Sex Education is the Solution to Gun Violence

I don’t know about you, but I’m sick of these mass shootings.

• I’m so sick of them that bile is rising in my throat.
• I’m so sick of them that I find myself glad to have moved my kids out of their birth country.
• I’m so sick of them that I can’t help but post discussions on my Facebook wall and spend hours debating the possible solutions.

First, I want to say that my friends are particularly good at these discussions. They’re a wildly diverse bunch, but are, largely, capable of civilized discourse; even where differences run deep. I appreciate this greatly. It gives me hope for the world.

I have, however, noticed a pattern over the past months:

• A Mass shooting happens (you know, twice a week)
• I post something requesting a discussion of solutions (or suggesting gun control is part of that)
• Immediately conservatives rally around their gun “rights”
• We talk about that for a while, my international friends weigh in.

Then, just as we begin to move past sound bites to real intellectual discourse, just about the time I think we’re making progress here and someone is on the cusp of having a legit idea as to curbing the problem…

An ultra-conservative friend pops up with:

• “But abortion happens 3,000 times a day in the USA”
• Someone replies, “That’s off topic, hush.”
• UCF tenaciously argues:

“No it’s not, murder is murder. The only difference is that abortion is legal but mass shootings are not.”

I breathe deeply on my side of the screen. I watch the debate unfold. And I think.

No one is debating that the USA has mass shootings on a scale that is off the charts unheard of in the first world. That’s a fact.

My conservative friends keep pointing out that this isn’t a “gun” problem it’s a “heart” problem. This is the basis of their argument against any form, no matter how minute, of gun control.

Amongst my American friend set I’m affectionately referred to as, “Everyone’s favourite Communist.”

The assumption is that I am anti-gun. In spite of the fact that we own one, and that I repeatedly assert that I am NOT anti-gun, but that it’s not an all or nothing proposition. There is a sliding scale of sensible gray that falls somewhere between wild west cowboy and, you know, Canada.

I do try to think about things from different angles. I do work towards understanding. I look, actively, for holes in my own thought process. And this week, thanks to UCF’s red herring, I think I may have hit upon a correlation that could be the solution to the whole shooting match, if you’ll pardon the pun.

Gun Control & Abortion

It has been pointed out, repeatedly, that I can’t compare the USA to Canada, or the UK, or Norway, or anywhere else that has serious gun controls in place, because America is not “like” any of those places and “we” will “never give up our guns.” Okay. Fair enough. True story on the clinging to the Smith and Wesson with cold dead hands. I lived in ‘Merica for almost half of my life. I get it.

So let’s take Switzerland as an example then, shall we? Loads of guns in that country. Healthy gun ownership rates. Open carry. Liberal gun rights policies. Gun death rate: .5 to every 100,000 people (2012). In the USA: 5 to every 100,000 people. TEN TIMES higher than Switzerland. Wowsers.

Okay, are you still with me? Now check THIS out:

In Switzerland, the abortion rate is 6.8 per 100,000 persons. In the USA, it’s 16 to every 100,000 people. Just over twice as high.

This got me thinking about the link between abortion and gun violence. Maybe my conservative friends are right. Maybe these are the same issue.

Maybe it’s actually that the answer to our gun violence problem is a lack of decent sex education in schools.

Maybe the fact that both abortion rates and gun violence rates are exponentially higher in the USA than they are in Switzerland, which also has a liberal gun ownership policy, comes back to the bottom line of decent safety training and education on the basic facts of life, be they conception (and how to prevent it) or firearms and the appropriate use thereof.

The same Americans that reject the idea of any kind of gun control policy reject the idea of medically sound, broad minded sex education as well. It is statistically measurable that where abstinence only programs are the norm, unwanted teen pregnancies (and thus abortions) are higher. But we all believe that’s for other people’s kids. My kid wouldn’t commit either atrocity. Of course he wouldn’t.

One could say that where inadequate education, and a “moral deficiency,” exist, an intentional (or unintentional) misfire of one’s “gun” produces an unintended consequence that results in a “murder” by my friend’s definition.

Similarly, where inadequate education and a “moral deficiency” are present a person walks into a school and makes the choice to fire his weapon into a room, murdering a number of children.

I find it interesting that the conservative contingent in the USA pushes HARD to protect the lives of the unborn but holds on to their gun rights with equal fervor. To me, this is incongruent. In doing so they use the same logic that they condemn in the pro-choice camp: “My rights matter more than your life.” Only they want to legislate away the rights of the women while holding tenaciously to their gun rights even in the face of rising weekly death tolls.

Quoting Jubal Early:

“Does that seem right to you?”

Perhaps the solution to both problems, and the way for conservatives to get what they want on both ends: a drastic reduction in abortions, and an end to school shootings is one in the same. Perhaps all we really need is liberal sex education for all.

Make love, not war, man.

Evidence points to medically correct, socially liberal sex education (read that access to information about contraception and disease prevention) reducing teen pregnancy and abortion rates at a rate three times greater than abstinence education alone.

Oh, but wait, we can’t do that, because sex education leads to people having sex, and that’s immoral, and also, it might lead to universal healthcare, and suggesting that as part of the solution is as communist as taking away the cowboys’ guns.

I guess in the end Jeb Bush’s commentary after the Oregon shootings last week summed it up for Americans, “Stuff happens.” School shootings, and abortions. We just can’t help it. What’s a country to do?

Photo Credit: jadawin42