Mass Shootings in Today's America

From the November-December 2012 issue of Forerunner.

The end of 2012 came with a bang. Many bangs, a reported 152 of them. The December 14 school shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, not only took the lives of 27 people, including 20 children, but the horror of the mass murder also reverberated across America, immediately spawning a national debate on school safety, mental illness, and of course, guns and the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Occurring less than six months after the Aurora, Colorado, "Batman" shooting, which killed 12 and injured 58, the Sandy Hook tragedy seems to have caused many Americans to say, "Enough is enough."

Such a reaction is natural. It is upsetting and disheartening to learn of the deaths of so many children, realizing that they were mercilessly slain by an assailant whose demons were his own. Without defense against the young man's murderous and insane rage, they died essentially alone and without comfort. It chills the heart of any parent or of any feeling person.

The death of anyone at the hands of another is cause for grief and consternation. It should cause law enforcement, government, and those involved to review what happened and ask the hard questions: Did the school, the school system, local police, and government do enough to provide a safe learning environment? Were there lapses in the safety protocols? Were reaction times fast enough? Was the school sufficiently hardened against assault? Were school employees trained in how to react? What additional measures could prevent such atrocities in the future? Responsible citizens consider it a solemn duty to undertake such an investigation to prevent anything like this massacre from happening again.

Some of these questions have been asked, but the final one on prevention has received the most ink. From what appears on the news, it seems as if the only "additional measure" that many in public office want to discuss is banning so-called assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines, not to mention tightening licensing guidelines and limiting ammunition sales. Their fellow travelers in the mainstream media also jumped to this conclusion almost immediately, inaugurating a gun-control campaign as soon as the news hit the wires.

In an instant, progressive forces in America decided that the tragedy in Newtown was the perfect crisis to help erase over two centuries of constitutionally unrestricted freedom to own firearms. In defense of their crusade, they also downplayed and dismissed suggestions from Second Amendment advocates to place more armed guards in schools or to arm teachers themselves, as occurs in Israel. Gun-rights groups like the National Rifle Association were marginalized, with many in the media rolling their eyes in disbelief that anyone could defend the ownership and use of firearms.

However, they are the ones who are out of touch. According to a Harvard study, the average gun-owning American household contains about five firearms. America's more than 300 million citizens own more guns than there are cars on its streets. As a whole, these firearms collections comprise nearly half of the world's guns, a real deterrent to both internal tyranny and foreign invasion, as the Founding Fathers intended by including the Second Amendment in the Bill of Rights. It is not surprising, then, that those who favor greater governmental control—as progressive political thought advocates—would desire to limit further gun sales and even reduce the number of firearms in private hands. Middle America, though, stands in their way.

Knowing a little about the reported mental state of the Sandy Hook shooter, a thinking person might wonder if some sort of mental-health measure could be effective in preventing similar tragedies. Some have suggested that a psychological checkup be added to the background check required for licensing a gun, but this idea has been dismissed as overly intrusive and open to both wild subjectivity and easy corruption. Besides, a mentally unhinged individual will find a weapon if he wants one badly enough, no matter how illegal it is for him to possess one.

Another factor that is only just beginning to be discussed is the known link of psychiatric drugs to mass killings. The Citizens Commission on Human Rights International reports in "School Shooters Under the Influence of Psychiatric Drugs" (http://www.cchrint.org/school-shooters):

Between 2004 and 2011, there have been over 11,000 reports to the U.S. FDA's MedWatch system of psychiatric drug side effects related to violence. These include 300 cases of homicide, nearly 3,000 cases of mania and over 7,000 cases of aggression. Note: By the FDA's own admission, only 1-10% of side effects are ever reported to the FDA, so the actual number of side effects occurring are most certainly higher. (See also, "A Brief History of Psychotropic Drugs Prescribed to Mass Murderers"; http://www.ladailypost.com/content/brief-history-psychotropic-drugs-prescribed-mass-murderers.)

The article links to 31 school shootings in which such drugs played a part, resulting in 72 dead and 162 wounded. Its findings do not include the Sandy Hook shooting, but its perpetrator had been prescribed Fanapt® (iloperidone), a controversial anti-psychotic medicine used to treat schizophrenia.

In all this finger-pointing, do we, as Christians, see anything missing from the discussion? To most of the politicians and pundits pontificating on the issue, the problem is inadequate safety measures, firearms, mental health, or drugs—or other factors like violent video games, a violent culture, or societal inequalities. We see that, yet again, they have left God entirely out of the picture. America's once staunchly Christian value system is fast eroding, and in its breakdown, its citizens have lost most of the internal controls that keep atrocities like these from occurring so often.

So comes to pass in modern America a fulfillment of one of the most horrifying of the Bible's prophecies: "Because you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children" (Hosea 4:6).

