Actually, what I found more interesting is the very first sentence where he says: "...what we want to have as part of the Gun Information Bill is an
information campaign..."
Never having heard of this "gun information bill" I decided to look it up. One Google Search later is
this Attorney General Press Release from 1994.
This is the part that had me pay more attention:
"If we are to fight crime effectively in the 1990s, we must focus more on kids and guns," said Reno. "Unless we act now, a generation of
young Americans will grow up in a world where gunfire is as normal as blue jeans and school books."
So what, right? More save the Children stuff. Except this is from 1994.
Pearl High School in 1997. The Heath High School shootings happened in 1997. The Kip Kinkel shooting happened in 1998. Jonesboro in 1998.
Columbine in 1999. There are others, but these are the ones I can remember.
So obviously this 1994 program fell on its face. Except that it seems that Holder got his wish. The media is focusing on guns and the violence
associated with guns. This is a distinct departure from the original plan.
In this Department of Justice publication from 1996,
Reducing Youth Gun Violence: An Overview of
Programs and Intiatives says quite clearly that,
According to one researcher, gun ownership by adults and the introduction of their children into recreational gun culture appears to reduce
problems associated with teenage violence (Blackman, 1994). Research by Huizinga (1994) and Lizotte et al. (1994) also shows that for legal gun
owners, socialization appears to take place in the family.
The US government, in its own publication, cites a study stating that guns in the family reduce teenage violence. So what's causing it? Well, in
1996 the strategy was preventive action through education programs. They were primarily concerned with inner-city and drug crimes, but they do state
that the origins of gun-crime can be categorized into the following steps: access to guns, escalation of violence, and drugs.
What about drugs? Again, to cite the publication:
Goldstein (in Blumstein, 1994) indicates three ways drugs and crime are connected: (1) pharmacological/psychological consequences, in which
drugs are linked directly to violent activity, (2) economic/compulsive crimes, or crimes committed by drug users to support their habit, and (3)
systemic crimes, or crimes committed regularly as part of doing business in the drug industry.
The inner-city youth might be carrying because of reasons orbiting 3 or 2. Mass shooters, it seems, would fall into category 1.
The problem isn't the gun culture. The problem is the drug culture. Crack or Prozac, both alter the brain chemistry. Holder, it seems, isn't
interested in combating the problem. So why is his solution to crack down on guns?
