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This article shows that there is no relationship between kids playing violent video games and have major aggression as growing up.

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In yet another study on the subject, it shows that there is no link between playing violent video games and aggression in adolescents.

Courtesy of the Oxford Internet Institute and the University of Oxford, this new study was published in Royal Society Open Science and is being touted as being one of the most comprehensive studies on the subject to date.

That is because this study used a combination of subjective and objective data to measure teen aggression and violence in games. Compared to previous research on the subject, which relied on self-reported data from teenagers, this study used information from parents and carers to judge the level of aggressive behavior in their children.

What's more, the content of the video games was classified using the official PEGI and ESRB rating systems, rather than just the player's perceptions of the amount of violence in the game.

If you're curious about the sampling here, as you should be, then it comprised of British 14 to 15-year olds and an equal number of parents or carers, totaling 2,008 subjects in all.

The result of this thorough approach showed that there was no link between violent video games and teenage aggression, something that the lead researcher Professor Andrew Przybylski went on to clarify.

The idea that violent video games drive real-world aggression is a popular one, but it hasn't tested very well over time. Despite interest in the topic by parents and policy-makers, the research has not demonstrated that there is cause for concern.

As Przybylski points out, this is not the first study to show these kinds of results and it is getting to the point now, that blaming video games for outbursts of teenage related aggression holds no weight. However, he did admit that trash talking online and other such behavior warranted further study.

Not to mention we have all the counter studies that actually show that playing video games has clear cognitive benefits, so it really is about time that video games were no longer demonized as the cause for all of society's woes and accepted for what they are.
Follow me on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. I also manage Mecha Damashii and do toy reviews over at hobbylink.tv. Read my Forbes blog here.

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New Study Shows That There Is No Link Between Violent Video Games And Aggression In Teenagers

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In yet another study on the subject, it shows that there is no link between playing violent video games and aggression in adolescents. Courtesy of the Oxford Internet Institute and the University of Oxford, this new study was published in Royal Society Open Science and is being touted as being one of the most comprehensive studies on the subject to date.

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What’s the Relationship Between Mental Illness and Gun Violence?

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What’s the Relationship Between Mental Illness and Gun Violence?

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This is the most reasonable topic for why so many shootings happen but after reading the article the data shows something a little different. Other research has suggested 23 percent of mass killers had mental illness. When examining violence more generally, the percentage is even lower.

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Political leaders often imply that gun violence is a mental health problem. But the research shows the reality is more nuanced.

Politicians and pundits often invoke mental illness as a cause for gun violence, particularly in the wake of mass shootings. The perception radiates outward to and the public. According to over the past few years, roughly half the American public believes that mental health problems are chiefly to blame for shootings.

It's true that severe mental illness does appear in some mass killers. But to pin the blame for violence on mental health problems is misguided. "There are a lot of news reports and public perception about gun violence that link it with mental health," said Yu Lu, a postdoctoral research fellow in behavioral health and research at the University of Texas Medical Branch. "However, if you look at data, if you look at actual research, there's minimal evidence supporting this claim."

Lu is the lead author of published by Preventive Medicine that examined the connection between mental health issues and firearm-related behaviors, namely gun access, gun ownership, gun carrying, and threatening someone with a gun. The results: Most mental health issues - including anxiety, stress, depression, PTSD, and borderline personality disorder - bore little association with gun violence. Aggressive firearm-related behavior, on the other hand, was strongly tied to access to guns. People with gun access were 18 times more likely to have threatened someone with a gun than those who didn't have access to a firearm.

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"Counter to public beliefs, the majority of mental health symptoms examined were not related to gun violence," the researchers wrote. "Instead, access to firearms was the primary culprit."

What makes the UMTB study unique is its use of longitudinal data, meaning it indicates the connections between variables over time. Lu and her co-researcher analyzed data from 663 young adults recruited from seven high schools in Southeast Texas who were then surveyed annually for eight years beginning in 2010. Previous studies have focused on individuals who've already committed violent crimes or only those with severe mental illness, which may make the data subject to selection bias. Earlier studies have also inconsistently defined mental illness, making it hard to compare findings.

