No-fault divorce has wreaked havoc on marriage in this country. And I’ve seen the statistics about the spread of STDs in our older population that you mention. It’s very sad, but the prevalence of this sort of behavior doesn’t make it inevitable for everyone. See my response to Sander’s comment after yours. Like you said you have to make the best of your life. If marriage is something you really want and are willing to make the commitment, wait for it. Keep looking for women you can befriend who share your beliefs. Pray for discernment. No situation is risk-free. But I hope you won’t give up.

My in-laws have been married for longer than 50 years. One of my aunts had been married for 53 years when she died last year. Three of my aunts and uncles will be celebrating 50th wedding anniversaries this year. The longevity of their relationships gives my husband and I courage; we’re only going on 18 years. I don’t want to get all religious on you, but I know for my marriage and the marriages of my relatives, none of it would be possible without God’s help.

There is a depth that comes to a relationship when you stay together even if, especially if, at times you disagree, dislike one another, or face difficult and unexpected life challenges. I hate that many in your generation feel that will not be possible for them. However, I know many young women and men who still want to be married and stay married. They’re out there, and they want to be the exceptions to the new norm of serial dating and co-habitation. If it’s something you sincerely want, don’t give up.

I find simply dating or co-habitating is fine, I don’t see any benefit that being married brings. I hope I change my mind one day, but it is unlikely. Most likely I will continue to date (over a series of years) serially one woman after another. It really breaks my heart to do this, I feel it is unfair to the women I date, but I accept that this is the world we live in and this is how dating and relationships work.

I feel that over 50 years ago, a man needed to prove his love to a woman, prove himself to her parents, dedicate his hard work and career to prove himself worthy to married/have sex with/be with a woman. NOW THAT WAS TRUE INCENTIVE FOR A MAN TO WORK HARD AND PROPOSE TO A WOMAN.

However now in 2013, all the work simply isn’t required, a man simply doesn’t need to commit/prove himself to a woman, again this breaks my heart a little but I acccept that for our generation in the 21th century, this is how dating/relationships are. Thank you for reading.

I used to get depressed and upset about it, but I’ve learned over time to just accept the ways things are and to make the best of my life. Marriage and dating have become a psychological, emotional, legal, financial and disease ridden minefield. This trend has been progressing for decades. One wrong move with the wrong person and BOOM – game over. I read an article the other day that focused on the ever growing grey divorce phenomenon. Scary!!! Don’t quote me, but I think I read that there’s a disturbing growth trend in the spread of STDs amongst those married and single who are over 40! Yikes!!! How many people that make it ‘til death’ these days are happy with one another at that point anyway? The roles between men and women have fundamentally changed and marriage will die a slow death as a result. In the meantime, millions of more lives will be severely impacted by divorce. Socially and economically, we’re heading for a “Logan’s Run” future for sure.

Very good article, and I am glad to find women that can empathize with men. Men that have lived between two and three decades in America have realized that women and society at large despise them. Our masculinity is constantly attacked, belittled, and disrespected, and instead we are encouraged to be more feminine and focus our attraction on independent career women. We are oppressors for desiring a feminine woman that is sweet, nurturing, supportive, loves and values us for who we are, and respects us. Should this description really be such an unattainable woman?

Suzanne Venker touched a nerve with me when she said, “men are tired”. It is true. On paper my life is fantastic: I make a very good living, have a great apartment in a wold-class city, i’m lucky enough to have a very tight-knit group of successful friends, I take exotic vacations, have multiple hobbies and interests, i’m athletic, and never have trouble getting a date. Despite all this, i’m incredibly unhappy, as I just can’t relate to the women i meet, and though i’m superficially attracted to them (sexually), I could not be any less attracted to who they are as people and their potential as life partners. Its exhausting to date so many women who consider men “unnecessary”, get angry about the “patriarchy”, and generally just consider men the enemy.

