DISRESPECT FOR AUTHORITY IS CAUSING MASS KILLINGS: NOT GUNS

DISRESPECT FOR AUTHORITY IS CAUSING MASS KILLINGS: NOT GUNS

By Domenick J. Maglio PhD. Traditional Realist

Our modern childrearing experts have put children on an equal footing or even above their parents. Elected officials are diluting the power of law enforcement, while protecting hoodlums and chronic criminals. Due to financial and progressive humanitarian concerns, our legal system is reluctant to incarcerate convicts for significant crimes. Pressure for early release is creating a mockery of our criminal justice system. Our teachers are not allowed to intervene in student fights or attacks on other teachers. Authority figure’s hands are tied on every level. Even sports umpires are quitting as disrespectful parents and players verbally and physically attack them.

This weakening of consequences, enforcement and duration of punishment for serious transgressions is causing our authority figures to be paper tigers. There is little reason for the average person to listen to or obey people in positions of authority, including their own parents. Most people think everyone is equal, doing their own thing instead of respecting an officials’ powerful position.

In California two big 15-year-old female students physically punch and kick a small stature female teacher, while she is helplessly curled into a ball. This vicious act shows a lack of feelings for others. Students in the room took videos instead of intervening to stop this cruel act on the teacher. Something is radically wrong with our moral values to see so many examples of this type of behavior over the last couple of decades.

The respect for brute force and lack of respect for people with superior knowledge and experience is a frightening sign for our nation’s growing instability. Without allegiance to our parents, teachers, firemen, policemen, elders, representatives, social law and order will crumble. This is a major reason for random acts of mass violence.

The adage that you have to give respect to earn it is still true. Another perspective is if you have authority, you need to use it and be backed up by your superiors. When police are forced by politicians to “stand down,” that official is undermining their function and power. When a parent says to a child that they will take away something due to their behavior but does not follow through, their word becomes a joke.

Parkland, Florida mass killer, Nikolas Cruz, showed all the behaviors, psychological signs and vicious threats to commit the mass slaughter he actually did. He was known to the school personnel, police and his family to be a ticking time bomb. Multiple authorities dropped the ball allowing him to remain free without incarceration or mental health treatment. Everyone in authority who passed the buck and allowed this tragedy to unfold deserves the loss of respect after they chose not to do their duty for the public.

Parents often witness their child exhibiting antisocial behavior without taking significant measures to put them on a more normal track. In school parents are not supporting their children’s teachers by following through on consequences for their inappropriate behavior or lack of effort. At the first sign of the child’s appeasing them they end their attempt at confrontation. The parents disregarding their duty to shape their child’s actions is setting up the child to be alienated from others in power.

Teachers are also in a bind as they are unable to exercise their responsibility with all the bureaucratic rules that keep them from doing what previously worked. Educators of the past used these methods with positive results. They are not backed by school administration or in many cases by the parents so are unable to do what they know works.

Most teachers play bureaucratic games to survive or have left the profession. They want to be dedicated teachers but are handicapped by a myriad of regulations.  The public expects positive results from our public servants although we constantly second-guess them. This lack of bureaucratic and public support has weakened their ability to do their conscientious best.  Almost anyone in an authority position appears to be protecting himself first instead of accomplishing stated objectives.

Blaming guns for mass killings is a cover up for a cultural breakdown. Our traditionally balanced culture is out-of–whack. We are undermining our essential authority not only by lax parental expectations, poor follow through and lack of support by superiors. We do not mention the effects of mental illness, drugs, shabby education, lazy and ineffective parenting and rampant lying that are factors in mass shootings.

Targeting guns is a diversion from the real problems affecting our society. The moral decay of our sacred institutions and weakening authority figures’ power in the family and in our traditional institutions is where the responsibility lies.

Domenick Maglio, PhD. is a columnist carried by various newspapers, an author of several books and owner/director of Wider Horizons School, a college prep program. Dr. Maglio is an author of weekly newspaper articles, INVASION WITHIN  and a new book entitled, IN CHARGE PARENTING In a PC World. You can see many of Dr. Maglio’s articles at www.drmaglioblogspot.com.