The World's Need for Atonement

This past week saw a meeting of the United Nations General Assembly, before which President Barack Obama gave another "historic" speech, or so the media tell us. That same media breathlessly reported about how significant it was that all these world leaders could come to the same place and speak openly about the world situation and try to "embrace a new era of engagement based on mutual interest and mutual respect," as Obama put it in his address. From behind the same lectern, not only would Obama address the assembled delegates, but also Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Israeli President Benyamin Netanyahu would also speak.

From all the faith that the administration and the media seem to have in this policy of engagement—without preconditions, as Obama has promised—we should expect the dawning of world peace at any moment. Is that not all it takes? All we have to do, according to this formula, is to get world leaders in one room, and after a few handshakes and a couple of beers—voila! World peace! It is so simple: Just let them jabber at each other for a few hours, and they will walk out arm in arm, best friends forever!

If this will work so well for nations with deep-seated enmities and ancient disputes, just think how far it will go in solving our petty personal and domestic problems. Just apply the formula: Gather the fighting parties in one place, tell them that they have mutual interests and need to have mutual respect for one another, and let them talk it out without preconditions or anything. They should be bowling partners before dinnertime!

Seriously, do the administration and media really think we are so naïve? When has this formula worked before? Have we not lived through previous administrations that have tried variations of this policy only to meet with unmitigated failure and reduced international respect? Jimmy Carter tried this with the Iranian revolutionaries when they took Americans hostage at our embassy in Tehran. Did that not embolden terrorists throughout the Muslim world? To them, it was a perfect illustration of the fact that America was weak and easily led about by the nose.

The same could be said for Bill Clinton's disastrous policy in Somalia, where the "Black Hawk Down" scenario played out. The Somali warlords were not appeased in the least by our humanitarian efforts in Mogadishu and elsewhere. American soldiers were sent into that city without the military strength or the standing orders to be effective in anything except as targets for snipers and gangs of militants. Playing nice and being understanding and talking incessantly about peace did nothing but put Americans in harm's way—in Somalia and around the world—because it was clear to Muslim extremists that America was still soft and could not stand to see bloodshed.

So it was just nine months into the George W. Bush presidency that al Qaida hijacked four domestic airliners, flying two of them into the World Trade Center in New York City, crashing one of them into the Pentagon in Washington, DC, and plunging the last into the ground in Pennsylvania. About 3,000 people lost their lives because Islamic fundamentalists believed that, because America had been all talk and little action in the recent past, it would be a pushover this time too. However, they failed to realize that the Bush administration was made of sterner stuff, and America's retaliation was severe, at least in comparison to its former lackadaisical behavior.

This is the real world, but the Obama administration is looking at it through rose-colored glasses. Tyrants cannot be talked out of power. Millennia-long conflicts cannot be solved by timely concessions and photo-op handshakes. Radical ideologies cannot be disputed with reasonable arguments so that their adherents suddenly say, "Sorry! I was wrong."

That is not how the real world works. Tyrants fight to the death to hold onto their power. Ancient feuds blaze into war. Radical ideologies are stamped out—if that—only by overwhelming force. Human nature guarantees that this is the only way it works because human nature rarely, if ever, thinks that it is wrong. In fact, human nature will often choose death before surrender. This is the simple reason why humanity has never progressed into any kind of "Golden Age" of universal peace, mutual understanding, and prosperity. Our nature will not allow us to.

Obama's policy will fail, just as Bush's did, Clinton's did, Reagan's did, and Carter's did. Mankind cannot find the way to peace because it is not in man to be at peace. Even if peace suddenly broke out all over the world, it would soon pass—very soon—and the people of the world would be back at each other's throats in no time. On this, the prophet Isaiah writes, "Their works are works of iniquity, and the act of violence is in their hands. Their feet run to evil, and they make haste to shed innocent blood; their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity; wasting and destruction are in their paths. The way of peace they have not known" (Isaiah 59:6-8).

Yet, the same prophet predicts, "It shall come to pass in the latter days that . . . they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore" (Isaiah 2:2, 4). What happens between the utter sinful, violent chaos of this world and that peaceful world to come?

Two things: The first is mentioned in Isaiah 2: "The mountain of the LORD's house shall be established" (verse 2). This is a reference to the return of Jesus Christ in power to rule all nations with a rod of iron (Revelation 19:11-15). Because of mankind's recalcitrant nature, He will be forced to deal with humanity sternly, as a conquering King, because man has rejected Him as the gentle and loving Lamb of God. He will set things right. This intervention in human affairs is foreshadowed in the Feast of Trumpets (Leviticus 23:23-25).