My options make me depressed: settle down with a feminist that will probably “liberate” herself 15-years down the line (ripping my life apart in the process), refuse to get married and try to build a fulfilling life without women, or move to a country where men are respected and valued. My hope in American women is fading fast. I would give anything for a sweet girl to prove me wrong.

I find it interesting that you make the assumption I own a gun and call the Nancy Lanzas of the world “my problem to solve,” not yours. SDK, the problem of violence in America is one for all of us to work together to solve. It’s not an “us” and “them” issue. We’re all responsible because we’ve all allowed and created an the atmosphere in our country that fails to protect human life and hold it sacred.

You’re right–responsible gun owners keep their guns locked away when not in use. I think I mentioned that in my post, too. We can fault Nancy Lanza for being irresponsible, but I don’t think she deserves all the blame. Her son stole the guns from her. Those weren’t his guns; they were hers. The larger, more disturbing points here, I think, are 1) he believed stealing from his mom (or anyone!) was okay and 2) the thought to shoot school children (or anyone!) entered his mind in the first place. That’s what makes me angry and sad. And that has nothing to do with rights. It has everything to do with our depraved human nature, our disrespect for human life, and our culture’s willingness to not only accept violence against humans but to celebrate it.

I don’t think legislating reasonable “gun safety” is necessarily a bad idea. I think there is room for common ground here; but we must be careful not to be excessive and punish people who haven’t broken the law or infringe on the rights afforded by our Constitution. I don’t get the impression from most gun control advocates that they are very concerned with that part of the equation. Maybe you’re different. Share with me your idea of reasonable “gun safety” and how to promote it while taking care not to trample the Second Amendment.

By the way, I don’t own a gun and neither does my husband. Like you, we don’t have firearms in our home. I don’t want to own a gun ever, but I can’t rule it out at this point. I wish I could, but like you I have to consider “the world we currently live in” and how best to protect my family.

We have some laws about guns. But they do nothing to protect my child from hers.

Responsible gun owners lock up weapons they are not actively using. Responsible gun owners do not need to purchase high-capacity magazines and store them at home. But those are simply ideas, guidelines, best practices. They are not laws. Gun safety — basic gun safety — is not a law in most states. It’s just a good idea.

The Supreme Court has ruled that we may have reasonable restrictions on gun ownership. They have ruled for traditional gun rights, such as self-defense within the home and hunting / shooting — not for a right to build an arsenal that can resist the U.S. government. That is what the Second Amendment currently means, whether you like it or not.

I want my child to be safe from irresponsible gun-owners, like Nancy Lanza. I am don’t want to lecture people about their parenting or what kinds of video games their children watch. I don’t want to lecture people who are divorced or who don’t seem to spend enough time at home. Nancy Lanza didn’t work. She spent all of her time and all of her energy on Adam. But she also taught him to shoot. She also bought him guns. She also kept an arsenal at home.

I can’t control the parenting. The parenting is not, ultimately, my business. Things that pose a direct threat to my children are my business.

The choice to own a gun and keep it at home creates a danger for me. It is your responsibility to mitigate that danger and contain it, not to bully me about your rights. If you can’t take that responsibility seriously — the responsibility to protect your neighbors from your gun falling into the wrong hands, including wrong hands in your family — don’t expect my respect or support.

Owning a gun is a big responsibility. Owning a big gun is an even bigger responsibility. Keeping that big gun at home where anyone in your family might use it is the biggest responsibility of all. And yet all I hear about is rights, rights, rights. As though your right to fight Hitler trumps my child’s right to enter second grade.

I don’t want to hear vague thoughts about our culture of violence. I want to hear about what you, as gun owners, are doing to make sure there are no more Nancy Lanzas. She was not a criminal — she was one of you. She was law-abiding. She loved shooting, she loved her guns, and she shared that love with her child. If she was part of a culture of irresponsibility and violence — it is your culture, not mine. She is your problem to solve, not mine.

