Mass murder has been in the news a lot recently. I wanted to contribute my $.02 to the issue. First there are lies, damn lies, and statistics. Trying to come up with accurate statistics on moral or immoral uses of guns is virtually impossible. I can find a statistic to prove any point if I look long enough. The first question is frequency. Are there really more mass type attacks today or do we just know more about them in the day of instant 24/7/365 news coverage. Most of the statistics I have seen seem to show a decrease in numbers of events and fatalities, but I don't think that can be proven. I want to lay out the reasons behind mass murders and some comments on each. The reasons are in what I think is the order of importance.
1. SIN
Ever since Adam and Eve chose to reject GOD and his ways and follow satan's suggestions the world has been awash in sin. The price has been paid; but most reject the one who paid the price(JESUS), and even those of us who have decided to follow HIM sometimes choose to do things that are sin. This is an area that no government or any other entity can ever solve. The only solution is for HIS people to preach HIS gospel and for the people that hear it to choose to follow HIM. This is really 100% of the cause, the rest is just explaining some of the natural causes.
2. Psychotropic Drugs
In every virtually every instance that we have information on the killers have been on psychotropic drugs(ADHD, anti depressant, etc). These are serious mind altering(by intent) drugs. These drugs have supposedly been tested(by the drug companies), proven safe and effective, and approved by the FDA(a government agency that is hugely influenced by the drug companies). There are no third party, large scale, double blind tests on any of these drugs. There is lots of anecdotal evidence of serious issues, as well as warnings on the labels of the problems they can cause. Yet they are prescribed to thousands of children every day, and our "leaders" seem to think this is a good thing.
3. Family Breakdown
There are many studies on the breakdown of families in our culture(see 1 above). Our culture and government used to support families and now actively work to destroy them. When a child grows up in an intact home with a father and a mother the chances of them becoming a mass murderer are minuscule. When the father is missing by death, the odds go up but not by a whole lot. When the father is missing by choice(divorce, abandonment, mother's choice, welfare incentives, etc) the odds go way up. And the odds also increase with every generation of fatherlessness.
4. Abortion
For 40 years now people have grown up knowing that killing children is a government approved activity, at least until shortly after birth. Do we really think that this does not impact the value that people place on human life? It has to have an effect.
5. Government Education camps
When we take large numbers of young people and put them under the authority of government schools for years there are lots of potential problems. First, you have a target rich environment for someone who wants to commit mass murder. Second, the system has a way of creating misfits and people who are ostracized by the various groups and need someway to express themselves, somewhere to fit in. Someway to make a splash.
6. Media Attention
When there is a mass murder and it gets 24/7 media attention for weeks with the perpetrator's name and picture featured prominently, do we really think this doesn't inspire certain people who want attention to do something to get their name in lights and draw attention to themselves? Does this mean it shouldn't be covered? No, but the coverage should be cautious about giving glory to the perpetrator. Do you realize that there are around 100 people killed on an average day in car accidents with no news coverage outside of a small area.
7. Video and TV violence
This has been frequently cited and I think it is certainly part of the problem. There is no way a young man can spends hours watching violent acts on TV and acting them out on video games without it having some effect on the way he sees the world.
8. Guns
Yes, if there were no guns in the world there would be less of these crimes. In the recent case in Massachusetts, if his mother did not own guns and had not shown him how to use them he would have had more difficulty in completing the murders. The flip side of course is that if there had been an armed good guy there, he MIGHT have been stopped much earlier.
Almost all of the media of the recent events has focused on guns and how to eliminate them. That is clearly impossible. And if my order of causes is even close to correct the availability of guns is a small part of the problem. If you look at gun deaths vs auto deaths it is very interesting. The total numbers are about the same on an annual basis, but there is no talk of car control. There are intentionally no good statistics of moral(self defense, home invasion, etc) vs immoral(murder, gang fights, etc) gun deaths. But since we know there are at least some deaths in which the bad guy dies and the good guy lives we absolutely know that cars are more deadly than guns. We can only guess at the rates of moral to immoral uses, or how many good guys and bad guys die from guns each year. So gun control won't stop the problem and has possibly already made it worse(disarming good guys).
Even more importantly if you look at gun deaths is that for every good guy killed by a gun, there have been thousands killed by government tyrants(Hitler, Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot, etc) over the years because the people were defenseless against them. For anyone to say that the 2nd Amendment(written by leaders of a nation that had just fought the world's greatest military power for their own independence using privately owned weapons) isn't about military type weapons is ridiculous at face value. That is clearly the reason for the Amendment. The good news is that many Americans understand this and are fighting back against more restrictions on gun ownership. As Vox Day said on his blog "The American people have made it eminently clear that even if 100 kindergartens are machine-gunned tomorrow, they'll pull their kids out of school and take them shopping at the gun store rather than disarm." I see that as a positive, you don't save the kids in the short or long term by giving up your GOD given right to protect yourself and your children.
The second purpose for the 2nd Amendment is for self defense against smaller scale thugs(robbery, murder, rape, etc). In this case statistics are clear. The states with the tightest gun control laws(Connecticut, Illinois, Michigan, New York, New Jersey, California) have the highest rates of violent crime. And more importantly as many states have introduced Concealed Handgun carry in one form or another their crime rates have gone down, while at the same time the states with more gun control have gone up.
So, what is the solution. The solution is the same as it has been for every problem since Adam and Eve. JESUS. Sin(rebellion against GOD) must be paid for, "the wages of sin is death(eternal damnation)." I have sinned and fallen short of the glory of GOD, so have you. I deserved eternal damnation, I owed the debt. JESUS came to earth to pay the price for me, and you. But you have a choice, you can accept that HIS death paid the price for your sin, choose to follow HIM and your sins are erased and you will spend eternity in heaven(and are very unlikely to ever be a mass murderer). Or you can reject his offer of forgiveness and try to get into heaven on your own good works(you will be rejected, you are guilty). Or you can actively choose to go to eternal damnation(bad idea).
