In April of 2007, a mentally disturbed student showed up at the campus of his school, Virginia Tech, brandishing two semi-automatic pistols, and murdered 32 students, teachers and school employees and wounded 17 others. Then he took his own life.
It was the one of deadliest mass shooting incidents in American history.
The nation was in shock, as it is now following the December mass murder at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.
The press and public outcry was the same then as now. How can we stop horrors like this from occurring? We’ve got to stop criminals and nut cases from getting their hands on guns.
The tragedy spurred passage of the first major piece of federal gun control legislation since the assault weapon ban was passed in 1994.
The new law, signed by President George W. Bush in January of 2008, appropriated $1.3 billion for states to get the names of those deemed mentally ill into the FBI national data base used for gun-purchase screening. This supposedly would solve the problem of lax state compliance and make the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) more effective.
If only this had been the law of the land a year earlier, commentators opined, the Virginia Tech tragedy might not have happened.
Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, D-NY, a co-sponsor of the legislation, said it would “close the wide gaps in our nation’s firearm background-check system to ensure violent criminals and the mentally ill no longer slip through the cracks and gain access to dangerous weapons.”
But a more sober message came at the time from the now late professor, American Enterprise Institute scholar and presidential Medal of Freedom recipient James Q. Wilson.
He wrote then: “The tragedy at Virginia Tech may tell us something about how a young man could be driven to commit terrible actions, but it does not teach us very much about gun control.”
Even if there were tougher background checks, Wilson continued, “access to guns would be relatively easy … many would be stolen and others would be obtained through straw purchases by a willing confederate. It is virtually impossible to use new background-check or waiting-period laws to prevent dangerous people from getting guns. Those they cannot buy, they will steal or borrow.”
Now, five years after Bush signed the NICS Improvement Amendments Act of 2007 into law, we have “déjà vu all over again.”
Not only have we tragically witnessed another deranged young man entering a school and murdering innocent youth, but we now must witness again politicians offering the same non-solution to allegedly deal with the problem: wider background checks.
Sen. Charles Schumer, D-NY, who is pushing legislation for universal background checks, was one of the original sponsors of the law that Bush signed five years ago.
It is even worse now. Adam Lanza, the deranged young Sandy Hook murderer, used a rifle from his mother’s collection in their home. No background check could deal with something like this.
Schumer will not solve the problem, yet he will make things worse by making it harder for law-abiding citizens to exercise their Second Amendment rights to bear arms and protect themselves.
And exactly how might expanded checks impinge on both our privacy and our rights?
Those who have ever seen a psychologist may be at risk. Those who have any kind of infraction on their record may be at risk.
Some states require doctors to counsel women considering an abortion that the procedure can result in various emotional problems. Might women receiving abortions in these states have difficulty purchasing a gun?
Let’s stop playing games. The problem is people, not guns. Our society suffers from a deficiency of personal responsibility -- not from an excess of personal freedom.
Bill Stevens, whose daughter attended Sandy Hook Elementary school, scene of the mass shooting in December, is making its rounds today of his testimony against gun control at a Working Group Public Hearing at the Connecticut State Capitol on gun violence prevention.
Although his daughter was not harmed in the shooting, his daughter’s friend’s little sister was a victim.
In his testimony, he was very clear on his stance against going after legal gun owners and that no one will take his freedom away to protect his daughter.
Stevens told the panel that he is not there to cite statistics, lives saved by a gun or the economic impact. He was there to remind those people about the U.S. Constitution and the 2nd Amendment, the Constitution of the State of Connecticut in regards to self-defense.
Young Black men are killing each other every day and the problem is particularly acute in urban cities like Chicago from which President Barack Obama hails. Yet, I haven’t seen Obama or the mainstream media shed a tear over the fact more than 50% of America’s murder victims are black and nearly all (85%) of those blacks killed are young men.
Nor do we see media or presidential outrage or calls for more rigid gun control laws when young black kids are heinously murdered like we do when the victims are mostly white. Neither words nor God can explain the horrific mass slayings that occurred at Sandy Hook Elementary, Columbine, Virginia Tech University, Aurora and those to come in our future.