On the whole, past research supports Lu's findings. A database tabulating the characteristics of mass shooters showed that less than 15 percent of perpetrators were diagnosed as psychotic. Other research has suggested 23 percent of mass killers had mental illness. When examining violence more generally, the percentage is even lower: "The best available national data suggest that only 3 - 5 percent of violent acts are attributable to serious mental illness," wrote psychiatrist Paul Appelbaum and sociologist Jeffrey Swanson in a "and most of those acts do not involve guns."

In actuality, individuals with mental illness are more likely to be victims of crime than perpetrators. One study of Chicago residents found that people with severe mental illness were 11 times more likely to be victimized by violent crime than members of the general population. Equating mental health struggles with violent behavior can increase stigma around an already vulnerable population, which may in turn make it harder for those struggling to reach out for help. A few years ago, The Trace cited a 2009 study of more than 34,000 participants in the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions, which found "that people with mental illnesses are more likely than the general population to have suffered physical or mental abuse, be unemployed, have a parent with an arrest record, or have drug or alcohol dependency. It is these factors, not mental illness itself, that are more likely to present in people who carry out violent gun crimes."

While Lu's research found a strong association between gun access and making threats with a firearm, it also flagged another risk factor: hostility. The study defines hostility as "a devaluation of the worth and motives of others...and a desire to inflict harm or see others harmed." Hostility can signify mental illness, but may also just be a personality trait. To evaluate their hostility level, the researchers surveyed subjects on questions like, "In general, how often do you feel easily annoyed or irritated?" The study found that individuals with high levels of hostility were 3.5 times more likely to threaten someone with a gun than those without a hostile demeanor.

The findings are unsurprising. A few years ago, my colleague Alex Yablon wrote about the role of anger among mass shooters:

The roster of America's most notorious mass shooters is populated by young, angry men who regularly displayed antisocial behavior before they carried out attacks. Isla Vista shooter Elliot Rodger, Charleston shooter Dylann Roof, and Virginia Tech shooter Seung-Hui Cho had all been previously identified, by a parent, roommate, or school administrator as a threat....understanding how rage can boil over into violence, and searching out ways to calm the anger and remove guns from people most likely to use them in acts of violence, should be a public policy imperative, researchers say.
Anger Is the Shared Fuel of Mass Shooters and Everyday Murderers. Here's What Might Stop Both.
His point was summed up neatly by psychologist Laura Hayes in Slate : "Violent crimes are committed by violent people, those who do not have the skills to manage their anger....Violence is a product of compromised anger management skills."

In addition to hostility, the UTMB study identifies gender as a factor, with men three times more likely to have threatened someone with a gun than women. Past research also highlights a history of alcohol abuse as a major predictor of gun crime.

Lu hopes her research inspires support of more resources that address hostility and anger and promote mindfulness. She also hopes the findings help dispel some of the stigma around mental illness. "There's so much public perception that gun violence is caused by people who are mentally ill, who are dangerous and likely to do all those horrible things," she said. This assumption, she says, does not reflect reality.

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What's the Relationship Between Mental Illness and Gun Violence?

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Political leaders often imply that gun violence is a mental health problem. But the research shows the reality is more nuanced. Politicians and pundits often invoke mental illness as a cause for gun violence, particularly in the wake of mass shootings. The perception radiates outward to and the public.

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7 facts about guns ownership in the U.S.

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7 facts about guns ownership in the U.S.

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3/10 American adults (30%) say they personally own a gun, and an additional 1/10 say they live with someone who does.

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A customer shops for a handgun at a gun store in Florida. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Guns are deeply ingrained in American society and the nation's political debates.

The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution gives Americans the right to bear arms, and about a third of U.S. adults say they personally own a gun. At the same time, President Joe Biden and other policymakers earlier this year proposed new restrictions on firearm access in an effort to address gun violence ranging from rising murder rates in some major cities to mass shootings.