Yet, that is not enough; the second event must occur, which is seen in the Day of Atonement or Yom Kippur, as the Jews call it. In the typical ritual of Leviticus 16 is illustrated what will happen after Christ's return. Two goats are selected, one to be sacrificed to pay for the sins of the people (fulfilled by the sacrifice of Jesus on Golgotha), and one to carry the guilt of sin and be led into the wilderness. This latter type will be fulfilled when Satan the Devil is captured and imprisoned in the Bottomless Pit (Revelation 20:1-3), where he will not be able to influence mankind with his rebellious, sinful, destructive attitudes (see II Corinthians 4:4 Ephesians 2:2-3; Revelation 12:9; etc.).

Until the minds of human beings are freed from this constant persuasion to live selfishly, there can be no peace. Such is our need—the world's need—for the atonement only God can supply.

What Is the Pope Up To?

Pope Benedict XVI, the German-born former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, is the leader of over a billion Catholics worldwide and presides over a multi-billion dollar empire of land holdings, churches and cathedrals, companies, universities, institutions, hospitals, etc. His representatives, official and otherwise, are in every nation on the globe, influencing policy to the advantage of the Roman Catholic Church. He has hundreds of advisors and assistants, many of whom are among the most learned men on earth. He sits atop an organization that wields power and influence far beyond the confines of tiny Vatican City in Rome.

If he has all this wealth, knowledge, and authority behind him, why did he make such a colossal blunder in his comments at Regensburg University in Germany on September 12? Did he not know that even quoting a fourteenth-century Christian emperor's anti-Islamic remark would ignite protests and perhaps violence as well across the Muslim world?

Without a doubt.

The Pope, who turned 79 in April 2006, has observed the world long enough to be able to predict accurately just how his audiences will react to his ideas. The Vatican, long steeped in both politics and cultural sensitivity, understands the hair-trigger reactions of Islamic fundamentalists to anything even remotely offensive to "the religion of peace" or its prophet, Muhammad—remember that the furor over the Danish cartoons erupted just months ago. If his words, then, were not a thoughtless blunder, what were they designed to do? Why did he intentionally make them? What is the Pope up to?

There are probably at least two answers to these questions. The first is contained in the public response to Muslim demands of the Pope to apologize to the faithful for his "outrageous slander" of Muhammad. In his remarks to invitees to a meeting at his summer residence near Rome on September 25, the Pope regretted that his comments offended Muslims, yet he went on to explain briefly that Christians and Muslims "must learn to work together . . . to guard against all forms of intolerance and to oppose all manifestations of violence."

A reading of his Regensburg speech makes it plain that this was his intention all along. Notice this passage:

The [Byzantine Emperor Manuel Paleologos II, a Christian] must have known that Sura 2,256 reads: "There is no compulsion in religion." . . . But naturally the emperor also knew the instructions, developed later and recorded in the Quran, concerning holy war. Without descending to details, . . . he addresses his interlocutor . . . on the central question about the relationship between religion and violence in general, saying: "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." The emperor, after having expressed himself so forcefully, goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable. Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. "To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death. . . ."

Here he introduces his real subject, the relationship of reason and faith in religion. Muslim extremists—and frankly most Muslims period—have abandoned reason in their wholehearted devotion to Islam, and the result has been conflict, destruction, and death. On the other side, Western Christianity has rejected faith in favor of rationalism, producing cultural relativism and an essentially godless society. Benedict's speech was designed to steer a course toward the future between the two extremes.

At this point, the second answer to the why of the Pope's intentions comes to the fore. Upon ascending to the pontificate, Benedict dedicated himself to returning Europe to fundamental Christian values in response to increasing secularization. In a May 1996 address titled "Relativism: The Central Problem for Faith Today," he noted, presaging his papal theme:

Today, a particularly insidious obstacle to the task of education is the massive presence in our society and culture of that relativism which, recognizing nothing as definitive, leaves as the ultimate criterion only the self with its desires. And under the semblance of freedom it becomes a prison for each one, for it separates people from one another, locking each person into his or her own ego.

To counter this creeping narcissism, he recommends Europe's re-Christianization, urging Europeans "to open ourselves to this friendship with God . . . speaking to him as to a friend, the only One who can make the world both good and happy. . ." ("St. Josemaría: God Is Very Much at Work in Our World Today," L'Osservatore Romano, October 9, 2002). In early 2006, this theme still on his mind, he reiterated, "It is time to reaffirm the importance of prayer in the face of the activism and the growing secularism of many Christians . . ." ("Friendship with God," Zenit News, February 7, 2006).

In this light, his remarks at Regensburg were a rallying cry to Europe to reject the fanatical, violent faith of its burgeoning Muslim minority as well as the sterile, empty secularism of modern society—and to embrace the reasonable, traditional, and beneficial faith of Christianity. By doing so, he sets up himself and the Roman Catholic Church as sound-minded bastions of European solidarity and strength.

