Pivoting off the bombings in Boston and the shootings in Newtown, Conn., the Family Research Council celebrated the failure of gun control in Congress in a statement to supporters, blaming "abortion, family breakdown, sexual liberalism, or religious hostility" for mass murders, not guns.

From the release:

In the aftermath of horrible tragedies like Newtown, the government desperately wants to do something -- even if that something is the wrong thing. There seems to be this notion, at least among liberals, that more laws will protect us -- but as we all witnessed in Boston, that isn't necessarily the case. The government can't make us safer until it recognizes that the problem isn't the instruments of violence -- but the environment of it. Stronger background checks wouldn't have prevented the deaths of three people at the finish line on Monday any more than it would have stopped Floyd Corkins from walking into our lobby and shooting Leo Johnson.

If Congress wants to stop these tragedies, then it has to address the government's own hostility to the institution of the family and organizations that can address the real problem: the human heart. As I've said before, America doesn't need gun control, it needs self-control. And a Congress that actively discourages it -- through abortion, family breakdown, sexual liberalism, or religious hostility -- is only compounding the problem.