughts, you couple all of that with the fact that our mores as a society have shifted to the degree that they’re largely nonexistent. That we no longer have these clear, delineated right and wrong boundaries. That everything is somewhat gelatinous.

And these children are increasingly coming from broken homes as well. And they find themselves rudderless. Now, you’re a father. And you understand it’s important what happens at home has a profound impact on what your children do out there. Too many children don’t have the blessings of having a stable environment at home. And we have to look at what has changed in society and not have a knee-jerk response that another rule and another regulation is the answer.

Host Tucker Carlson asked the governor why his explanation, which “sounds obvious,” tends to provoke a hostile reaction from some people.

“It does not fit the narrative that people want,” Bevin replied. “And for a thousand reasons, people have a preconceived notion that another gun restriction, for example, another rule, another regulation, another you-can’t-do-this, another governmental intervention of some sort is the answer.”

Bevin said it is our responsibility — as individuals, as parents, as teachers, as educators, as members of churches and civic organizations and youth organizations — to ask, “What are we not doing that was done a generation ago to provide the type of guidance that young people need as they grow up?”

The governor also pointed to the way we now deal with differences of opinion, demonizing those with different viewpoints instead of listening.

He made one final point: “We are lionizing, sadly, some of these children who do this. Again, not anyone’s intention, but we’re making heroes of a child who has no business to have their face put out there. Another young person who’s…..perhaps psychologically unbalanced will say why not? I will get my 15 minutes of fame. If we don’t think there’s a copycat mentality, we’re not paying attention.”

https://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/susan-jones/kentucky-gov-bevin-we-have-look-what-has-changed-society-it-isnt-gun