What does abortion have to do with mass shootings? Not much.
PEGGY NOONAN, a Wall Street Journal columnist, believes that compromise is in the air.
In light of the recent Parkland shooting, where 17 teachers and students were murdered at a Florida high school, Mrs. Noonan proposes a swap. A ban on late-term abortions in exchange for a ban on assault rifles. “In both cases,” she writes, “the lives of children would be saved.”
Mrs. Noonan is peddling a curious argument. Her basic thesis is that modern-day America’s violent culture can be boiled down to a few factors. The collapse of the family, for one, creating hoards of fatherless children. The proliferation of pornography, enrapturing kids’ impressionable minds. Drugs. Violent video games. And, of course, America’s original sin: Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court case that legalized abortion nationwide.
Amidst America’s poisonous culture, Mrs. Noonan hints, no wonder children grow up so troubled these days. In her line of thinking, the 19-year-old killer who perpetrated the Parkland shooting is part of a “continuing cultural catastrophe” produced by a society “ill at ease with itself.”
Is she right? Is Mrs. Noonan’s suggested compromise one worth entertaining? And is America’s culture as toxic as she makes it out to be?
Begin with Mrs. Noonan’s proposed abortion-for-weapons trade. Pro-lifers argue that banning late-term abortions (commonly defined as occurring after 20 weeks of pregnancy) is the least we can do to stymie a barbaric practice that amounts to, in their eyes, murder.
We are not persuaded. Abortion is an ugly enterprise, and the stories of abortion procedures gone wrong are compelling. But anecdotes are not data. Indeed, the evidence increasingly shows that abortion restrictions do not work. Women barred from having an abortion often seek out riskier methods, endangering themselves. A better solution would be to increase access to contraceptives and improve sex education, which reliably lower abortion rates. On this count alone, Mrs. Noonan’s argument is a hard sell.
Her proposed assault weapons ban is similarly misguided. The U.S. banned assault weapons from 1994 to 2004, with little to show for it. A large body of research suggests the 1994 ban had only a limited effect. That’s because the fundamental reason America has more shootings than other nations is because it has more guns, more than 300 million of them.
Marginal changes to gun laws, such as implementing universal background checks or age restrictions, could marginally reduce the number of shootings. These are fixes worth doing. But the only way to solve America’s gun problem is by reducing the number of guns in circulation. That means taking guns away from people.
The Supreme Court, however, affirmed in 2008 that the Second Amendment implies an individual’s right to own firearms. Therefore, the only way to solve America’s gun problem is by repealing the Second Amendment, as the conservative columnist Bret Stephens has convincingly argued.
The unignorable reality is that repealing the Second Amendment is politically untenable. The brutal truth is that the pro-life movement is and will continue to be the center of political gravity. Blame whomever you want—chances are gun control and abortion will remain deadlocked for the rest of this administration.
So much for the abortion-for-weapons swap. But what of Mrs. Noonan’s other contention, that America’s violent ethos produces violence-prone children?
Several of her claims are plainly unsubstantiated. Despite some recent upticks, violent crime remains near an all-time low. Gory video games are linked to aggressive behavior, but not criminal activity. Porn has no effect on sexual violence.
More interesting is Mrs. Noonan’s argument about the family. It’s true that American families look different than in decades past. Family sizes are shrinking. Parents have kids later in life. Marriages are less stable and more births occur out of wedlock. Interracial couples are on the rise. The nuclear family is dissipating.
These trends are in part a response to deep shifts in the job market. Single-breadwinner households seem less viable than they once were, replaced by dual-income households. Diminishing returns to education have kicked in, such that more people must attend school for longer to secure employment.
Women now attend college at higher rates than men. At the same time, many burgeoning professions, like nursing, appeal more to women than men. For many couples, these trends mean that marriage and children inevitably get put on the backburner. How these changes in the family connect to a culture of violence is murky at best.
Every generation faces unique challenges. The coming generation will need to grapple with the awful reality of gun violence. It has already started to do so. The high schoolers who watched as their classmates and teachers were gunned down are speaking out. Blaming the culture is not only intellectually lazy; it is a disservice to the young women and men who are vying for change. The optimism of youth may well rejuvenate this pessimistic nation.
