Morally and Spiritually Sick

At least 17 dead children in another school shooting as a teenager armed with an assault rifle systematically slaughtered them. There is a school shooting every 60 hours in this Country. There is no other Country where this happens. When the weakest and most vulnerable of a society are slaughtered with the passive permission of adults, it is a sign of moral and spiritual bankruptcy. We live in a sick society.

Already, we are seeing the same sick post slaughter ritual: 24/7 news coverage with endless loops of the same video shots from helicopters, Congressmen saying it’s “too early” to talk about preventing the next slaughter… And we know how it will end – the same Congress bought out by the NRA will do nothing. After the last mass murder, Congress actually passed a Bill to permit people with mental illnesses to purchase any weapon! That’s sick. School districts now have regular drills for students and teachers to respond to an active shooter in their school. Think about that. The only drill most of us had in schools were fire drills. Our children must drill for mass murder. That’s sick. How does that affect their psychological development?

This school actually drilled for mass murder situations and by all accounts, the faculty and students responded just as trained. Still, at least 17 are dead and more critically wounded. You cannot prevent mass casualties when a murderer is using an assault weapon. Period.

I started out by saying that our children are being slaughtered in schools with the passive permission of adults. The fact that over 90% of Americans want some form of gun controls, especially on assault weapons is not a sign of sanity – quite the opposite. Evil is defined by actions AND by inaction. If you have never written or called your Congressman to demand reasonable gun control laws, then you have been a partner of that evil. If you have not made your vote for them contingent on passing gun control laws, then you are part of the evil. Let me argue another defining characteristic of evil: an NRA membership card.

If some organization, or country had given ISIL millions to enable them to acquire the weapons to slaughter American children, it would rain Hellfire Missiles. Yet the NRA has literally bought and bullied Congress for decades to allow virtually unrestricted access to weapons of mass murder. To cure this social sickness requires more than political activism. It requires PERSONAL activism. You need to shame every friend and family member belonging to the NRA. They can’t hide behind cultural values BS any longer – what culture allows children to be slaughtered?  They can’t hide behind phony Constitutional BS – the Courts have consistently ruled that gun control laws can be Constitutional. They can’t hide behind arguments about criminals, mentally ill, or blaming the victims. There will always be criminals and mentally ill (although mentally ill people, as a whole, are far less violent than the rest of society). There are mentally ill and criminals in every country, but only our society has become so sick as to allow mass murders of children. The only thing we can control is their access to weapons of mass murder. It seems a small consolation, but if the shooter had only a handgun then more children would have survived. Denying a murderer an assault weapon is not an infringement on your Constitutional Rights. If anyone is a member of the NRA, they are advocates of allowing children to be slaughtered in schools, and you should let them know it and make them own it.  NRA members are part of the problem of enabling/promoting evil. So are you if you do nothing in response to this evil.