Some say the long spiral downward starts in 1972. I don't know. I wouldn't sugar coat anything, obviously, we had big problems in the '60s, '50s, and obviously before with World Wars and a great depression.
Years ago, I read Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, a book about a real life massacre of a farm family in Kansas back in the 1950s. In those days such a crime was horrific primarily because you almost never heard of such a thing. Today we hear of massacres somewhere in the world almost every day. Where I live, we have almost daily home invasions. Usually, they are related to drugs and sometimes the occupants are killed. People, especially our young, are desensitized to the violence. They think nothing of it.
I relate it all to the days when prayer was taken out of public schools. Once God disappeared from the schools, He disappeared from everywhere else -- even in the home. Growing up, every kid on the block went to church and Sunday School on Sunday. Most Sundays after church and Sunday School were spent with family -- the traditional Sunday dinner, followed by sports on tv for the men, the women did the dishes and cleaned up, then sat around talking about "women stuff," playtime for the kids and so on.
Apparently, those traditions are gone from many households When Trayvon Martin was shot, he was out on the street on a Sunday evening . At the time, I asked why he wasn't at home with his family. But I guess I'm old fashioned. Heck, a lot of these kids don't have a family to stay home with.
All the legislation and government intervention in the world won't cure this constant violence. The whole culture has to change. And if we can't bring prayer back to schools or people don't believe in God, we need to instill in our young a sense of right and wrong. They have to learn that violence does not solve problems and is never the right thing to do.