Of course, I want a more peaceful world with more peaceful hearts. But as long as people’s hearts are full of anger, I do not want the anger of Adam Lanza to kill my children at 50 rounds per minute. America is far more religious than Europe and yet our violence rate is much higher. And you can hardly suggest that gun publications and gun shows promote a more peaceful world with their images of danger, violence, and death.

Christianity opposes violence. Jesus turned the other cheek. Yet gun owners prepare to meet violence with violence every single day. Obviously, Nancy Lanza did not think her faith would protect her. She did not rely on God, but rather on her arsenal. So I don’t think more gun-owning Christians will protect my child.

The current system requires that I trust people like Nancy Lanza with protecting my child’s life because her right to own any gun trumps my right to ensure that she behave responsibly. I am simply tired of trusting her. Instead, I want to force her to behave responsibly. I can’t rely on her good judgment to keep my child safe, because her good judgment obviously failed in this case.

So yes, work on that more peaceful world. I will be working in the world we currently live in to make sure that gun safety becomes a law instead of just a nice idea.

I would agree machine guns have no place in hunting. To be perfectly honest, it is illegal in every state to hunt with a machine gun. Keep in mind, machine guns are fully automatic. Not semi auto like the AR15.

People own machine guns, titled as Class III weapons by the ATF, for private collections and because they are down right fun! Anyone who has ever shot a full auto weapon knows how much fun it can be. Keep in mind, those who own them have been through an extensive background check (more stringent than the regular gun check) and about a 6 MONTH waiting period. The ATF has a location on every one of these guns and knows when they are bought and sold as they must approve each transfer. Possessing one without this process is an automatic 10 year prison sentence.

If you have any questions on types of guns, their uses or whatever, just ask me. I am not an expert but I have been around guns my entire life and shooting for over 20 years so I know a little bit anyway haha

“Assault weapons” are not what we are talking about here. They are a VERY specific class of weapons which are HIGHLY regulated and controlled by the ATF. Not a single mass shooting in recent history has been carried out with a true assault weapon, simple as that.
We have been told by the mainstream media an AR-15 is an assault weapon. It is not. It is simply a semi-automatic rifle. Is it scary looking? Perhaps. Is it any more evil than any other gun out there? Certainly not. As I noted in another comment, mine have existed in a very peaceful state for many years. They have many purposes in the hands of legal owners from self defense to sport shooting to hunting.

I wonder why it is that while only 2-3% of murders by firearm annually are carried out with a rifle of ANY kind, people have managed to demonize them like they have? Handguns are a significantly greater danger to society (at least, following the logic of more murders = more evil) yet I have heard no one call for a ban on hand guns? Kind of odd to me.

What would be a balanced approach to the 2nd Amendment? I think most gun owners would agree that background checks are vital to keeping the guns in the right hands. I would also think they would agree that tougher background checks are needed and that proper reporting by states to identify those with mental illnesses is also needed. But why take or ban weapons? Can you show me, during the last assault weapons ban in 1994, that we had a drastic reduction in crime? Keep in mind, the violent crime rate has been steadily falling for some years. Even the ATF themselves say it did nothing and we would see no benefit from it this time. Why waste the tax dollars? How about spend it as you already so rightly mentioned on effective programs to identify and treat illness and strengthen background checks. Close the private party sales loophole even. Guns owners could support those things and they would actually HELP our country.

As for the stats, if you click on the orange words you will open windows to where I got these numbers. I tried to get to original sources; in some cases it was more difficult to find where and how the estimates were reached. Personally, I think the estimates for the number of children who die from abuse and maltreatment is low–and so do many “experts” in child welfare. For the sake of brevity in the post, I focused on violence against children (though violence against adults is plentiful) and depended upon readers clicking on the links to read more. I think we agree violence in America creates a scary, dismal, and disheartening environment especially for our children.

As for Jesus, the verse you allude to Romans 1:30 (and really all of Romans 1) came to mind when writing this. I agree with you that the only way to curb our appetite for violence is to change our very human natures. And the only way for that to happen is through salvation in Christ. Yesterday I wrote a little more about this on everyday epistle, including sharing a verse from a different chapter of Romans (!). Here’s the link to that post: http://bit.ly/XnziyJ

And while we’re in Romans, I cannot resist sharing Paul’s courageous declaration from Romans 1:16-17: For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile. For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed—a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.”