Here are some key findings about Americans' attitudes about gun violence, gun policy and other subjects, drawn from recent surveys by Pew Research Center and Gallup.

Four-in-ten U.S. adults say they live in a household with a gun, including 30% who say they personally own one, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in June 2021.

There are differences in gun ownership rates by political party affiliation, gender, geography and other factors. For instance, 44% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say they personally own a gun, compared with 20% of Democrats and Democratic leaners.

Men are more likely than women to say they own a gun (39% vs. 22%). And 41% of adults living in rural areas report owning a firearm, compared with about 29% of those living in the suburbs and two-in-ten living in cities.

Federal data suggests that gun sales have risen in recent years, particularly during the coronavirus pandemic. In 2020, the number of monthly federal background checks for gun purchases was consistently at least 20% higher than in the same month in 2019, according to the FBI's National Instant Criminal Background Check System. The largest comparative percentage point difference occurred in July 2020 - when about 3.6 million background checks were completed, 44% more than were conducted in July 2019.

Personal protection tops the list of reasons why gun owners say they own a firearm. In a Gallup survey conducted in August 2019, gun owners were most likely to cite personal safety or protection as the reason they own a firearm. Roughly six-in-ten (63%) said this in an open-ended question. Considerably smaller shares gave other reasons, including hunting (40%), nonspecific recreation or sport (11%), that their gun was an antique or a family heirloom (6%) or that the gun was related to their line of work (5%).

A Pew Research Center survey conducted in 2017 found similar patterns in firearm owners' stated reasons for owning a gun.

Around half of Americans (48%) see gun violence as a very big problem in the country today, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in April 2021. That's comparable to the share who say the same about the federal budget deficit (49%), violent crime (48%), illegal immigration (48%) and the coronavirus outbreak (47%). Only one issue is viewed as a very big problem by a majority of Americans: the affordability of health care (56%).

Another 24% of adults say gun violence is a moderately big problem. About three-in-ten say it is either a small problem (22%) or not a problem at all (6%).

Attitudes about gun violence differ widely by race, ethnicity, party and community type. About eight-in-ten Black adults (82%) say gun violence is a very big problem - by far the largest share of any racial or ethnic group. By comparison, about six-in-ten Hispanic adults (58%) and 39% of White adults view gun violence this way. (Due to sample size limitations, data for Asian Americans is not available.)

Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents are far more likely than Republicans and GOP leaners to see gun violence as a major problem (73% vs. 18%). And nearly two-thirds of Americans who describe their community as urban (65%) say the same, compared with 47% of suburbanites and 35% of those who live in rural areas.

Roughly half of Americans (53%) favor stricter gun laws, a decline since 2019, according to the Center's April 2021 survey. Smaller shares say these laws are about right (32%) or should be less strict (14%). The share of Americans who say gun laws should be stricter has decreased from 60% in September 2019. Current opinions are in line with what they were in March 2017.

Among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, views have shifted. Republicans are currently more likely to say gun laws should be less strict (27%) than stricter (20%). In 2019, by comparison, a larger share of Republicans favored stricter gun laws than less strict laws (31% vs. 20%). Both years, roughly half of Republicans said current gun laws were about right.

Today, a large majority of Democrats and Democratic leaners (81%) say gun laws should be stricter, though this share has declined slightly since 2019 (down from 86%).

Americans are divided over whether restricting legal gun ownership would lead to fewer mass shootings. Debates over the nation's gun laws have often followed recent mass shootings. But Americans are split over whether legal changes would lead to fewer mass shootings, according to the same spring 2021 poll. About half of adults (49%) say there would be fewer mass shootings if it was harder for people to obtain guns legally, while about as many either say this would make no difference (42%) or that there would be more mass shootings (9%).

The public is even more divided about the effects of gun ownership on crime overall. Around a third (34%) say that if more people owned guns, there would be more crime. The same percentage (34%) say there would be no difference in crime, while 31% say there would be less crime.

