"Horrific mass shootings aren’t the only sign that the world is pining under the effects of sin and darkness."

Folks,

To everything there is a time, but I question whether now is the moment for this discussion.

The blood has not been scrubbed from the classroom floors. The bodies have not been laid to rest.

My views on firearms are about as pronounced as anybody’s, but I’m holding myself in check.

We are enduring one of the worst nightmares that has ever been committed within our nation. This crime strikes at us all, and it holds up a mirror to the depravity that shelters itself in our hearts. Like the dissecting tables of Buchenwald or the furnaces of Auschwitz, this horror reveals the sin of which humanity, given over by God, has become capable.

There will be a time for anger and there will be a time for argument.

But now is the hour to mourn, is not not?

There were several school shootings this last year- California, Texas, Ohio, Washington… the death toll was much lower in each incident, so they only received a couple of days of coverage.

As soon as some starlet wears a new dress or a celebrity couple gets a divorce, the CT story will also pass into media oblivion. The news media has the attention span of a gnat.

Children die from illness, neglect, and violence every day. It seems that it takes a massacre for folks to notice that our world is sin-sick and lost without a Savior. I don’t understand why we think these deaths in particular are somehow more tragic, more grievous, than a single child shot in a drug-related drive-by, or one who lost their battle with RETTs, or those killed by drunk drivers every day. Those parents have lost just as much, but who will notice their sorrow and minister to them?

It is time to pray, and time to grieve, but let’s not forget to grieve with and comfort those to whom we can minister in our own communities.

About mourning… I understand the need for sensitivity, but many of our leaders are already talking gun control. Neither the dead nor the grieving families are honored by having only the gun-blamers’ ideas heard.

[Huw]

Or better still what if the mother had not been able to buy and keep arms?

What if the son had not been taught how to shoot?

What if the son did not have access under law to weapons?

Why was this woman in need of an assault weapon? She bought it out of fear. The fear that she and hers would be in danger. She taught her son to shoot at and kill people and I have no doubt that this became an obsession.

On the first two questions: How would that become enforceable? Either all moms have to have the ability to tell what their sons are going to do with shooting skills or you have to legally ban the teaching of shooting skills. Can’t see either of those working out… especially since the latter would require a constitutional amendment.

About the assault weapon… These are really not as special as the media like to encourage everyone to believe.

a) The shooter also carried two semi auto hand guns

b) I doubt he would have been much less “successful” using those or an ordinary .22 semi auto rifle… or any number of other non-“assault” options.

What really creates these situations (other than the evil-maniac himself) is the knowledge that people at schools are completely defenseless. Any mad shooter can count on doing a whole lot of damage without being stopped because federal law bans firearms on school property: which means that federal law only allows homicidal crazies to have guns on school property.

But even for the gunphobics there is a relatively simple solution: allow trained armed security guards on school property or staff them them with local police. Expensive. But $ is worth less than liberty and certainly less than lives.

Still, God only knows how many of these shootings would not occur if the potential killers knew there might be somebody armed on school property, even if a civilian. (The profiles of these killers are pretty consistent: they are not people who like a fair fight and they intentionally seek out places where they are confident nobody will shoot back)

Susan,

While your point about tragedy occurring every day is legitimate, it seems that there is something different about this episode.

This was not just a massacre. It was an intentional targeting of the innocent (I am using the term in a social sense, not a theological one), not singly, but en masse. These little children had wronged no one, but they were deliberately destroyed.

We are heartsick over a single child who falls. When a child is taken, whether by disease or mishap or predation, we know that something is wrong. This event, however, is beyond the usual expression of depravity. It is not just sinful, but horribly unnatural.

In most other school shootings, the perpetrators have been students , usually expressing some element of rage against classmates who were perceived as persecutors. Bad as the reasons were, they at least made some measure of perverse sense. Furthermore, the victims have rarely been children—not in the proper sense of the term. They and the shooters have been in adolescence, which our civilization tends to reckon as the last stage of irresponsible childhood (could that be part of our problem?), but which other cultures reckon as the first stage of adulthood.

Here, you have an adult, not connected with the school, invading the precincts with the express purpose of doing as much harm to as many of the utterly defenseless as possible. The closest thing to this was the episode at the Amish school in 2006. These two events may well stand together as the nadir of our culture.

The targeting of noncombatant populations is acknowledged to be immoral by all civilized peoples. What must we say about one who aims to slay a population of les enfants innocents? The mind balks at the hideous deed.

Aaron,

I completely agree with you that the gun-blamers are honoring neither the dead nor the grieving. Their pronouncements are entirely out of place.