But why don’t we hear the same pain or calls for tougher gun laws from the mainstream press when Trayvon Martin was killed? Instead, the media immediately turned it into a racially motivated killing of a black boy by a white man yet showed no horror over the alarming rate of young black men who are both perpetrators and victims of homicides.
The homicide rate among blacks is beyond epidemic. From 1999--2002, among persons aged 10--19 years, the homicide rate for blacks was 10 times that of whites, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It gets worse; as of 2007, “black males age 15-34 were at the greatest risk of death by homicide.” Blacks seem to do a good job of consistently holding the highest homicide rates of any race in America. Where’s the societal outrage over the reality that 55% of all federal prisoners are black though blacks only account for 12%- 12% of the population, as Shelby Steele noted.
The double standard the mainstream media shows toward its coverage of black vs. white homicides is beyond dishonest. When black Kansas City Chiefs football player Javon Belcher shot his wife Kassandra Perkins and then killed himself with the same gun, I don’t remember the news media calling for tougher gun laws. Why? Is it okay for blacks to kill?
At the Sandy Hook prayer vigil, Obama declared the nation isn’t “doing enough” to combat tragedies like Adam Lanza’s killing of 20 children and seven adults. He added “We can’t tolerate this anymore. These tragedies must end.” Two things bothered me when I read the president’s remarks. First, America has never tolerated madmen or any man or woman killing innocent people. Never!
But secondly and equally as important, why haven’t we heard President Obama give a prayer vigil in cities like New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and Baton Rouge where blacks are butchering each other with guns? In 2010, black males age 15-29 accounted for 3% of New York City’s population but 33% of its murder victims. When 7-year-old Heaven Sutton was killed June 27, 2012 by gang gunfire in Chicago, Mayor Rahm Emanuel pledged to do something about the city’s high murder rate. I’ve never heard Obama describe these killings of blacks as “an endless series of deadly shootings across the country, almost daily reports of victims, many of them children . . .their only fault was being in the wrong place at the wrong time,” as he described the poor souls of Sandy Hook.
What the media and the president seem to be saying is when black kids die, it’s not a gun control thing but a national disgrace we’ve come to accept as normal but when mostly white people are killed is reprehensible. Both are reprehensible and ending the cycle of violence has nothing to do with more gun laws. Homicides committed by young black men and white men like Adam Lanza have everything to do with a lack of parenting, personal responsibility and/or society’s mishandling of mental illness.
More young black men are becoming murderers because more young black men are increasingly becoming casualties of fatherless homes. According to the Brookings Institute, 73% of all black babies in America are born to single mothers compared to 30% of white babies, 50% of Hispanics and 40% of all kids overall.
Brookings found “more than 36% of the unmarried fathers had a prison record, five times the share of married fathers who ever spent time in prison.” The study also found that boys born to unwed mothers experience more behavioral problems, such as engaging in crime, than girls.
When you don’t have a mom and dad caring for you, asking you if you did your homework or teaching you right from wrong, is it any wonder, young black men are becoming murderers? A lack of parenting also is to blame for Adam Lanza’s killing rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary School and others like Columbine and Virginia Tech.
News reports haven’t been able to confirm whether Adam Lanza’s mother and father ever sought treatment for his son’s mental illness. Nancy Lanza told babysitters never to leave Adam alone. But more importantly, Lanza’s mother was an irresponsible gun owner. Knowing her son was mentally disturbed, Nancy kept guns unsecured in her home, easily accessible to her sick child, which was utterly negligent.
We didn’t see these kinds of horrific shootings 40 years ago nor did we have the high rate of black men murdering each other. I think that’s because we had stronger families, lower divorce rates and virtually no outsourcing of parenting to video games and the Internet.
The rise in young male murderers isn’t about a need for more gun laws. Connecticut has some of the strictest gun laws in the nation, which didn’t stop Adam Lanza. Parents need to parent. Society needs to bring back shame in our culture and tell teenagers it’s not cool to have a baby. America also needs to do a better job of treating mental illness like a disease not a stigma. We can have a conversation about gun laws but Sandy Hook is about the skeletons in our culture we refuse to talk about.