Keep on keeping on.

Knee jerk reaction on my part, when someone throws numbers at me I calculate – or I would try to. Please note: this is independent of subject material. Your statistics are state of the art, which sounds nice, but effectively says incomplete at best and misleading at worst. A better way to say what I am feeling is that any single stat you mention might be a good place to start a real investigation. An easy red flag to spot is when someone, anyone, assigns a number to something they cannot count. It would be far more honest to disclose the method by which they estimate.

Another knee jerk reaction (which I believe MOST of us have in common) is that when something is clearly broken, and people are hurting, we want to fix something. Let me make an example – I make my choice based not upon the severity in particular. It is not the most flagrant offender, just what I think easiest to express, maybe.

People focus on violence in video games, movies, media in general. They focus on establishing a connection between violence viewed and acts of violence. Not that this is a total waste of effort, but I believe it would be a better effort to try to understand why violence has an appeal at all. Texas Chainsaw Massacre, I have never seen it. I will never see it. I use it because the name is so descriptive. What is the fascination with such?

I have an inkling of something that runs deeper. The old Rural vs Urban war. ( yeah, “war” is over the top. but my brain fogged over when I tried to find a better one. )

Liberty is inversely proportional to Population Density. Or what might convey more clearly to others, the more closely people live to each other, the more effort it must be to simply get along. Or, good fences make good neighbors.

Jesus is the answer at the heart of things, at the heart of me. I need to be better, to be more. Then I can better assist others. When a person believes they can fix themselves, pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, the person degenerates. Talking to myself, I can just say “entropy” and the concept is complete. The Godless have no objective standard, no authority higher than themselves (or the tyrant you did not choose) and no leverage on becoming the best they can be. “What you are meant to be” implies intent from outside yourself – a creator.

St, Paul, first part of his letter to the Romans, gives his belief of what happens to people who fail to acknowledge God. You can read it for yourself, or not. I think he nailed it.

So, gun control. They invent ways of doing evil. The ideas being forwarded are feckless to reduce gun violence, but potent to restrict the law abiding – and those of the depraved mind crowd are UNABLE to see it. Pray for them .

Peace.

I love your breakdown of what it would cost to put armed guards in all schools. I can think of a MUCH more effective use of that money – funding evidence-based programs that have been shown to decrease violence by improving youth’s social skills and coping skills, reducing bullying, and treating youth with anger issues. EFFECTIVE programs rather than using programs that have no evidence of working. There are lists of these programs (Nurse Family Partnership, PATHS, Multisystemic Therapy, Aggression Replacement Training, Life Skills Training….) $13 billion would go a long way. But these programs don’t provide the (false) sense of safety that armed guards provide.

I heard a fascinating piece of information at a conference I attended today: Schools with police officers on campus have higher rates of arrest. This might sound desirable from a public safety perspective but it’s not, because this often means low-risk youth are entering the juvenile justice system and end up in programs resulting in worse outcomes. Want to make a youth more dangerous? Send him or her to juvenile detention rather than treating him or her in the community! If we are going to put police in schools, we need to be very careful about how that is done – how they are trained, their function and objective, and what other programs are in place to address youth behavior problems in school.

I don’t believe there is any need for assault weapons in our communities. Yes, most gun owners are responsible. But data shows that gun availability is associated with higher rates of homicide and there is no denying that assault rifles are a much more lethal means of destruction than a hand gun or a knife or a baseball bat – especially when we start taking about mass attacks. To me, there is NO benefit that outweighs the risks associated with having assault weapons in our community. I think we can -and must – find a balanced approach to protecting our 2nd Amendment Rights.

Wow – I don’t usually write this much in response to blog posts, especially on politically-related issues…you sure got me thinking!

