OPINION:
President Biden, in response to calls from mourners in Uvalde to “do something” about gun violence, promised “We will.” What? Vice President Kamala Harris called for “an assault weapons ban.” Whatever that means. California Gov. Gavin Newsom pressed for laws allowing government and victims of shootings to sue gun manufacturers and dealers. What for? Democrats in blue-dominated states around the nation have grabbed ahold of a new talking point, calling on Republicans to pass “evidence-based policy interventions” to stop the gun-related violence. What does that mean? It means whatever Democrats say it means.
Democrats know all their bluster and grandstanding and political posturing about gun control is just that — bluster, grandstanding and political posturing. Democrats know they can’t disarm criminals by passing more gun control laws.
So they simply push for more restrictions on the rights of legal carriers to carry. They push to restrict only those who will obey laws. And they do it all the while pretending as if they’re not.
Think of what Democrats stand for, as a party, as a political ideology — think of what Democrats have either openly advocated or silently, tacitly allowed to go forth in recent years: Black Lives Matter and Antifa violence in the streets. The defund the police movement. The takeover of city blocks by armed thugs who declared the areas “no police zones” — that is, CHOP then CHAZ areas. The so-called First Amendment right of loud, low-information types to track down Donald Trump supporters at restaurants, at their homes, in the streets, and bellow madly at their MAGA and America First principles. The so-called First Amendment right of these same bottom-barrel individuals to stand outside Supreme Court justices’ homes to try and intimidate them into bowing to radical abortion industry will.
The message of Democrats?
There’s no law. There’s no order. There’s only taking whatever means necessary to bring about the desired political end.
That’s just a tip of the outrage.
Democrats have called for open borders, so that lawbreakers can more easily cross, bringing with them their sexual trafficking ways, their drug mules and fentanyl from China, their socialist mindsets from countries that know nothing of American Exceptionalism — and more to truth, care nothing for American Exceptionalism, except what they can grab from the system by way of entitlements and government, i.e., taxpayer-funded benefits.
Then Democrats turn around and demand lawful citizens provide for these unlawful entrants, calling out those who would resist as racist; ignoring when horrendous crimes are committed by illegals; turning blind eyes even to programs run by top-ranking Democrats that put guns in the hands of these illegals. Operation Fast and Furious, anyone? It took years for border patrol agent’s Brian Terry killer to be ruled in court a murderer. How come Democrats don’t want to talk about their own Barack Obama-era roles in allowing criminals to purchase weapons that then ended up tied to crimes and murder?
It’s much easier to rail against guns, that’s why.
It’s much easier to wail against the National Rifle Association and other Second Amendment supporting organizations, and point fingers for dead children at the Republicans who, as New Jersey Democrat Gov. Phil Murphy just accused, take “blood money” by way of political donations from these groups.
Addressing the roots of gun violence takes courage, politically speaking, that is, because addressing the roots of gun violence means talking about moral standards and behavioral expectations. Addressing the roots of gun violence means pointing out the sins of a nation and the sins of a nation of people that have led to the acceptance of fatherless homes — to the acceptance of divorce and broken families — to the acceptance of a radical LGBTQ agenda that degrades the family unit even further. Talking about the roots of gun violence means looking at the drugs today’s youth takes, both prescribed and not prescribed, and tracing the sources of those drugs — and finding, at the end, government’s own guilty hands.
“US Schools and the Astounding Rise in ADHD,” Psychology Today wrote in 2016 in a piece about the increasing frequency of parents demanding medication for their children after “being told by a teacher that their child had ADHD and needed medication to be successful in school.”
Children, as young as kindergartners, especially boys, have been labeled with alarming frequency as hyperactive, overactive, disorderly active, and so forth — and then put on medicines that can carry some serious side effects. Like what? Like everything from suicidal thoughts to psychosis.
Consider this.
From Esquire, in 2014: “If you have a son, you have a one-in-seven chance that he has been diagnosed with ADHD … 6.4 million children between the ages of four and seventeen have been diagnosed with ADHD. By high school, nearly 20% of all boys will have been diagnosed with ADHD — a 37% increase since 2003.”
Then consider this.
“The number of children diagnosed with ADHD rose 24 percent from 2001 to 2011,” NPR wrote in 2013. “Over the same time, the number of prescriptions for Adderall and other ADHD drugs has soared exponentially. … Amphetamines likes Adderall and Vyvanse can be addictive, which is why they’re classified as Schedule II controlled substances, along with Oxycontin and morphine. … Other popular ADHD drugs like Concerta and Ritalin are methylphenidate … [and] can cause a wide range of side effects including insomnia, aggression, mood and behavior changes, twitching and shaking.”
Then consider this.
“Studies of Adderall and similar stimulants, such as … Ritalin, estimate that psychosis occurs in about 0.10 percent of users,” Healthline reported. “However, new research … showed that the rates of psychosis in adolescents in the amphetamine group was as high as 0.21 percent. … If you have a history of mental illness, you may be more likely to develop psychosis from using Adderall.”
Then consider this.
“About 15 percent of 12th graders say they misuse prescription drugs,” NPR wrote, “and about 6 percent say they’ve misused Ritalin or Adderall.
In college kids, the percentage of misusers is even higher.
“Quite a few of [these] pills] don’t end up being used to treat ADHD,” NPR wrote. “They’re used as ‘smart drugs’ or ‘study drugs’ by students who find the pills give them a mental edge.”
Prescribed. Not prescribed. Potatoes, potahtoes.
As NBC News wrote in 2019: “Certain medications used to treat ADHD in teens and young adults may be more likely to cause symptoms such as paranoia, hallucinations, delusions and hearing voices.”
How much of all this contributes to school shootings?
It’s a discussion that seems worthy to have. So, too, the sad and sorry statistics about broken homes, fatherless homes, rising addiction among youth, inner-city gang violence and gang-related gun crimes; so, too, all the Democratic-sponsored messages that decry law, downplay order and defund police.
It’s much easier for Democrats to point at guns, inanimate as they are, as the cause of bloodshed and ignore the roots of the violence in the hearts and minds of those who pull the triggers.
It’s much easier for Democrats to call for the removal of guns from the hands of legal, law-abiding citizens than take on the real causes of gun-related crimes — a path that often leads right into their own laps.
Disarming the law-abiding would only lead to more gun-related violence, not less, because criminals would then know their victims were powerless.
Democrats must know this.
Democrats leading the party must know this.
But so long as they can disarm legal carriers and water down or abolish the Second Amendment, they simply don’t care.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter and podcast by clicking HERE. Her latest book, “Lockdown: The Socialist Plan To Take Away Your Freedom,” is available by clicking HERE or clicking HERE or CLICKING HERE.
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