There is no one thing or one person to blame for America’s mass shootings, but there are big factors and smaller factors that work together to produce a perfect storm. The “big” factor is the breakdown of strong, intact, healthy families, via divorce or never-formed marriages, as well as absentee or lax parenting. While gun control proposals like background checks or red flag laws may do some good, gun control won’t cure the underlying disease.

Family dissolution and dysfunction almost always results in children’s needs being thrust aside in favor of more pressing adult matters. This, in turn, can and does result in drug addiction, anxiety, suicide, depression, violence, promiscuity, despair and, yes, even hate.