Paul Little: Law change won't stop violence

Young men scuffle outside McDonalds, Britomart. Photo / Michael Craig

A man kills his children and himself. A schoolboy dies after being hit in a fight after rugby practice. Late at night outside a city bar, a reveller is consigned to oblivion by a blow from a stranger. A boy stabs a prostitute to prove he's tough enough to be in a gang.

Violence is men's problem to own. Women kill, too, but to nowhere near the same extent.

Every time something like the appalling murder-suicide case of Edward Livingstone occurs there are calls to change "the law".

But it's not the law that's the problem; it's a certain mindset in men. If you prevent them having guns, they will use knives. If you could ban knives, they would use clubs. Or their cars. Or their fists.

If we want to do something about male violence, we need to change our thinking about what it means to be a man.

For many males, masculinity is about dominance and enforcing it, with violence if nothing else works.

And for many men, limited in their emotional range and communication skills, violence is a first rather than last resort.

It's male culture that needs to be changed, not the laws and sentences that have been put in place to attempt to contain male violence.

Heavier sentences won't make a difference. What's needed is a culture where boys are taught the real meaning of manhood - that if it's difficult, you get on with it.

That you don't own the people in your life, that it's your job to protect others not control them, that force isn't power, intimidation isn't strength, and that killing isn't teaching a lesson.