Once again we are faced with another tragic school shooting and once again many people beat their drums for gun control. Yet, is gun control the solution to our nation’s recent epidemic of mass shootings? Asked in this way, the answer is obviously yes, because other than firearms, there is nearly no other object that people use to lethally “shoot” another person. But such a question is equivalent to, “Have you stopped beating your spouse?”
The first step in finding a solution to any problem is defining the problem one is trying to solve. Putting a definition, to the issue at hand, in the form of a question, the actual question should be, “How can we, as a society, curtail mass murder in America, no matter the method used?”
It would be very short sighted to assume that firearms are the cause of this epidemic and ignore all other possible reasons for what is happening. Imagine if we were able to magically stop killers from using guns and they instead turned to some other form of murder that is more lethal. Our efforts would have been futile indeed. Besides, firearms have been a prevalent part our society since its inception, and until relatively recently people did not use them to indiscriminately kill others, even when fully automatic weapons, like the Thompson submachine gun, were commercially available without restriction.
The second step in finding a solution to any problem is collecting information on all the possible causes that may contribute to the problem at hand, and then researching them down to their root cause. Root cause analysis is critical to problem solving, because only removing a surface cause will superficially affect the outcome, but the problem will still persist.
Some possible causes, which have been proposed by pundits, for this shift in the willingness of a few people to indiscriminately kill their fellow Americans, is prescription psychotropic drugs, single parent homes, and a culture that glorifies killing via many forms of social media, such as movies and video games. Without further research into all the non-jihadist mass murders in America, it is impossible to speculate how much these potential causes influenced the killers in each of the numerous incidents since 1966, when Charles Whitman shot people from the University of Texas clock tower, and especially those that have occurred since Columbine.
A root cause behind each of these potential causes is the belief that it is acceptable, or at least not prohibited, to murder another person. Before a person commits a violent crime they must first believe in their heart it is something they want to do. If we, as a society, can instill in our youth that murder is wrong and that it has negative consequences for the perpetrator, perhaps we can curtail what we see unfolding in our society.
One thing that each of the public school shootings have in common is that the perpetrators where all products of public schools. Incidentally, no non-public school has experienced shooting incidents or mass murder of any kind. But to be fair, correlation does not prove causation. This is another way of saying that just because all the mass murders were a product of public schools does not automatically indicate that public schools are the cause, unless one can establish a cause and effect relationship between what has been mandated and taught, or not taught, in public schools, and the actions of the people who decided to indiscriminately take the lives of others.
Such a cause and effect relationship exists in the U.S. Supreme Court case Stone v. Graham, 449 U.S. 39 (1980). Late in the 1970s, a Kentucky state court case made its way to the Kentucky Supreme Court in which the Kentucky Supreme Court upheld a statute allowing the Ten Commandments to be displayed in public schools in their state. In 1980, Chief Justice Burger and Associate Justice Blackmun, who wrote the majority opinion in the 1973 Roe v. Wade case, granted certiorari, a writ of a superior court to call into question the decision of an inferior court, and they gave it plenary consideration, which is complete and absolute power, in which they reversed the decision of the Kentucky State Supreme Court. Since that time public school children have not had any formal standard of morals taught to them in schools across America that prohibits the taking of another human life, like the Fourth Commandment, “You shall not murder” (Ex. 20:13; Deu. 5:17 ESV).
While this action by Burger and Blackmun in 1980 happened long after Charles Whitman shot at students and faculty from the clock tower, it was a mere nineteen years later, more than a K-through-twelve school generation in which no public school student was exposed to the Ten Commandments in school, that Columbine took place. Since then, mass murder in public schools has sky rocketed and the most frequently heard remedy to this modern malady is gun control. Instead of attacking a constitutionally protected right, like firearm ownership, that has not, until recently, been blatantly abused, we should instead attack our public school systems, which are not constitutionally protected and have a lot to do with the behavior demonstrated by their students.
Perhaps loving death is the actual root cause to this recent epidemic and public schools have been promoting death through civil government mandated policies. “For whoever finds me finds life and obtains favor from the Lord, but he who fails to find me injures himself; all who hate me love death” (Prov. 8:35-36 ESV).
Public schools are killing our children mentally by denying them a sound moral foundation. What should or should not be taught in public schools is one of the most litigated issues in American society which, like every other bureaucratic system, cost tax payers millions of dollars on top of already bloated and wasteful budgets.
Government is not our god, and more laws will not fix this problem. Those who will not or cannot comprehend this idea need to consider how effective school gun-free zone laws have been in stopping mass murder in our public schools.
We, as a society, will never agree on what should or should not be taught in our schools, so let us stop fighting about it and give every tax payer a choice of what school to support in their school district. Far more importantly, if you care about the well being of your kids, get them out public schools before it is too late!