Written by Walter Hecht   

Yesterday on her show, Rachel Maddow listed the mass shootings that have occurred in the year beginning with end of the Iraq war on December 15, 2011 and ending with the Newtown shooting on December 14, 2012. It was painfully obvious to me that what all the shootings had in common was that the shooter was male. Adam Lanza used his mother's weapons, but Adam was a male. Mass shootings outside the US occur much less frequently, but still the shooters are male. That tells me that we are raising our male children differently than we raise our female children. We might even consider the male fascination with guns an illness to be treated as a disease.

The right to bear arms is not a God-given right; it is a right written into the Constitution by men for the benefit of men. Women were not consulted since they did not have the right to vote when the Constitution was written. Treating the male portion of the population to reduce their fascination with firearms will not be easy, but consider some of the alternatives. If men cannot be trained to take better care of their weapons, then we might be forced to consider transferring all weapons from men to women. Women do not use guns in mass shootings. That would mean that men could not use any firearms in civilian situations. It might even be necessary to make law enforcement an all-female profession. Even combat in the military might eventually become an all-female profession. Let dad stay at home and mind the children.