On the news radio the other day I listened to the talking head expounding on the Houston shooting. He said this was the 41st school shooting this year. (He defined "school shooting" as any discharge of a firearm at a school.) He complained about the whole problem and declared, "No one is doing anything!" Really? No one? Anything?
Dan Patrick, Texas's Lieutenant Governor, made himself the laughingstock of the Internet by suggesting that the solution to school shootings was to decrease the number of entrances and exits. "There aren't enough people to put a guard at every entrance and exit," he said. "Maybe we need to look at limiting the entrance and exits into our schools so that we can have law enforcement looking at the people coming in through one or two entrances."
That's stupid, right? Everyone knows that the real answer is gun control. Silly Lt Governor. Except that almost no one seems to be noticing that the loud and angry gun-control advocates are advocating the very same thing that they are mocking the Lt Governor for -- control. He's saying control access; they're saying control access. He's saying control access to schools; they're saying control access to guns. And although it was clear that the Florida shooter in February and this most recent shooter didn't have legal gun access, it's still all about access. And the lt. governor is a buffoon but the gun control crowd is brilliant. Nonsense!
In my work in the area of technology, I've had to find out "What went wrong??" a lot of times. The way you typically do that is to ask, "What changed?" That is, "Technology X has been working up until now ... and now it isn't." So the question has to be "What changed?" Did a part give out? (Time has changed.) Did a user do something different? (Use has changed.) Did we get a different part? (Content has changed.) If something has been operating one way and now it's different, what changed?
There have been students and there have been guns and there have been loose gun laws or loose gun law enforcement for a long, long time. We haven't seen this many school shootings ... ever. What changed? It is not guns. It is not gun laws. If anything they've been made tighter. It is not (sorry, Lt. Gov.) doors. What has changed is something in people. More and more people, often young people, are much more willing to use deadly force than ever before. That's not because guns exist or gun laws are lax. It's because they're much more willing to kill than ever before.
Until we allow a hard look at what's gone wrong with people, we will not find a meaningful solution to this problem. I'm fairly confident, however, that 1) we won't allow that discussion, 2) we won't like the outcome (Gen 8:21; Psa 51:5; Psa 58:3; Jer 17:9; Rom 3:23; Rom 8:7; etc.), and 3) we won't tolerate the fix. Because it won't be "those dirty, rotten guns" or "too many doors"; it will be us.
3 comments:
If people can't even agree on how many school shootings there have been this year, how can they be expected to come to a conclusion on why they are increasing and how fix it? On the day of this last one, the reporter said 18, but that included shots around schools. Now there's 42. A quick Google search came up with at least 3 different numbers, one as low as 10 (according to the NY Times). If that one simple number can't be agreed upon, where is the hope of finding any fix, let alone one most can agree with?
That's it in a nutshell, and while it is another variation on the theme "guns don't kill, people kill", it will indeed be rejected by those who were complicit in the change that has led to these results. No one wants to be tied to these events as a co-conspirator, enabler or anything like that. But the fact is that there are changes, as you say, that were made by somebody in some way to which these events are a reaction or consequence. But hey, let's not look at the culture, or how parents/adults haven't adapted or refused to adapt or are themselves a consequence of the culture merely passing it down, cementing it and provoking even more corruption in the culture by not recognizing and reacting morally to it. It's those accursed inanimate objects forcing these behaviors. Jeez!
An armed citizenry and despots don’t mix well. That’s one thing that hasn’t changed, and never will. It’s also the root problem with guns. If they really cared about life, they’d be working harder to end abortion than creating an unarmed citizenry.
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