Changing Hearts and Minds

Kevin McCullough today penned a think piece on the two mass shootings that occurred this weekend in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio.  It seems somewhat premature, as I keep reading that the authorities don't know enough yet.  But one thing that McCullough got right is that people committing these sorts of crimes are cowards.  You can read McCullough's article at Townhall.com entitled The Cowardice of Mass Shooters And The Easy Prey They Always Target.

I agree with McCullough that these cowards choose "gun free zones" 99 percent of the time.  In my opinion, these people are...to use a technical term...nuts.  Oh, not in the usual, clinical sense.  Rather, these people have very skewed views of themselves, their fellow mankind and their own place in society.  But gun free zones are not the answer.  Nor is more gun control the answer.  Both solutions rely on getting rid of a tool.  But tools are easily made, easily smuggled. 

Of course, anti gunners want to sue the firearm industry out of existence.  But let's say they do.  Do they not realize that if the Mexican cartels can smuggle in drugs, why can't they also smuggle in guns?  If one of these "nuts" wanted to commit mass murder, he could easily acquire one of these smuggled guns from the black market.  I am sure other countries would be very willing to supply the United States criminal underworld with guns if there was no longer a domestic industry.

Indeed, if the anti gunners wanted to sue someone the logical defendant would be the mall, or restaurant itself.  The facility is the one that decided to make itself a gun free zone, thus depriving those at that location the ability to defend themselves.  And while school districts can use the law as a shield to prevent lawsuits on the grounds of being gun free zones, perhaps lawsuits could be initiated against individual legislators for their fecklessness.  But nobody sues car manufacturers for the death of people die in car accidents.  Nobody sues knife manufacturers for knife deaths.  Why not?  The answer lies in the fact that any tool can be used for both good and evil.

This leads into Selwyn Duke's article over at the   American Thinker entitled El Paso: The Real Root Causes Of Mass Shootings. I mentioned above that a mass shooters have a very skewed view of himself, of others, and of his place in society. Duke gets to the heart of this issue. Duke's point is that what mass shooters lack is morality. Morality is defined by Divine Law. Man can not define morality because man is the subject of morality. It is because we born in sin, and can not by ourselves do rightly, that God handed down the Law.  The Law is not designed to punish, but rather to show man the moral thing to do, and for the thinking individual, to show him how far off the mark his own behavior is.

Jesus summed up the law in Luke 10:27 as:

And he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself.

One doesn't kill one's neighbor if he loves him, but instead defends his neighbor against those intending evil against him. Perhaps the politicians trying to control the means of defense for ourselves should instead work at spreading morality in society. If more people looked upon their fellow man as being made in the image of God himself, they might not be so quick to want to murder that image.

The "root cause" is not that there are too many guns in society.  Guns do not commit crimes.  Guns do not miraculously jump out of their holsters and start shooting people.  And guns are not implements with magical powers to cause people to do things they otherwise would not do.  Fyodor Dostotevsky said it rightly: "Without God, all things are permitted."  We are seeing this played out now.  We must begin to change hearts and minds, or we shall surely perish as a society.  That is the true meaning of "repent," to turn around, to rethink, and to change your heart and mind.