Today the people of our nation ask themselves why did the shooting in Connecticut happen? Why were innocent children murdered? What can be done to stop it from happening again?
Almost immediately the easy access to firearms in America was trotted out as the villain that needed to be stopped. Television and Radio personalities as well as politicians and lobbyists on both sides of the fence have amped up the rhetoric concerning gun control.
What I find disappointing is the silence on the issue of the American infatuation with violence. Movies today demand a level of violence unheard of in previous generations – Violence that is amazingly graphically enhanced through computer technology. “First Person Shooter” games which Lt Col Grossman (former West Point professor of Psychology) refers to as murder simulators (as in flight and driving simulators – see his works “On Killing”, “On Combat”, and “Stop Teaching Our Kids to Kill: A Call to Action Against TV, Movie and Video Game Violence” as well as his “Killology” website) glorify murder as the preferred means to end any difficulty. We live in a society that would have protected the life of the murderer but allowed anyone facing and unwanted or unplanned pregnancy to kill an unborn child regardless of reason. If we want to know why children are more violent than they have ever been before we need to look at what we are training them to be through the games we buy them (What video games and movies are in your stockings and under your tree to be unwrapped the day we commemorate the birth of the Prince of Peace). If we want to know why deranged people think it acceptable to kill innocent children in a school we must ask why we allow sane people to kill innocent children in what should be the very safest of locations – the womb.
It is easy to blame guns for the tragedy that occurred yesterday (as well as the others within recent memory). The trouble with that reasoning is that guns have been part of the American fabric since the founding of our nation. Furthermore they have been responsibly used by the vast majority throughout the entirety of that time. Mass shooting however, are a recent addition and reflect the damage done to the soul of America through “Murder Entertainment” and our own intentional invalidation of the value of innocent life.
I am afraid that those who are currently calling (and will continue to call) for enhanced gun control will continue to do so not because they think it will work. Instead, the supposed panacea of new and stricter laws is easier to advocate for than to look within in order to see where we have gone wrong as a nation.
Another mass murder has occurred – this is not the time for kneejerk reactions that will have little to no effect. It is a sobering call for serious introspection and a changing of our society.
Can we as a nation do the following?
He who walks righteously and speaks uprightly, who despises the gain of oppressions, who shakes his hands, lest they hold a bribe, who stops his ears from hearing of bloodshed and shuts his eyes from looking on evil, he will dwell on the heights; his place of defense will be the fortresses of rocks; his bread will be given him; his water will be sure. Isaiah 33:15–16.
Turn away from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it. Psalm 34:14
Why do we allow the killing of children that God holds to be so precious?
For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well… Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them. Psalm 139:13–16.