GUNS ARE AN EQUALIZER FOR LAW ABIDING CITIZENS AGAINST EVIL

GUNS ARE AN EQUALIZER FOR LAW ABIDING CITIZENS AGAINST EVIL

By Domenick J. Maglio PhD Traditional Realist

Except for government officials who have the right to carry guns, some people believe guns should not be allowed. They think it would eliminate violent crimes and killings. There is little or no appreciation that a gun carried by a law-abiding person acts as a deterrent and protection against violence. Guns to progressives not only symbolize evil but they believe if guns disappear from earth the world would be without killing.

After the recent San Bernardino mass killing President Obama argued for gun control as he has previously done after every other similar tragedy. He refused to mention any connection to radical Islam even when the facts were obvious. This incident happened in California, a state with one of the strictest gun control laws in the nation. The gun laws that President Obama is advocating are already on the books and would not have prevented the massacre. Even his press secretary, Josh Earnest, admitted this in a press conference.

Furthermore the president had the audacity to repeat his false mantra: “I mean I say this every time we’ve got one of these mass shootings. This just doesn’t happen in other countries.”

President Obama’s ridiculous statement was proclaimed just after the Islamic radicals killed 129 Parisians. He failed to remember or blatantly distorted the truth not only about the mass killings but also that “Isis was contained.”  There recently were mass killings in Norway, Israel, and Germany, in Nigeria and Cameroon as well as West Gate Mall in Kenya.  When you factor out gang killing from mass killing the United States is 8^th in the world. It appears the president has a low opinion of the intelligence of the American people.

For the first time since 1920 the New York Times devoted their front page to an editorial. This editorial advocated more restrictive gun control even though San Bernardino, California has ultra restrictive gun laws. The zealots of gun control do not comprehend that it is evil people not guns that are the problem. Gun Free Zones, where no guns are permitted, are a sign to killers that this is a perfect place to commit atrocities since there is minimal threat to them.  There are thousands of city, state and national laws on the books to prevent criminals and mentally ill people from purchasing firearms. The cities and states that have the most restrictive gun laws, contrary to what most would believe, have more deadly violence on innocent people than places where there are significantly fewer gun laws.

The majority of thoughtful humans understand that violence would not end with the stricter gun control or even confiscation of guns because evil people would find other methods to harm or kill innocent victims. In fact they realize that a gun is only one weapon among many for mass killings.

In Switzerland where the government provides a gun for all citizens and trains them to use it, gun violence is the lowest in the world. Israeli politicians are pleading with gun owners to carry their weapons and assist in the rash of stabbings on the West Bank. Suicide bombers, cars driving into crowds and stabbings have become alternative means of killing. In New York City there have been hatchets used to attack policemen, pressure cooker bombs in Boston, box cutters, gas explosions, poisonings and even fists used as deadly weapons.  In Broken Arrow, Oklahoma two teenaged brothers left five family members dead or dying from stab wounds.

Nations that have eliminated guns from citizens have become more repressive governments. The inability of citizens to defend themselves through more intensive gun control laws has empowered governments to go further by confiscating them. The next step is to eliminate the lives of the opposition. This has been the pattern after confiscation: Mao’s China -20 million killed, Turkey- 1915-17 1.5 million Armenians killed, Germany 1939-45- 13 million killed, Guatemala 1964-81 100,000 Mayan Indians, Uganda 1971-79- 300,000 Christians killed, Cambodia 1975-77 one million killed. Millions of defenseless people were exterminated after gun confiscation left them defenseless and extremely repressive governments were established.

The founders of the USA understood this reality very well. It is the reason for the Second Amendment to the Constitution. This amendment was not to protect the rights of hunters as the progressive media is attempting to persuade us. It was established to enable “we the people” to stand up and defend ourselves against government tyranny.

The assault on guns to stop criminal violence is a naïve and bizarre notion. Guns in the hands of decent people can be a blessing while in the hands of evildoers is a potential tragedy. Terrorists and other criminals will always get weapons one way or another. People have a human right to protect themselves. The local government and state police response time is often too long to protect citizens from an ongoing attack. Weapons in the hands of the general public have been shown to be a restraint to criminal activity.

The issue is to contain evil. It is not possible to eliminate it, as it is part of the human condition. Guns are an equalizer against lawless people and a deterrent to out-of-control government attempting to establish a repressive totalitarian government.

Domenick Maglio, PhD. is a columnist carried by various newspapers, an author of several books and owner/director of Wider Horizons School, a college prep program. You can visit Dr. Maglio at www.drmaglio.blogspot.com.