With so many school shootings and senseless violence recently the uneducated are beginning again to call for a ban on “assault rifles” and “high capacity magazines” instead of addressing the real problem behind all of it…mental health in America and the world. The gun is not evil. It is merely the weapon chosen by the evil doer. It takes an evil person to pick up that weapon and use it against another person PERIOD!
The uneducated’s argument is that weapons are too easy to get. Now while this is only partially true (I will address this shortly) it is not the real reason behind all the violence. In the “old days” you could go into most hardware stores and walk out with a gun within 5 minutes. In the 80s most of the trucks in my school parking lot had a rifle in the rear window. In the 80s over 45 million homes had a gun in them while today that number is down to around 32 million. Back then there were more guns, less regulations, and only a very very small fraction of school shootings and mass violence as compared to today.
So there are less guns and more regulations and rocketing mass shootings. The most dangerous cities in the United States for gun violence are the cities that have the strongest and most restrictive gun laws.
So then what is the cause? It is what I like to call a degeneration of society. It began when we took Christ and prayer out of the classroom. It is also the lack of mental health care in America. We accept, and many times encourage, mental instability in the name of inclusion. As a society we are afraid to address mental illness because “they should be allowed to be who they are” or because we just don’t want to be bothered or be the person who alerts police or doctors. And yes it is also a failure of the system. Many times people are brought to the attention of law enforcement or mental health professionals and they drop the ball.
Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
Romans 12:21 NKJV
So how do we reduce the violence? It is not by banning guns and “high capacity” magazines. Those truly intent on doing evil will use a hammer, a car, a bat, etc. All of which HAVE been used in the past to cause mass casualties. No! The first step is to come back to God as a people and as a country. The second is to address mental health in America. Give people the help they need when they need it and don’t wait until they commit violence to themselves or to others.
We can’t stop there though. Once a person has been diagnosed for a mental illness then that information should go into a database that flags the background check done for firearm purchases and stops the sale. Once that flag is placed it cannot be removed until one year after that person has been cleared by a doctor.
Now I don’t claim to have all the answers nor do I claim that this will put a stop to all the violence but it is a start. We start be turning our hearts and minds back to God and address the person that commits the evil rather than the tool chosen to do the evil. only then can we truly begin to see a change.
If you return to the Almighty, you will be built up; You will remove iniquity far from your tents.
Job 22:23 NKJV