It is heartbreaking to think about the horror that ensued in that small Connecticut town where 28 innocent people were gunned down, eighteen of whom were the most innocent of innocents – wide-eyed, angelic first graders - and one of whom was the shooter’s own mother.
Babies – little munchkins who came to school to learn to count, read and sit cross-legged on the floor during story hour – these were the victims of a terror too unspeakable to comprehend.
Nonetheless, while America takes in and tries to process the sights, sounds and anguish of a tragedy of this magnitude, it’s hard for those who are committed to the sanctity of life to ignore the hypocrisy currently afoot in the aftermath surrounding the ordeal.
Some may argue that it is highly inappropriate and insensitive, while 20 first-graders are being prepared for burial, to tie human suffering to the topic of abortion. But since liberals “never want to let a serious crisis to go to waste,” why not follow that lead by using this tragedy as a “teachable moment?”
For starters, it’s important to recognize that some do not understand that for most conservatives it’s the babies that drive our politics. A problem arises whenever little ones are hurt and liberals respond by condemning violence against children. Instantly, the prolife community is criticized for recognizing the absurd paradox and pointing out the left’s hypocrisy.
As pint-sized bodies are shuttled away from the Connecticut crime scene, it’s important to remember that our nation legalized the slaughter of innocents more than 40 years ago. Then, recently we put our approbation on continuing the carnage by reelecting the most radical advocate for abortion rights in our nation’s history. Five weeks later, in broad daylight, when slaughter and carnage come out of hiding we wonder why?
The brutality of senseless violence is hard to comprehend, especially when a high-powered rifle mows down precious little ones. But daily, Americans ignore the fact that weaponry like scalpels, saline, and suction exterminate far many more children than those who die in classrooms.
In essence, what happened in Newtown merely pulled back the curtain and revealed the spirit behind the everyday viciousness perpetrated against America’s children. The difference is that normally the bloody massacre is hidden from the public’s eye.
As for those on the left who now weep for the lost, nice try, but not convincing. Prochoice advocates shedding tears for the loss of the pure and the blameless just doesn’t fly. Neither does hearing partial birth abortion backers pontificate about preserving and protecting life. Doing so is comparable to the world’s most famous butcher, Dario Cecchini, lending his face to a PETA ad.
And while no one can, or should, judge the heart of a man, it is also quite perplexing to see infanticide supporter Barack Obama crying over the demise of small children when, if they were 6½ months in utero versus 6½ years old in a classroom, he’d be defending an individual’s right to terminate their lives.
Furthermore, after earning a 100% voting record score from NARAL, it’s also mindboggling at best to hear President Obama utter the following words about a select group of children: “The majority of those who died today were children — beautiful little kids between the ages of 5 and 10 years old. They had their entire lives ahead of them — birthdays, graduations, weddings, kids of their own.”
The only difference between the dead Obama wept for on national television and those that Planned Parenthood deprives daily of “birthdays, graduations, weddings [and] kids of their own” is that the latter are victims of the kind of violence the President approves of.
Nonetheless, in response to the tragedy Obama is now talking about “meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics.” What he’s really talking about is taking “meaningful action” to institute more stringent gun control laws that will restrict law-abiding gun owners
Someone should remind Planned Parenthood’s presidential cheerleader that on the same day children were sprayed with bullets in a Connecticut elementary school, 3,500 innocent babies died at the hands of abortionists – and not one gun was involved in those murders.
Moreover, the words “regardless of politics,” are being used to support the gun control argument. Yet, while claiming to omit politics from the ‘violence against children’ issue, Obama is predictably using politics to retain his prochoice political base by conveniently disregarding the fact that in America every 10 days, 35,000 viable infants are victims of feticide.
As America deals with the horror in Connecticut, it’s clear to some that what happened in Newtown, Connecticut is the heartbreaking symptom of a national disease where to some the life of a child is nothing more than a disposable throwaway.
