We mourn them… we cry for them… we pray for them… we hold vigils for them… we symbolically put our arms around them… we do all of this as a nation when unbelievable and unexplainable violence occurs in our country – specifically violence where some mentally troubled soul takes a gun of some sort, or maybe many guns of differing sorts, and goes to a temple or a street corner or a movie theatre or a shopping mall or a school… and massacres innocent people… babies, children, teenagers, adults…
Then there are the (hopefully few) idiot Christian leaders who get on the news and say that because our society is a secular one, because as a country we try to allow people to have or not have the religious beliefs of their choice (as our Founding Fathers designed things to be), and as such, official entities within our country (like our public schools) cannot dictate to anyone who comes within their purview what prayers they must say or what religious scriptures they must read… because of these things, there are (hopefully only) a few idiot (yes, I called them this once and I’ll do so again!) Christian religious leaders that publicly suggest that God was not at the place of the tragic violence, because “we don’t want God in our public schools” or wherever the violence occurred, and so God chose not to protect the victims…
(Is the faith and theological grounding of these types of religious leaders so weak, that they do not realize that no matter what our laws might be, that God is always present? Should they not realize this, especially at Christmas time, when Christians celebrate the coming of the Christ child, of Emmanuel – of “God With Us”??? Well, I guess all faiths have their idiots… but I digress)…
Next, there are the gun enthusiasts who speak up and say that it’s not the gun’s fault that it was used in such a massacre… we should not “blame the guns” or “outlaw the guns” because some mentally deranged person or some criminal committed such a heinous crime… we have our constitutionally protected rights! We have the right to bear arms… and so we cannot even begin a rational discussion on the many issues surrounding gun legislation… on looking for ways to keep guns out of the hands of those who should not be able to get them in the first place, or at the very least, make it much harder for such individuals to be able to get their hands on them…
WE HAVE OUR sacred RIGHTS to own guns and ammunition of all types and to be able to get them as easily as possible!!!!
Simple question here:
Just because we have a right to do something… just because we can do something… does that mean that we should do it?
Until the time when we as a nation decide it is time to at least talk sanely and realistically about the issues surrounding gun violence, and meaningful and effective ways to curb it…
Until that time comes, be prepared to continue to mourn for and cry for and pray for and hold vigils for and comfort the immediate survivors of our gun violence…
Even as we continue to sacrifice the life blood of our country to the almighty gun gods that we worship…
America... 