Zack Hill by John Deering and John Newcombe for August 28, 2023

Yes. THAT has changed

But what made the most difference was the expiration and non-renewal of the assault weapon ban in 2004.

It’s the parents not paying attention to what their kids do. My son played all those games and grew up absolutely non-violent…

There’s only one thing that all mass shootings have in common.

I don’t think it’s the games.

Daily news, tv shows,so my guess would be that

Didn’t grow up in my neighborhoods then. I find todays parents, guardians and children considerably less violent than what I experienced growing up.

Kids who play violent video games are statistically LESS likely to be violent in real life. Nobody has conclusively explained why. (Maybe the games are an outlet? Maybe they teach consequences?). Regardless, the games are not the cause

No, they had violence in movies back then. However, there was no obscene graphics of the murder and mayhem AND it wasn’t available 24/7 AND they didn’t make graphic video games of them.Big differences……

The speed of news spreading.

Well, part of the answer may lie in the fact that when I was a kid (1940’s – 1950’s), the world population went from 2 billion people to 3 billion people.

Today, the world population is over 8 billion.

That is a completely different atmosphere to live in… 8 billion people as compared to 2.5 billion people, when it comes to cities, etc.

Throw in instant communication and access to all of the world’s knowledge in seconds … I mean, I can take a picture of my lunch in Boston, and a person in Japan can see that picture almost instantly… certainly in a matter of seconds.

If you do read old newspaper articles, you will find there has always been “random violence”. The primary difference was that individuals were not packing the firepower of a whole squad of soldiers and their actions were not “glorified” by endless repetition in national media.

Looking at frequently offered solutions “from the Good Old Days,” I wonder whether Billy the Kid was homeschooled or had mandatory school prayer.

Huh, when was that? The 60s when police rioted in Chicago and Blacks were lynched in the South? The 50s? Maybe the 70s when crime started trending up as better records were kept? Perhaps you mean in the 40s when things like the Zoot suit riots were happening? I think the reason “There was never this kind of random violence when you were young” was because you were young and unaware of what was going on. Now you are older, and while you see no reason to know any history, you can read the papers, which rarely tell you that crime is down, (even this year 2023 it is down from last year). You see the crime now and are unaware of how bad it was then. But that is a choice you have made.

I recall a lot of horrific violent behavior from the 60’s an up