Arrest, try, and emprison, Mayor Daley, the city council and Daley's backers. They are the only persons legally allowed to have handguns in the Peoples' Republic of Chicago. As we know gun control absolutely workd and criminals never get guns, it must the legal gun owners, Daley and his cronies doing all the shooting. Stands to reason.

The underlying problem is multigeneration fatherlessness. Neither Chicago's or the nation's wealthy Progressive elites want to go anyway near belling the illegitimacy cat because to do so is to undermine the sexual revolution; and to correct this problem will require a sea change that reestablishes Christian marriage as the universal norm in America. Both prospects are unacceptable to America's wealthy Progressive elite. Chicago will have more fatherlessness, more crime, more dead kids, more Black males in prison, and more taxpayer funded helping professionals. And the Kabuki theater about gun control will continue.

>>"Groups like the Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence, the Violence Policy Center and the Brady Campaign have a structural flaw in their basic underlying philosophy. They have deluded themselves into thinking that a banning a device (a firearm) will somehow mitigate the cultural problem of violence in certain groups."

You give them way too much credit. They are indifferent to violence. They oppose private citizens owning firearms, full stop. If you could prove to them beyond a shadow of a doubt that private ciizens bearing arms led to a reduction in violence, their position would not change, because their position is not contingent on the amount of violence in the world.

"A subculture that accepts, embraces, and glorifies violence in their entertainment (music, video games, television shows, movies, etc) unsurprisingly develops and nurtures individuals and groups that accept, embrace, and glorifies violence in the real world."

Bob I gotta call you on this one.

Humans are inherently violent and our entertainment is merely a reflection of that. In fact I'd go so far as to postulate that movies and video games provide an outlet for humanities' violent nature.

There are fewer wars, armies, and general bloodshed in one's everyday life than there were even 100 years ago. Violent individuals found their outlets in crime (or law enforcement) as they still do. They also has the "frontier wars" in America and the various conflicts that raged across Europe that culminated in WWI and II. We are creatures of violent habit in a world where real violence is less and less acceptable (unless your Muslim) and virtual violence becomes the outlet.

There is violence and there is violence. Portrayals of righteous violence - St. George slaying the dragon - onscreen probably do provide a catharstic of some kind while reinforcing the idea of right and wrong - violence as a final resort to preserve the moral and social order. Grand Theft Auto, on the other hand, may provide a cathartic experience, but does not encourage a moral sense at all, to put it mildly (I have seen it played, and it is just as bad as folks say). Augustine of Hippo argued that all violence is caused by the presence of evil, but not all violence is evil in and of itself, I believe. It is a useful distinction, think.

Another issue is that violence, as well as any other strong emotion, can be titullating as well as cathartic, and thus encourage violence instead of merely providing an outlet for something already there. It is a hard line to draw, unfortunately, but I think Bob is right that at least some of the blame can be laid upon the entertainment industry, which seems to lean heavily towards titullation. What we see and listen to does have an effect on the character, I would imagine.

Incidentally, it is interesting to note that while our ancestors may have been more violent, we are more removed from the real effects. We see it portrayed all around us onscreen, but few of us have any real experience with violent death, even animal death, first hand. Most of our ancestors had to kill their own chickens for Sunday dinner, or saw them killed at any rate, and natural death of humans was more immediate and common for them. We may be as much or more likely to treat violence casually than they (or maybe not, depending on place and time), but much more squeamish about it in the real world. Interesting to reflect on, though what significance it may have I am not sure.

Are you kidding? Gang members VOTE!

all 18 year olds who are legally entitled to carry rifles should be give/loaned weapons by the NRA many of them are unable to afford to purchase them on their own.

all 18 year olds who are legally entitled to carry rifles should be give/loaned weapons by the NRA many of them are unable to afford to purchase them on their own.

Silly liberal. The CMP should be doing that, not the NRA.