P.S. Just to clarify, my former colleague was not considered mentally ill (though it would almost make it easier to believe if he were). Heartbreaking.

NONE of the mass shootings have been committed with either an “assault weapon” or a machine gun, contrary to what the media would lead you to believe.

The AR-15 is not an assault weapon, the AR stands for Armalite Rifle, and is sold to consumers as semi-auto only, no different than a Ruger 10/22 with the exception of caliber. If you arent familiar with a Ruger 10/22 is a wonderful rifle which is popular with families and target shooters but essentially functions as an AR15, that is to say, a semi auto rifle.

A true assault weapon would be select fire (full auto or semi auto) and have a few other technical features. These weapons would be controlled by the National Firearms Act (NFA) of 1934 and require registration and strict control by the ATF.
Same goes for machine guns, which are larger and more powerful and, typically, fully automatic only.
These guns are VERY expensive and hard to get approved to own. Those are not the tools of the mass shooter. They are in the hands of collectors and well vetted owners.

The term “assault weapon” or “assault rifle” has been used by the media to describe the AR variant to scare people, simple as that. They serve an agenda and this perpetuates it.

Let’s take a look at why one might own an AR-15. Besides them being a LOT of fun to shoot, they provide an excellent tool for personal defense.
Here is a scenario to help illustrate. Let’s say my wife is at home alone (she works from home so this is common) and several armed men break in our house (also common around here as we live in a region where drug addicts like to break in looking for prescription drugs and money). They all have hand guns. My wife, all 5′ 105lbs of her, has an AR15 with 30 rounds of ammo. Why? Disparity of force. The rifle is a “force multiplier” in this equation. It is FAR more powerful than any common handgun cartridge and it’s capacity is 2:1 that of the average handgun. The AR is light and VERY easy to shoot accurately under stress. All of those things makes it superior in that situation. I don’t want my wife to have equal force to some thugs. I want her to have SUPERIOR force and to win that fight.
Now, she trains with it regularly and could honestly make most men look bad with it. I don’t think anyone should own a gun without regular practice and training.

Hope that clears that up a bit! I only bring it up because it is a stigma we gun owners and rights advocates are trying to combat due to the misinformation in the media.

First off, you’re welcome and I enjoy meaningful discussion on issues of great importance. If only our political representatives could manage themselves in such a manner.

To answer your question, REAL changes come from several avenues.
One, we need to reconsider who we treat those with mental illness. In nearly every mass shooting of recent history, they shooter was on some sort of very strong anti-depressant or anti-psychotic drug. Is there a connection between the drugs and the shootings? I don’t know but its hard to ignore. I am not a Dr. but there could be a better way.

Two, we need to strengthen penalties for crime. If you use a weapon in a violent crime, it should be a 25 year MINIMUM. Not 3-5, out in 2 with good behavior. It should be some of the strongest penalties we can enforce. While mass shooters aren’t repeat offenders typically, firearm crimes are often committed by people who have been convicted of violent offenses, usually while armed, before. Make the penalty so severe, it deters violent crime to begin with. No questions asked, no light sentencing…Throw the book at them so to speak.

Do I support stricter background checks? To a degree. I think one issue we have is the bureaucracy involved with the system should be removed and the system be more accurate. For instance, the Virginia Tech shooter bought a gun legally even after being declared mentally defective because the FBI database was never updated by his home state. That’s a serious issue.
I think the background checks we have work when the information is up to date. The effectiveness of waiting periods is inconclusive at best. Would I be willing to wait 3 days to buy a gun? Sure, I don’t buy them with any urgency. I DO support the idea of requiring background checks for all purchases, even those conducted friend to friend. Since many firearms change hands to people you don’t know, I think it protects the seller and keeps legal firearms from being purchased by felons or other non-permitted.

Do I have all the answers? Certainly not. I do however think we can find solutions without infringing on law abiding peoples’ rights. Like I said before, lawmakers like “feel good” legislation which appears strong but solves very little when it comes to crime.