Fatherlessness and Guns

This blog isn't going to focus on gun violence and gun laws.  Still, it's the public policy topic of the day, it's related to poverty to some degree, and there's a powerful new column on the relationship of gun violence and one of the themes of this blog to date - fatherlessness.  The column is by Lee Habeeb on National Review Online.  A few excerpts:

As we continue to hear calls for ever-tightening gun laws from the Obama administration, and from states such as New York, it is worth thinking about those headlines in Chicago. And in inner cities all around America, places where strict gun laws are already in place. Places where the weapon of choice isn’t an AR-15 but a semiautomatic handgun — the same kind of weapon most Americans use reasonably, and safely, to secure their most precious assets: their loved ones and their property.

***

In Chicago, it’s Newtown every month. But the media haven’t converged on Chicago this month.

You don’t know the names of those kids and adults gunned down in Chicago this January, all by handguns. But the Chicago Tribune’s RedEye website tracks the Chicago body count since January 1: Gregory Bady, 28; Damian Barnes, 22; Marcus Wallace, 23; Tyrone Soleberry, 39; Brian Cross, 34; John Taylor, 23; Darville Brown, 24; Tyshawn Blanton, 31; Marcus Turner, 19; Lavonshay Cooper, 22; David Bartzmark, 25; Michael Kozel, 57; Ulysses Gissendanner, 19; Kevin Jemison, 29; Myron Brown, 30; Devanta Grisson, 19; Octavius Lamb, 20.

***

You don’t know their names because the real racism that exists in the media is this: A young black male’s life is not worth reporting when it is taken by another black male.

***

You don’t know the names because the media don’t or can’t blame the deaths in Chicago on a weapon like the AR-15, or on the NRA.

You don’t know their names because the media aren’t interested in getting at the real cause of much of the senseless gun violence in America: fatherlessness.

About 20,000 people live in my hometown of Oxford, Miss., and there are probably twice as many guns. Folks own handguns, shotguns, rifles, and all kinds of weapons I’ve never even heard of. But I can’t remember the last murder story in the local paper.

That’s because my town has lots of guns, but lots of fathers, too.

Chicago doesn’t have a gun problem; it has a father problem.

Gun control isn’t the problem on Chicago’s streets; self-control is.

When young men don’t have fathers, they don’t learn to control their masculine impulses. They don’t have fathers to teach them how to channel their masculine impulses in productive ways.

***

So why don’t the media focus on the epidemic of fatherlessness in our inner cities and on the tragic consequences for boys? The mostly white liberal editors and gatekeepers of the mainstream media would never admit that liberal policies of the 1960s have had disastrous consequences. They won’t admit that government can’t replace the essential role that marriage and family plays in raising, disciplining, and loving children.

The gun control measures proposed by President Obama yesterday don't seem likely to prevent another Newtown.  I'm mildly in favor of additional regulation on the process for obtaining guns and additional restrictions on the kinds of guns that individuals may own (on the grounds that most such laws won't do any harm and won't inhibit the ability of law-abiding individuals to protect themselves), but I'm largely pessimistic these laws will do much to protect mass shootings - or even the violence Habeeb describes as sadly unexceptional in Chicago. 

On the other hand, who seriously can doubt that more fathers in the homes of poor children would reduce some of the gun violence we see in our innercities?  Too uncomfortable to discuss, though, apparently.

Yesterday was another opportunity for President Obama to speak out on the issue of fatherlessness - another opportunity missed.