Connecticut Shooting Tragedy

My heart goes out to the families affected by the mass killing at an elementary in Connecticut. Sadly I actually heard someone say today “How could a loving God allow such things to happen”.

Blaming God is simply not a conclusion supported by the facts. I’m reminded that we keep passing laws to keep God OUT of schools, and the problem is the lack of his presence, not physically of course, but in the hearts of those that perpetrate such inhumane and horrific acts.

We as a society are  just too wise in our own eyes for our own good. We decided that we are just too smart to believe in God. It was like Santa, we’d outgrown it. The REAL problem must be increased access to weapons that can kill faster than ever before.

For those that are not familiar with firearms… the CURRENT sidearm in use by the United States Marine Corps is the 1911, so named because that was the year it was designed by John Browning. And it wasn’t the first semi-auto, it just happens to be one of the best ever built.

It fires the .45acp cartridge, which has the most effective history of “one stop shots” of any round ever produced. It was used to great effect by WW1 Medal of Honor recipient Corporal Alvin York on the day he took out 7 of 7 advancing German soldiers with his sidearm.

That weapon has been available to civilians for over 100 years, and is actually deadlier than the Glock carried by the kid that did this shooting.

Semi-autos have been around for a century plus, but the “school shooting” phenomena is a much more recent addition to the landscape.

So maybe the problem is the bad weapons are just more available now?

Again, no. Heck, the Thompson sub-machine gun is a FULLY AUTOMATIC weapon that fired the same .45acp round as the 1911. It was designed for the military to “clean trenches”. When first available in the early 20th century… it was sold at the local hardware store. It was marketed to farmers as a varmint gun.

Yet we had no school shootings in the 1930s.

Basically for roughly a century plus we have had access to deadly repeating firearms that could be used exactly as they were used today. The problem is NOT advanced gun technology. The problem is NOT access to firearms.

The problem IS a society that raises our children without values.  Children are not held accountable for their actions. Telling them NO when they are young is not politically acceptable. Making them show respect for others is not fashionable.

And they are given NOT the time and the love of their parents… but expensive toys that are then allowed to raise them in their parents absence. Who knew Nintendo wasn’t a substitute for parental love and discipline.

Bottom line, our problem is not the weapons. We can’t legislate them out of the hands of those that would have them any more effectively than we made pot disappear by outlawing it. Pot’s been illegal here for over half a century and I could name several guys that are probably smoking it as they read this.

Awful deeds like we saw today will not be fixed by creating more imaginary gun free zones or implementing more gun control laws. The school was ALREADY a gun free zone, and that area of the country has stricter gun control than most. The problem isn’t the hardware, it is the lack of values of those holding it.

Until we recognize the real problem, any solution  we attempt is a waste of time. We owe our kids a better set of values, not a fancier set of toys.