The sad truth is that the small and defenseless die horrific deaths everyday in America – some huddled under a desk and others under cold florescent lights in an abortion clinic. Either way, the formula is the same: violence and the intent to kill which, regardless of the method, both deliver the same result – dead babies. In a first grade classroom there are 20; in a clinic across town there could be 220.
What’s stunning is that this truth has not deterred the disingenuous from campaigning for the right to kill the unborn on Monday and then publicly quoting Scripture, weeping, and lighting memorial candles for murdered children on Friday.
And so, as usual, liberals try to have it both ways. Yet, for those who recognize hypocrisy it will be painful to watch as a nation in mourning accepts the feigning of grief from those who, under different circumstances, would heartily support killing the children they now weep for.
Is there such a thing as objective morality? If there is, does that suggest a moral law giver? Peter Kreeft, distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Boston College, takes on these critical questions and offers some challenging answers.
In the aftermath of the Newtown massacre, as family members and friends of the slain and wounded suffer unspeakable agony, people around the world are asking, “Where was God?” But very few are asking, “Is God hurting too?”
According to Basilea Schlink (1904-2001), a German Christian leader who stood up to the Nazis, “Anyone who loves as much as God does, cannot help suffering. And anyone who really loves God will sense that He is suffering.” She found support for this view in the writings of the Japanese Lutheran theologian Kazoh Kitamori in his book “Theology of the Pain of God.”
God suffering? God in pain? How can this be?
If he is the Almighty Creator and Ruler, and if he has infinite knowledge of the future, why would he even create a world in which there would be so much suffering and pain on a daily basis? And if the scripture is true that not even a sparrow falls to the ground without the knowledge (or care) of the Heavenly Father (Matthew 10:29), how could he allow 20 innocent children – not to mention the adults – to be cut down in cold blood?
Questions like these are raised in the Bible itself, including cynical observations about the state of the world (see Ecclesiastes 7:15) and even harsh accusations against God uttered in the midst of extreme suffering (see Job 9:22-23). As one Old Testament scholar put it, if you’d like to voice your complaint to God, the Bible provides you with forms with the words already filled in for you.
Of course, as I noted in my Ohio State University debate with Prof. Bart Ehrman, a noted New Testament scholar and agnostic, if you remove God from the picture, there’s really no problem of suffering and evil. A spider kills a fly; a lion kills a zebra; a mugger kills his victim . . . this is what the random products of unguided evolution do! What’s wrong with the survival of the fittest? Why doesn’t might make right?
But if you believe that there is a loving Creator, then you recognize that suffering and evil really do present a problem.
How then do we respond to a mind-numbing tragedy like the Newtown massacre, and how does the concept of God’s pain help us process this tragedy?
First, we affirm that it was right for God to create the world, without which we would not exist, and we affirm that it was right for him to give us free will. But these are gifts with consequences, and the things we cherish most – our existence and our ability to make choices for our lives – are the very things for which we fault God at times like this.
C. S. Lewis sagely observed, “Try to exclude the possibility of suffering which the order of nature and the existence of free-wills involve, and you find that you have excluded life itself. . . . Free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. A world of automata – of creatures that work like machines – would hardly be worth creating.”
Put another way, love cannot be coerced; it must be freely chosen.
Second, we recognize that God created a world that would also cost him dearly, to the point that he had to send his Son to suffer and die that we might live. That was a consequence of his choice to give us freedom of choice.
In the words of Pastor Timothy Keller, “If we again ask the question: ‘Why does God allow evil and suffering to continue?’ and we look at the cross of Jesus, we still do not know what the answer is. However, we know what the answer isn’t. It can’t be that he doesn’t love us. It can’t be that he is indifferent or detached from our condition. God takes our misery and suffering so seriously that he was willing to take it on himself.”
That’s why Anglican leader John Stott stated, “I could never myself believe in God, if it were not for the cross.”
Third, we understand that God is not a distant bystander but is himself in agony because of his creation’s agony.
