Fathers Needed

                Families, communities and nations are strengthened when good fathers are in the home with their children.  Fathers and mothers bring different skills, mindsets, and personalities to their home, and children need to have the influence of both parents.  Children deserve to be reared by both a mother and a father in the home.

\               The recent mass shooting in Oregon brought gun control to the nation’s attention once again.  Gun control advocates from Barack Obama down are all clamoring for more laws to control guns even though they know gun control is not the answer to the violence.  They all have an agenda to take guns away from American citizens, and they never “let a crisis go to waste.”  They refuse to look at the facts that are staring all of us in the face.   All we have to do is look at Chicago and Detroit:  these two cities and others like them have the strongest laws against guns in the nation and yet have the most murders.  Gun control does not work.  It simply takes the guns out of the hands of citizens who can then no longer defend themselves from thugs.

                Thankfully, we are blessed with good people who see through the smoke and mirrors and see the real cause of violence in our nation.

Matt Walsh, a “blogger, writer, speaker, and professional truth sayer,” wrote an article published at The Blaze entitled “Our Kids Don’t Need Gun Control Laws,They Need Fathers.” He claims the federal government will not confiscate guns because it is “an expensive, convoluted, extravagant, impractical, unconstitutional, disastrous, ridiculous, impossible solution.  But it’s easy.  Not easy to do, easy to talk about.  Easy in the abstract.  Easy to use as a scapegoat.  It’s easier for us as a society to place the blame on the tool a murderer uses instead of focusing on why he chose to be a murderer in the first place.  And if we do discuss why, it’s easiest to simply and generically conclude that he’s `crazy’ or `nuts.’  A crazy nut with a gun, that’s all.  More pills!  Fewer guns!  That’s the ticket!  We find great comfort in this – pawning the solution off to politicians and drug companies – because it saves us from assuming any sort of responsibility ourselves.”

                Mr. Walsh brought the responsibility right to the home.  “These mass killings happen with relative frequency, and they are usually not perpetrated by men who grew up in strong families with both biological parents present.  Divorce and fatherlessness are the two elements that tie most of these cases together.  No other factor – gun laws, politics, racism, etc. – comes close….

                “Indeed, it’s not just the high publicity tragedies that seem to always involve broken homes.  The statistics across the board are staggering and conclusive:  90 percent of homeless kids are from fatherless homes; 63 percent of kids who commit suicide are from fatherless homes; 71 percent of high school dropouts are from fatherless homes.  Children from fatherless homes are at a much greater risk of developing drug addictions and are four times as likely to be poor.  Out of all the youths in prison, a full 85 percent are from fatherless homes.  In the inner city where violence and drug abuse are rampant, four out of every five children are growing up without their biological fathers.

                “You name the societal ill or problematic group – from violent boys to promiscuous girls to everything in between – and right there in the middle you’ll find broken homes, unstable families and absent fathers.”

                Mr. Walsh said it very plainly, but in case you did not get the message from him, here is another messenger.  Bobby Jindal, Governor of Louisiana and presidential candidate, made a “very politically incorrect” statement about the father of the Oregon shooter after talking about the “millions of kids” growing up without fathers in the home:  “You have the father of the Oregon shooter lecturing us about gun control.  Here’s a guy that, by his own admission, doesn’t know how many guns his son had; doesn’t know where he got the guns; wasn’t in his son’s life.  He was living with his mom – really couldn’t tell us a whole lot about his son.  Who is he to be lecturing us?”  Governor Jindal also stated that the left does not “want to talk about the moral decay” that is rampant in our nation.

                Vicki Gardner, the lone survivor of an on-air attack in Virginia a month ago, recently wrote that she has “had plenty of time to contemplate this complicated social phenomenon and how it can be resolved.”  She does not believe more gun control legislation would reduce crime.  “The answers may lie not in far off legislative halls but much closer to home.  Perhaps it is parents monitoring more closely what their children consume in the terms of media.  And, as adults, maybe it’s refusal to give into our baser desires of enjoying for entertainment what we abhor in our culture.”

                BINGO!  She hit the nail squarely on the head.  The solution to the violence in our nation is for mothers and fathers to accept responsibility for the children they conceive and teach their children correct principles.  They could start with loving each other enough to marry and then stay married for the benefit of the children.  Children need mothers and fathers in their home.  This simple change would strengthen our homes, communities, and nations.