School Shootings

Five weeks ago a deranged student took an AR-15 rifle into his former high school in Parkland, Florida and killed 17, wounding over 30 more, and walked out with other students fleeing the building while four police officers stood around outside doing nothing. In response students across the country, encouraged by liberal teachers, politicians and media, staged a walkout to condemn the NRA, criticize the president and demand that AR-15 "assault" rifles be banned. We must listen to the children declared many as Chuck Schumer and other Democrats, protected by armed policemen, joined some of the protests calling for more gun control.

President Trump was vilified for suggesting that qualified teachers should be armed in the schools. "Our safety is more important than the Second Amendment," many students shouted. "We should feel safe in our schools and not have to fear for our lives," others said. What viable solutions did these amazing "wunderkinds" in their simple wisdom offer? Nothing but more gun control.

Yesterday at a high school in Maryland a deranged 17 year old student proved the fallacy of the left's entire argument. He walked into a classroom with a handgun and shot two fellow students. Reacting to the gunshots a school human resource officer, armed with a handgun, confronted the student and shot him. The only one that died was the shooter.

The fallacy of leftist demands to overturn the Second Amendment and ban assault weapons like the AR-15 is found first in its non understanding of the weapons they consider to be assault rifles. They often refer to the AR-15 as an automatic weapon. It is not. It is a semi-automatic, meaning, one bullet per one trigger pull. There are many semi-automatic rifles on the market, but the AR-15 is the one singled out only because it looks like an M-16 military rifle.

The second fallacy is found in the emotional naiveté of all gun control proponents. They focus on the AR-15, but the reality is the AR-15 has rarely been used in mass killings. AR-15s had been banned by Clinton in 1994 and were not for sale in America for ten years until W. Bush rescinded the ban. In the first school shooting at Columbine High School in Littleton Colorado in 1999 the perpetrators used handguns and shotguns. In 2012, after the ban was lifted, the Sandy Hook shooter used a Bushmaster XM-15 that he stole from his mother after murdering her first. In 2016, out of over 11,000 gun-related murders in the country, less than 300 involved an AR-15. Emotional appeals to ban the AR-15, overturn the Second Amendment, and blame the NRA may make unthinking people feel good, but they provide no solutions to the problem. For one thing, not one mass shooter has ever been associated with or linked to the NRA in any aspect. In fact, it was an NRA member with an AR-15 that put a stop to the church shooting in Sutherland Texas last year.

The answer to the problem is much deeper and goes to the heart of the culture. Our Founders gave us a country based on biblical values and self-government. John Adams made it clear that this type of culture would only work for Christian people who feared God and revered the Bible. America has drifted a long way from those moral precepts.

From a country that once believed "out of the many we became one," we now celebrate diversity of belief, which has led to division. In our schools we teach children they have evolved and are nothing more than a higher form of animal life. There is no morality except that which is right for you. The Ten Commandments are banned and Christianity is mocked. Bullying those who are different is common and for all the talk of free love there is no love instilled in our children. In our homes parents have reneged on disciplining their children and teaching them values. What we have created is a valueless society that trends toward lawlessness because it is godless.

The answers we come up with are nothing more than platitudes that blame straw man scapegoats and deal only with symptoms rather than root causes. The problem with listening to the wisdom of the children in these student walkouts is that there is no wisdom in them. Sure they have a right to be concerned. Yes they have a right to voice their opinions. But opinions based on a leftist ideology that has taken us down from a Christian moral high ground to the depths of humanism and a philosophy that worships the individual above the Creator doesn't begin to address the reason for the problem or offer rational solutions.

Thomas Jefferson gave us this warning: "God who gave us life gave us liberty. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of a Gift of God?"

The only real answer to the godless nature of our culture is a return to the founding principles that made our country the envy of the world. These are the "general Principles of Christianity," according to John Adams. They are the principles of the Ten Commandments which are etched in stone at the United States Supreme Court. "The gospel of Jesus Christ prescribes the wisest rules for just conduct in every situation of life," declared Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Self-government is impossible without a Christian foundation.

The answer to the problem of our culture is to teach our children (and our childish self-centered adults) that the first two great commandments that need to be followed are to "love the Lord their God with all their hearts and souls and minds," and to "love their neighbors as themselves" (Matthew 22:37-39). The answer to all of our nation's problems begins in a relationship with Jesus Christ. Until that happens, all protests, all pontificating, all laws and bans passed in Congress are meaningless and will accomplish nothing.