The Scriptures teach that he is hurt by tragedy and suffering, and Jesus was even angered by it. In the words of Isaiah, “In all Israel’s affliction, he was afflicted” (Isaiah 63:9). He may not explain to us all the reasons for our suffering or tell us why he apparently doesn’t intervene more. But this much is sure: He cares deeply and he is suffering with us.
You don’t like the way this world is? God doesn’t either. In fact, he hates certain things that take place, but he is at work for good in the midst of it and, in the end, he will bring something beautiful out of it.
As expressed by quadriplegic Joni Erickson Tada, “God permits what he hates to achieve what he loves.”
Fourth, we realize that only God can bring good out of evil and light out of darkness. He who hurts with us will help us, and the one who understands the depth of human evil is the one who can bring healing and hope.
According to Kitamori, “Those who have beheld the pain of God cease to be loquacious, and open their mouths only by the passion to bear witness to it.”
And so, in the end, we stop talking and we stop writing, and we pray for God to bring beauty out of ashes and life out of death, in this world and in the world to come. Right now, the agony is great. Dr. Michael Brown
In light of the horrific developments in Newtown, Conn. – developments so sorrowful that no words will do – I felt it only appropriate to pull my regular column for this week. I offer, instead, the only words I can at this inexpressibly mournful time: A simple prayer. ~ Matt Barber
Please come, Lord Jesus.
Come, King Jesus.
Come soon I pray.
Yet, even still come now, Holy Spirit, until such time.
We need You.
As the banked fish gasps for that which, without, she will surely die, so too do we gasp for living water-fused crimson that flows freely from Life’s pierced side.
The people of Sandy Hook assuredly cannot endure without Your supernatural grace.
Give them grace and comfort pressed down and running over.
There are things so wicked we cannot bear.
There are things manifestly beyond our understanding. Things of which, and perhaps for our own sake, You have kept from our grasp.
Such a thing is this.
We cry out, Abba, Father!
Torrents we weep for the families of Sandy Hook.
Our souls groan for the people of Sandy Hook.
Our spirits are broken for the babes of Sandy Hook.
Hold them close, dear Alpha and Omega – the great I Am.
Comfort them.
Love them.
You are the Way, the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father but through You.
Show this to all who are alive in flesh but dead in spirit.
Show them Life in death and that Life is You.
Reveal Truth and Life in the Spirit despite death in the flesh.
You are the Way.
Pull near to your bosom forever the precious slain of Sandy Hook.
Let our lips say, “Oh, death, where is your sting?” – even until our hearts believe it.
There is no hope save You, oh Christ, and, save us, can You alone.
Evil triumphs, so it seems, sovereign Lord.
Do they mock You?
So they try.
But You will not be mocked.
Let us rest assured that vengeance is Yours, Christ Jesus.
Darkness consumed this man, and so he did the liar’s bidding – Satan’s work.
Cowards.
He has not escaped Your justice.
The enemy of the world will not escape Your justice.
But for Your bounty of blood, who can escape Your justice?
Yet, for those who believe, Satan’s ransom is paid in full.
Let us, even now, hear the laughter of our beloved Sandy Hook babes – hidden most high – while, at length, they play together, joyfully, at your nail-pierced feet.
Thank You, Jesus!
Thank You, Jesus, for John 1:1, which proclaims, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
Thank You that the Word is with the bereaved of Sandy Hook.
Thank You, Jesus, for Matthew 11:28-30, which summons, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
Oh, Christ, give rest to the most weary and burdened of Sandy Hook.
Thank You, Jesus, for Matthew 5:4, which vows, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.”
Only You can comfort those beyond worldly comfort.
Comfort them, King Jesus, we plead.
We wait upon You, Lord Jesus.
We remain still.
Until You return, King Jesus.
And You will.
Oh, and how You will.
It is in Jesus’ name; the name of all names – the name at which demons shudder and both saints and angels rejoice – that I pray.
In April of 2007, a mentally disturbed student showed up at the campus of his school, Virginia Tech, brandishing two semi-automatic pistols, and murdered 32 students, teachers and school employees and wounded 17 others. Then he took his own life.