There is broad partisan agreement on some gun policy proposals, but most are politically divisive, the April 2021 survey found. Majorities in both partisan coalitions favor two policies that would restrict gun access: preventing those with mental illnesses from purchasing guns (85% of Republicans and 90% of Democrats support this) and subjecting private gun sales and gun show sales to background checks (70% of Republicans, 92% of Democrats). Majorities in both parties also oppose allowing people to carry concealed firearms without a permit.

Other proposals bring out stark partisan rifts. While 80% or more Democrats favor creating a federal database to track all gun sales and banning both assault-style weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines that hold more than 10 rounds, majorities of Republicans oppose these proposals.

Most Republicans, on the other hand, support allowing people to carry concealed guns in more places (72%) and allowing teachers and school officials to carry guns in K-12 schools (66%). These proposals are supported by just 20% and 24% of Democrats, respectively.

Gun ownership is closely linked with views on gun policies. This is true even among gun owners and non-owners within the same political party, according to the April 2021 Center survey.

Among Republicans, gun owners are generally less likely than non-owners to favor policies that restrict access to guns. Democratic non-gun owners are generally the most likely to favor restrictions.

For example, a majority of Republicans who don't own a gun (57%) say they favor creating a federal government database to track all gun sales, while 30% of Republican gun owners say the same. There are similar-sized gaps among Republicans who own guns and those who do not on banning assault-style weapons and high-capacity magazines.

Among Democrats, there are modest gaps on gun policies by gun ownership. For instance, while majorities of Democratic gun owners and non-owners both favor banning assault-style weapons and banning high-capacity magazines, Democratic gun owners are about 20 percentage points less likely to say this.

Americans in rural areas typically favor more expansive gun access, while Americans in urban places prefer more restrictive policies, according to the April 2021 survey. Even though rural areas tend to be more Republican and urban communities more Democratic, this pattern holds true even within each political party. For example, 71% of rural Republicans favor allowing teachers and other school officials to carry guns in K-12 schools, compared with 56% of Republicans living in urban places. Conversely, about half of Republicans who live in urban communities (51%) favor bans on assault-style weapons, compared with 31% of those living in rural areas.

Democrats favor more gun restrictions regardless of where they live, but there are still some differences by community type. A third of rural Democrats (33%), for instance, support allowing teachers and other school officials to carry guns in K-12 schools, compared with 21% of those in urban areas.

Note: This is an update of a post originally published on Jan. 5, 2016.

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Here are some key findings about Americans' attitudes about gun violence, gun policy and other subjects, drawn from recent surveys.

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How gun-free zones invite mass shootings

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How gun-free zones invite mass shootings

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Most gunmen are smart enough to know that they can kill more people if they attack places where victims can’t defend themselves. That’s one reason why 98 percent of mass public shootings since 1950 have occurred in places where citizens are banned from having guns.

The national media tend to ignore case after case of mass public shootings being stopped by armed private citizens.

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"This doesn't happen anywhere else on the planet," said California's Gov.-elect Gavin Newsom. "We stand alone in the world in the number of mass shootings," echoed U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y. These were typical comments after an alleged shooter murdered 12 people in Borderline Bar & Grill in Thousand Oaks, Calif.

People have been acting for a long time like the United States is the world's hotbed of mass public shootings. Following a 2015 mass shooting during his administration, President Barack Obama declared: "The one thing we do know is that we have a pattern now of mass shootings in this country that has no parallel anywhere else in the world."

This belief is constantly used to push for more gun control. If we can only get rid of guns in the United States, we will get rid of these mass public shootings and be more like the rest of the world, gun-control supporters preach.

But America doesn't lead the world in mass public shootings. We're not even close. Just last month, a school shooting in Crimea, Russia, claimed 20 lives and wounded 65 others. But Americans usually don't hear about such events.

The Crime Prevention Research Center, of which I am president, recently finished updating a list of mass public shootings worldwide. These shootings must claim four or more lives in a public place. Following the FBI definition, the shootings we list are carried out simply with the intention of killing. We exclude gang fights because they tend to be motivated by battles for drug turf. Murders that arise from other crimes are also excluded.

