Since 1966: Mass shootings more common since [late] 1960s
Since Aug. 1, 1966, when Charles Whitman climbed a 27-story tower on the University of Texas campus and started picking people off, at least 100 Americans have gone on shooting sprees...seven of the eight deadliest mass public shootings have occurred in the past 25 years [1982 through 2007].Since 1957 through 1968:...The increase in mass killings during the 1960s was accompanied by a doubling in the overall murder rate after the relatively peaceful 1940s and '50s.
[T]he first concerted effort to overturn state laws prohibiting abortion began in 1957...
...when a group of prominent lawyers, law professors and judges, as members of the American Law Institute (ALI) first proposed a "model penal code" on abortion, calling for abortion to be legal in cases where there was "substantial risk that continuance of the pregnancy would gravely impair the physical or mental health of the woman, or that the child resulting from pregnancy would be born with grave physical or mental defect, or in cases of pregnancy resulting from rape or incest." Before states began adopting the ALI model in the late 1960s, statutes generally prohibited abortion or limited it to situations of "severe physical disease or impairment," and states interpreted these laws rather strictly.What was predicted 34 years ago has come to pass and one need look no further than the non-coincidental dates of these two above phenomena. Legalizing abortion has changed our collective human psyche--legitimizing destruction of human life inside our wombs has very much paved the way for legitimizing destruction of human life outside the womb. Why respect anyone's life who's already born when we disrespect them before they're born?Mississippi added an exception for rape in 1966, but the first state to specifically follow the ALI model was Colorado in April of 1967. Several other states followed suit, with North Carolina and California passing ALI style statutes in 1967 and Georgia and Maryland doing so in 1968. By 1973, thirteen states had passed laws based on or similar to the ALI model, and in many other states and Washington, D.C., court decisions had rendered previous statutes invalid or ineffective. [my emphasis]
We have no one but ourselves to blame. Emily and myself, included.
No one, I don't care how liberal, how libertarian, how anything--no one can say the timings above are just "happenstance."
Cross-posted on After Abortion
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