Gary DeMar | June 13, 2013
A California elementary school is offering a toy gun buyback program. Liberal geniuses claim that “playing with toy guns, saying ‘I’m going to shoot you,’ desensitizes children.” So as they get older, it’s easier for them to use a real gun.”
So now we know why liberals want to take more money from us in the form of taxes. Money “desensitizes” us to the plight of the poor. So through market intervention and higher taxes, the government makes more poor people.
I played with toy guns as a child, and when I didn’t have a toy gun, I made one out of wood. I’ve never shot anyone. When a toy gun isn’t available, young boys will find a stick or use their own fingers to gun-pretend. Murder is a heart thing, not a gun thing. (Col. 2:21–23; Mark 7:14–15). People are killed in many different ways and for many reasons. A woman in Georgia murdered two husbands with anti-freeze.
Teaching children responsibility and practicing it ourselves (gun safety) is the best remedy against gun violence. It doesn’t hurt to teach a moral worldview that puts God at the center of decision making and choices and recognizing that murder is striking at the image of God (Gen. 9:6). Such things are not permitted to be taught today.
Societies that introduce children to wine at an early age have fewer problems with alcohol later in life. If you teach children to eat well at an early age, most of them will grow up continuing those healthy eating habits. This isn’t always the case, but now we’re back to a sinful nature.
If children are taught at an early age how to handle a weapon and are shown the dangerous effects of a weapon, generally they will grow up respecting a gun’s power.
None of this is to say that there will never be violence, alcoholism, or obesity, but there will certainly be less of it.
Liberal social theory has a long history of making everything worse. When government gets involved in market and social changes, somebody always loses. Voluntary economic transactions result in a win-win experience between buyer and seller. Socialists hate this truth because it leaves them out of the transaction process and reduces their political power.
Liberals believe that if the economy is equalized through intervention and planning, everybody will be equal. It’s true. Everybody gets equally poor. A microcosm of the policy can be seen in Cuba. The only people who are prosperous are the government leaders who have a license to steal. Take a look at a satellite photo of North and South Korea at night.
Interventionists also believe that if they pass out condoms and create subsidy programs for young girls, children born out-of-wedlock will be a thing of the past. Ask me how these interventionist programs are working across the country? Let’s look at Richmond, VA:
First Things First, an organization dedicated to keeping dads involved in kids’ lives, reports that 60 percent of all families in the city of Richmond are single-parent households. Within the African-American demographic, that number spikes up to 86 percent, a number that surpasses the national average.
Bleeding heart liberals contend that with government involvement, people will become responsible with their lives and the lives of others. There’s no price to pay for stupidity if there’s always someone there to bail out idiots.
We saw the disastrous economic results with the home-loan bailout programs Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. With Uncle Sam in the wings to buy up default loans, lenders were quick to lend money to anybody who could sign their name to a mortgage note. No job or income stream was necessary.
When banks and other lending institutions were responsible for bad loans, they were much more cautious. It was government intervention that forced banks to loan to people who had no economic business getting a loan.
There is a predictable economic principle: The more you pay for something, the more of it you’ll get. If you pay people to be irresponsible; you will get more irresponsibility.
The assumption is that if kids don’t play with toy guns they won’t play with real guns. This is nonsense.
“Having a group of children playing cops and robbers or cowboys and Indians is a normal part of growing up,” Yih-Chau Chang, spokesman for the gun rights group Responsible Citizens of California, told the Daily Review. “While the intentions are obviously good on the part of the school administration, this doesn’t really educate children about guns or gun safety.”
There was a time when gun violence was relegated to criminal gangs, once again with government intervention being a catalyst (e.g., prohibition).
Here’s what I propose. Collect all the toy guns you can, take the cash, and buy a real gun and teach your children how to use it and treat it with respect. With power comes responsibility. The sooner a child learns this truth, the sooner he’ll make his way well in the world.