So are ours.

There are times and places for brawls, but the graveside is not one of them. The dead are far more honored if we simply refuse to engage until the appropriate time.

People will remember our decorum (or lack thereof) and demeanor much longer than they will remember our arguments. Nobody is going to pass a law before the week is out. The deliberations can wait.

Dr. Bauder,

When would you suggest is the appropriate time?

My pastor’s text yesterday was John 1:5:

The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.

Embers of hope as we mourn these dark days.

Larry,

The Messiah was not speaking proverbially when he made these statements.He was delivering facts that were important at the time and were clear as well as urgent.

[Kevin T. Bauder]

Susan,

While your point about tragedy occurring every day is legitimate, it seems that there is something different about this episode.

This was not just a massacre. It was an intentional targeting of the innocent (I am using the term in a social sense, not a theological one), not singly, but en masse. These little children had wronged no one, but they were deliberately destroyed.

We are heartsick over a single child who falls. When a child is taken, whether by disease or mishap or predation, we know that something is wrong. This event, however, is beyond the usual expression of depravity. It is not just sinful, but horribly unnatural.

Here, you have an adult, not connected with the school, invading the precincts with the express purpose of doing as much harm to as many of the utterly defenseless as possible. The closest thing to this was the episode at the Amish school in 2006. These two events may well stand together as the nadir of our culture.

The targeting of noncombatant populations is acknowledged to be immoral by all civilized peoples. What must we say about one who aims to slay a population of les enfants innocents? The mind balks at the hideous deed.

The targeting of children is hideous- I agree. But why do we think it is more tragic for one lone gunman to kill 20 kids than 20 mothers abandoning, abusing, and murdering their own children? I think the murder of children by their own mother is as ‘horrible and unnatural’ as strangers killing strangers.

In this case, even though the perpetrator was 20 yo, he also seemed rather infantile, and the possibility of mental illness is being explored. He himself was a ‘child’ of sorts. This was not, from what I’ve read so far, the act of a fully functioning independent adult.

Huw, I shall not dwell on this, but that saying of Jesus is a proverb, a proverbial form. When used, a proverb can deliver facts that were important at the time and were clear as well as urgent. Those things are not mutually exclusive. Calling it a proverb is not a statement about its truth, but about its form.

But the fact remains that it is a proverb (and perhaps one drawn from an extra-biblical source). To draw the application from there to now is a bit trickier than simply quoting it as a basis for public policy.

[Huw]

Or better still what if the mother had not been able to buy and keep arms?

What if the son had not been taught how to shoot?

What if the son did not have access under law to weapons?

Seriously? You really think that would have prevented it? What if? what if? ….Then, he could take his high school chemistry kit to make a bomb to blow up a classroom with 20+ kids in it.

http://www.henrymakow.com/whos-really-to-blame-for-school-shooting.html

I envision this kind of debate regarding gun rights shortly after a tragedy as a gun rights guy sort of like a reasonable man in the midst of a lynch mob. The scene is that someone’s been killed, and the crowd is being whipped into a frenzy by a minority of agitators. Emotions are running high, and ropes are being thrown over a tree limb to string up a fellow that isn’t guilty, and may have been prevented from helping the victim. There is a time for some reasonable people to say, “now hold on a minute. Let’s think this through.” The lynch mob is the anti-gun lobby. Emotions are on their side, but reason may not be. Those who say this isn’t time to talk about it miss the context. Gun rights groups aren’t going around bringing this up. They are responding to emotional reactions that could have real and lasting effects as of the first month of this year.

Now is exactly the time to be defending gun rights, in a wise and winsome way. Gun rights advocates shouldn’t do it in a “if thou hadst been here, my brother would not have died” tone. It shouldn’t be cold and full of mere data. But I do think a defense of the basic right to meet force with force is a good thing. A timely thing. One good way to defend the fatherless and the widow when I can’t be every place at once, is to at least give them the means to defend themselves.

I do think allowing the arming (if not teachers always, then staff), AND training, staff that wish to meet force with force.

[Huw]

Larry,

The Messiah was not speaking proverbially when he made these statements.He was delivering facts that were important at the time and were clear as well as urgent.

[Huw]

you will die by the sword.

Can we just agree that guns have replaced swords?

If a nation allows it’s people to live by the sword/gun then that nation is under wrath and its consequences.

In Wales we have strict gun control and I can’t remember the last time I heard of someone being shot, yes it’s that rare.

Do our gun control laws have an effect upon the lack of gun crime?

So what do you do with the very literal statement where He told his disciples to get a sword, and sell their cloak if they had none.