Then there are politically motivated attacks, either by or against governments. Some shootings occur in the course of guerrilla wars for sovereignty. These attacks do not meet our definition. This meant excluding a lot of very deadly shootings such as those in the Russian-Chechen conflict. The Russian Beslan School siege of Sept. 1, 2004, left 385 dead and another 783 wounded. In a three-day siege of the Dubrovka Theater in Moscow in 2002, 130 were killed and more than 450 were wounded.

Over the course of 18 years, from 1998 to 2015, our list contains 2,354 attacks and at least 4,880 shooters outside the United States and 53 attacks and 57 shooters within this country. By our count, the U.S. makes up 1.49 percent of the murders worldwide, 2.20 percent of the attacks, and less than 1.15 percent of the mass public shooters. All these are much less than America's 4.6 percent share of the world population.

Of the 97 countries where we identified mass public shootings, the U.S. ranks 64th per capita in its rate of attacks and 65th in fatalities. Major European countries, such as Norway, Finland, France, Switzerland and Russia, all have at least 25 percent higher per capita murder rates from mass public shootings.

While Americans are rightly concerned by the increased frequency and severity of mass public shootings, the rest of the world is experiencing much larger increases in per capita rates of attack. The frequency of foreign mass public shootings since 1998 has grown 291 percent faster than in the U.S.

The media bias on this is overwhelming. Even after President Donald Trump again raised the danger of gun-free zones, the news media still refuse to mention this fact in its reporting of mass shootings. The attack earlier this month at Borderline Bar & Grill occurred in a gun-free zone. Unlike in 39 states, concealed handgun permit holders in California are banned from carrying permitted concealed handguns into bars. The mass shooting Monday at Chicago's Mercy Hospital & Medical Center in Bronzeville was at a place where law-abiding citizens were banned from having guns.

Most gunmen are smart enough to know that they can kill more people if they attack places where victims can't defend themselves. That's one reason why 98 percent of mass public shootings since 1950 have occurred in places where citizens are banned from having guns.

The national media tend to ignore case after case of mass public shootings being stopped by armed private citizens. Just a couple of days before the synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh a concealed handgun permit holder stopped an alleged killer who was shooting blacks at a Kroger grocery store in Louisville, Ky.

National media outlets such as ABC and NBC covered the attack, noting that the alleged gunman told another white man that: "Whites don't kill whites." It sounded as if the gunman was merely reassuring a bystander that he had nothing to worry about. But reporters left out the crucial first part of the quote. The killer said: "Don't shoot me. I won't shoot you. Whites don't shoot whites." The other white person was pointing a permitted concealed handgun at the killer.

It is understandable that the media dosn´t cover most mass public shootings in other countries. But as much as it might not fit the media's narrative, the U.S. is a relatively safe place from these shooting attacks. Still, we need to let people protect themselves and each other. We need to get rid of gun-free zones.
John R. Lott Jr. is president of the Crime Prevention Research Center and the author most recently of "The War on Guns." Join the discussion on Twitter @Trib_Ed_Board and on Facebook. Submit a letter to the editor here or email letters@chicagotribune.com.

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How gun-free zones invite mass shootings

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"This doesn't happen anywhere else on the planet," said California's Gov.-elect Gavin Newsom. "We stand alone in the world in the number of mass shootings," echoed U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y. These were typical comments after an alleged shooter murdered 12 people in Borderline Bar & Grill in Thousand Oaks, Calif.

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Here are some statistics about the likelihood of being in a mass shooting or terrorist attack.
Mass Shootings 2.5 per 10 mil in population
Terrorism 18.8 per 10 mil in population

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Our obsession with small probabilities and rare events

I started considering this article last month around the anniversary of the death of my father. Even with Christmas, the weeks leading up to and after the holiday are always a little somber. Thoughts of death and mortality intermingle with my children's innocent excitement for Santa's arrival and the welcoming of the new year. My dad passed away in 2001, a few months after September 11th. He died after a short battle with gastrointestinal cancer. During his treatments, we had a chance to muse about how the terrorists had changed the world.

