Last week, a terrible tragedy happened. More than a dozen people were senselessly gunned down in a Colorado movie theater by an armed assailant.
This is truly a tragic event, and I wish we could leave it as that: A tragedy—not something political that one side or another uses to further an agenda. But I am bothered by the mix of reactions I see. Look online at Twitter, Facebook, the blogosphere, and elsewhere, and you will see the automatic response of many is that there must be something wrong with our laws that has led to this. Either we do not have enough gun laws to stop men like this one; or we have too many, thereby preventing moviegoers from being adequately armed to protect themselves; or we inadequately evaluate the mental health of Americans; or we have focused too much attention on preventing foreign terrorism instead of preventing crime here at home.
I find all of these responses, frankly, shortsighted.
When I was a kid, growing up in rural southwest Arkansas during the 1950s and ‘60s, it was entirely normal to see people of all ages—kids and adults alike—carry guns. Either they were going out hunting with their families, or they were target-practicing with friends, or they were participating in local shooting competitions. Sure, there was crime back then, but the idea of mass murder was pretty nonexistent.
I remember high school students kept shotguns and twenty-twos in their trucks, because they were planning to go hunting as soon as class let out. No one cared.
When I was in middle school, my friends and I would often sit out in a field or on a riverbank, shooting old cans and bottles. No one was ever shot. No one was ever accidentally injured, either.
Imagine how you would feel today if you drove past a bunch of thirteen year olds carrying rifles. You’d probably be scared out of your mind. In those days, no one thought twice about it.
What happened? Our laws governing the purchase of firearms are much stricter now than they were then. Our laws governing concealed carry are much more permissive now than they were then, too (in those days, there really was no such thing, per se). So why the tragedies like those in Aurora and at Columbine High School, Virginia Tech, Fort Hood, and elsewhere? Is it a problem with our laws?
I say it is not. The heart of the problem is the problem of the heart. Somewhere along the way the needle on our society’s moral compass quit pointing true. Somewhere between 1950 and 2012 this modern phenomenon of mass murder began. I believe it corresponds to a change in the hearts of people. Our sense of morality is on the decline; maybe we subscribe to certain moral ideals, but when pressed, we really have no answer as to where those morals come from. Our society won’t acknowledge that God is the author of morality; it won’t acknowledge that He creates life, and that is the reason why murder is wrong; it won’t acknowledge that He is the one who endows human beings with their unalienable rights. Our teachers and professors tell our students that morality is relative. Should we be surprised, then, when a person acts on that by committing an atrocity?
I promise you this: Atrocities start as beliefs in the heart. A person does not murder unless they first justify it in their heart. You cannot legislate a murderous heart into submission. You cannot take away enough rights, privileges, property, or recognition to neutralize it. In maximum security prisons, inmates are barely permitted pencils, much less firearms, but murders still happen.
Tragedies like the one in Aurora, Colorado, do not end when we have new laws. They end when we have new morality. And new morality is something that, ultimately, comes from God.
