In the wake of any awful tragedy, it’s human nature to look for answers and, at times, for people to blame. We want someone to be responsible and we want to punish them. That’s why conspiracy theories can be so popular and powerful. We want there to be more.

Democrats are no different, obviously. They, too, want to blame. In the wake of something like Nashville, they tend to blame guns.

Yet as Donald Trump, Jr. and Cliff Sims note over at The Federalist, much of that effort ignores a different aspect of human nature.

The elementary school shooting in Nashville, Tennessee, is a tragedy no community should ever have to endure. As fathers, our hearts break for those innocent children and their parents, as well as the brave and selfless teachers. The heroic police officers, who sprang into action with total disregard for their own safety, saved countless lives. The shooter, whose name should not be made famous by the media, reminds us there is evil in this world, that every moment with our families is precious, and that something in our country must change.

Unfortunately, the radical left has once again rushed to demand new laws and policy changes that would have done nothing to stop this tragedy — or any tragedy.

…

As with so many similar tragedies, the cowardly Covenant School shooter chose a soft target, shooting through the school’s locked doors and counting on it taking time for armed law enforcement to respond. In fact, police said the shooter had mentioned another potential target, “but because of threat assessment by the suspect, too much security, they decided not to” attack it.

There is no quick, easy solution, and any politician claiming to offer one is a liar because there is no legislation to reverse the erosion of American culture that has brought us to this point.

A new Wall Street Journal survey shows a stunning abandonment of the values that once defined the United States and made our country great. Between 1998 and 2023, the percentage of Americans identifying religion as “very important” to them dropped from 62 percent to 39 percent, and patriotism plummeted from 70 percent to 38 percent. Value on community involvement has dropped by half since just a few years ago. Depression and anxiety have skyrocketed. And the widespread push to impose radical transgender ideology on our society has caused a spike in Americans — including our innocent children — questioning the very fabric of their humanity and whether there is beauty in being made in the image of God.

Until we reverse these trends and fix America’s corroding values and culture, we will remain a broken society that produces broken people.

I want to argue with this.

I really and truly do.

The unfortunate thing is that while I might find myself disagreeing on specifics, the truth is that we are broken. What else would be the reason that our non-gun homicide rate is more than six times greater than Japan’s total homicide rate? It’s not just Japan, either. We’ve seen our non-gun homicide rate outstrips many other developed nations’ total murder rate.

The idea of focusing exclusively on the guns fundamentally ignores the fact that something else is terribly and deeply wrong here in the United States.

Now, understand that this kind of thing does happen in other countries. We’ve seen mass shootings all over the world over the last year or two, from Thailand to the one earlier this year in Hamburg, the truth is that it’s not uniquely American. However, intellectual honesty should note that these kinds of mass shootings are more common here than elsewhere.

Trying to blame guns for this, though, is too simplistic and it further ignores all the other areas we seem to be more violent as a nation. Making guns go away–something many want but isn’t remotely possible–doesn’t solve the problem with human nature, at least here in the US.

We really need to look beyond that and try to solve the underlying issues first and foremost.