The paradox was lost on me. I and my father believed the greatest threat to the United States had just revealed itself. However, at the time, I also firmly believed that his cancer was an anomaly. Perhaps exposure from his youth was to blame; a freak occurrence. Years later I've come to realize how simple my thinking was. I am much more likely to have a battle with cancer than pass away from a terrorist attack.

I now understand how violence, like terrorism and mass shootings, plays a small role in our lives. I make this statement having experienced my fair share of death. For the past 16 years I have been a Soldier in the United States Army and can attest that at a 2:1 ratio, combat has not been the primary cause of military funerals.

In fact, I just attended yet another non-combat military funeral this past weekend. Suicide, motorcycle accidents, car crashes, cancer, and heart attacks have removed more of my friends from this earth than patrols. This obviously isn't going to be every Soldier's experience, but it is for most and it is consistent with the data.

The truth is, you are probably not going to die in a mass shooting or terrorist incident. They are exceedingly rare events. You likely have been told this before, but it stands in stark contrast with the amount of news coverage and political attention such events receive. Over the last half-century, the average number of victims in the United States population is something close to the values listed below.

+ - - - - - - - - + - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - +
| Incident Type | Avg Annual Victims |
+ - - - - - - - - + - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - +
| Mass Shootings | 2.5 per 10 mil in population |
| Terrorism | 18.8 per 10 mil in population |
+ - - - - - - - - + - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - +

There are many reasons we fixate on these events. Maybe because they fit so neatly into political narratives. Or perhaps violence took center stage as the prime concern for our ancestors and our biological wiring does not change as quickly as civilization.

However, there are data-based reasons that justify the rare event obsession. They (rare events) can be a precursor of something larger. Sometimes the unexplained movement in the grass is a lion. Perhaps infrequent events involving guns and terrorism are symptomatic of burgeoning epidemics and not just episodic societal background noise. A data science view of this problem would be concerned with how non-linear the impacts of such events are. In lay terms, do the events get exponentially worse or increase rapidly in frequency?

I have almost always found it a mistake to dismiss human intuition. Often, there are good reasons for people to hold specific beliefs. In the case of mass shootings and terrorism, some of the characteristics of the data may explain our obsession. Looking just at the United States here is a view of the total number of victims per incident.

Each of these incident types has a story to tell. Typically with discrete rare events, a Poisson process is used for modeling and forecasting. This is, for example, how earthquakes are commonly u nderstood. However, a Poisson process has the assumption of being memory-less with stable inter-arrival times (average time between events). Visualizing the statistical inter-arrival times shows mass shootings becoming more common (currently as common as terrorism) with a drastic increase in frequency starting in the '80s.

One silver lining is that the average total victims in mass shootings are stable year over year. On the other hand, terrorism is stable with respect to inter-arrival but has a much larger variation in the total victims per incident. Another way to look at the difference between these two types of rare events is comparing the average time between events with respect to the number of fatalities.

The number of fatalities for a mass shooting seems to be capped at around 100 regardless of the time between events. However, with terrorism, the noticeable outliers tell a different story. The (admittedly crude) trend line hints that the longer the time between events the greater the number of possible fatalities. In fact, fatalities magnitude grows non-linearly. So, for example, every time we add 10 years to the average time between events the expected number of fatalities grows by as much as 10x.

In this light a truly massive scale terrorism incident, killing between one hundred thousand and one million people, is not only possible but likely. By the extreme boundary of this basic model, we can expect such an event as often as every 50 -100 years.

These types of rare event trends can be recognized by our psyches, even before we consciously realize it. Mass shootings are accelerating in frequency and low impact terrorism is an indicator of a much larger event. Both of these problems are at the forefront of our minds because our intuition is telling us to pay attention, and so is the data.
All of the data and code used to create this article can be found in this MatrixDS project. Follow Me on LinkedIn Follow Me on MatrixDS

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I started considering this article last month around the anniversary of the death of my father. Even with Christmas, the weeks leading up to and after the holiday are always a little somber. Thoughts of death and mortality intermingle with my children's innocent excitement for Santa's arrival and the welcoming of the new year.