Despite the violence his remarks caused, he has calculated that they were worth the turmoil so that he could gauge, not the Muslim reaction, which was predictable, but the European response. He is hoping to see a shift in attitudes toward the Catholic Church and the papacy to defend Christendom from the ongoing Islamic assault. So far—and granted, his remarks still echo across the Continent—he has seen nothing from secular Europe to give him hope.

The Thin, Frail Line

In the huge water bowl that is the city of New Orleans now, the looting began not long after the worst of Hurricane Katrina had passed. Some of those who had stayed behind to weather the storm ventured out into the still wet and windy streets and began plundering grocery, electronics, clothing stores—anywhere unguarded items sat "free" for the taking. Authorities were overwhelmed by rescue operations and damage assessments to pay much attention to the millions of dollars of merchandise being pilfered in plain sight.

On Wednesday, TV viewers across the nation woke up to the news that someone had taken a potshot at one of the rescue helicopters near the Superdome, and that several pilots refused to land after they saw gun-toting individuals in the crowd below them. That same day, a sniper interrupted a patient evacuation at Charity Hospital with several shots, and someone opened fire at the rear of the hospital not long thereafter. The same hospital had earlier been forced to move its patients to higher floors to escape looters down below. New Orleans police informed CNN that groups of armed men roamed the city at night, and that officers were removing ammunition from gunshops to keep it off the streets. Only 2,800 National Guardsmen were available to restore order in the city on Wednesday, though as many as 24,000 were expected by next week.

The situations at both the Superdome and the New Orleans Convention Center became tense and potentially explosive as the days wore on. Authorities promised food, water, medical assistance, and basic hygiene supplies, but there was little to go around. They pledged buses to take the refugees to other shelters, but the slow process and frequent disruptions ratcheted frustration and anger to the breaking point. Dead bodies, crying infants, sickness, and human feces added nothing helpful to the growing discontent.

Consider these conditions in contrast to a mere week before. In one day, a thriving city of a half-million people endured nearly complete devastation. Its infrastructure was destroyed to the point that even basic services—electricity, water, sewer, transportation, communication—functioned at a bare minimum, if at all. Relief of any sort had to be trucked in from hundreds of miles away, as the 75-mile swath of the hurricane’s destruction stretched far to the north. Yet, Katrina's almost unfathomable power had cut or clogged many nearby land and watery arteries, making movement of goods and services almost impossible. As London's Telegraph so succinctly phrased it, New Orleans swiftly descended into a "pre-industrial" condition.

Almost as quickly, the thin, frail line between civilization and anarchy began to crumble. The suddenly primitive conditions brought out many individuals’ basest natures. The book of Judges describes a similar situation in Israel before a monarchy brought order to the nation: “Everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Judges 21:25; 17:6). Any thoughts of “all for one, and one for all” were quickly submerged under loud and insistent cries of “each man for himself.”

How far is any one of us from acting out of pure selfishness? In reality, that is all that lawless behavior is; it is base human nature desperately trying to preserve itself and get as much for itself as possible without concern for anyone else. It falls at the far end of the spectrum from God’s way of life, the way of give and loving concern for one’s neighbor (Matthew 22:39; I John 3:16-19). This is why the apostle John defines sin as lawlessness (I John 3:4); it is failure to consider and conform one’s actions against God’s standard of behavior. Paul informs us that “the carnal mind [human nature] is enmity against [hostile to] God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be” (Romans 8:7). Anarchy, as we have seen in New Orleans, occurs when the majority of human conduct devolves to each person deciding for himself what is best, despite any recognized standard—and the Devil take the hindmost!

Now is a good time to consider how a disaster like Hurricane Katrina would change our behavior. Would we continue to abide by the laws of the land—and the laws of God—or would we become a law unto ourselves? Would we rise to the occasion or sink into the chaos of disorder? Would we lend a hand to others suffering with us, or would we be like Ishmael, “his hand . . . against every man” (Genesis 16:12)? Would we cooperate or compete?

Each of us would like to think of himself as a good person, one who would always do the right and honorable thing. But perhaps the looters and shooters in New Orleans thought of themselves in the same way just a few days ago, and look how they are behaving now! Severe trials can pressure a person into doing things he never imagined doing before they hit, and this is why godly behavior is a matter of character. One’s true character surfaces in tough times, and to be effective, it must be developed before the calamity strikes.

The crisis at the close of this age “is nearer than when we first believed” (Romans 13:11). What kind of character will we have to work with when it arrives? Will we endure on the strength of faith, hope, and love, or will we buckle under the onslaught of selfish human nature and let out the ravenous, depraved beast of lawlessness? Now is the time to thicken the veneer that separates us from the depths of human carnality, and we do that by strengthening our relationship with God (James 4:7-10).