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Guns are not the problem; it’s the lack of morality

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Guns are not the problem; it’s the lack of morality

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This article talks about gun ownership is not our problem. Our problem is a widespread decline in moral values that has nothing to do with guns.

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One of the unavoidable tragedies of youth is the temptation to think that what is seen today has always been. Nowhere is this more noticeable than in our responses to the recent Parkland, Florida, massacre. Part of the responses to those murders are calls to raise the age to purchase a gun and to have more thorough background checks - in a word, to make gun purchases more difficult. That's a vision that sees easy gun availability as the problem; thus, the solution is to reduce that availability.

The vision that sees "easy" availability as the problem ignores the fact of U.S. history that guns were far more available yesteryear. With truly easy gun availability, there was nowhere near the gun mayhem and murder that we see today. I'm tempted to ask those who believe that guns are today's problem whether they think that guns were nicer yesteryear. What about the calls for bans on the AR-15 so-called assault rifle? It turns out that according to 2016 FBI statistics, rifles accounted for 368 of the 17,250 homicides in the U.S. that year. That means restrictions on the purchase of rifles would do little or nothing for the homicide rate. Leaders of the gun control movement know this. Their calls for more restrictive gun laws are part of a larger strategy to outlaw gun ownership.

Gun ownership is not our problem. Our problem is a widespread decline in moral values that has nothing to do with guns. That decline includes disrespect for those in authority, disrespect for oneself, little accountability for anti-social behavior and a scuttling of religious teachings that reinforced moral values. Let's examine elements of this decline.

If any of our great-grandparents or even grandparents who passed away before 1960 were to return, they would not believe the kind of personal behavior all too common today. They wouldn't believe that youngsters could get away with cursing and assaulting teachers. They wouldn't believe that some school districts, such as Philadelphia's, employ more than 400 school police officers. During my primary and secondary schooling, from 1942 to 1954, the only time one saw a policeman in school was during an assembly period where we had to listen to a boring lecture on safety. Our ancestors also wouldn't believe that we're now debating whether teachers should be armed.

There are other forms of behavior that would have been deemed grossly immoral yesteryear. There are companies such as National Debt Relief, CuraDebt and LendingTree, which advertise that they will help you to avoid paying all the money you owe. So after you and a seller agree to terms of a sale, if you fail to live up to your half of the bargain, there are companies that will assist you in ripping off the seller.

There are companies that counsel senior citizens on how to shelter their assets from nursing home care costs. For example, a surviving spouse may own a completely paid-for home that's worth $500,000. The costs of nursing home care might run $50,000 a year. By selling her house, she could pay the nursing home costs, but her children wouldn't inherit the house. There are firms that come in to shelter her assets so that she can bequeath her home to her heirs and leave taxpayers to foot the nursing home bill. In my book, that's immoral, but it is so common that most of us give it no thought.

There is one moral failing that is devastating to the future of our nation. That failing, which has wide acceptance by the American people, is the idea that Congress has the authority to forcibly use one American to serve the purposes of another American. That is nothing less than legalized theft and accounts for roughly three-quarters of federal spending. For the Christians among us, we should consider that when God gave Moses the commandment "Thou shalt not steal," he probably didn't mean thou shalt not steal unless you get a majority vote in the U.S. Congress.

Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

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Column: Guns are not the problem; it's the lack of morality

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One of the unavoidable tragedies of youth is the temptation to think that what is seen today has always been. Nowhere is this more noticeable than in our responses to the recent Parkland, Florida, massacre.

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My thoughts on why so much gun violence is happening is because there are too many guns available. 30% of the population in America owns a gun, and that does not account for the thousands ands thousands of illegal guns that are owned by gangs or dealers. The access to guns makes it a lot easier for gun crimes to happen. Also mental illness could be playing a larger role in gun violence as we start to test and study more mental illnesses.