This past Friday a horrific crime and tragedy occurred in a small quiet and idyllic Connecticut town. Twenty beautiful young school children and several adults were murdered. The instrument of their destruction was a deranged young man with no moral center who gave no value to another human life. The tool he used was a gun.
America’s knee-jerk and misguided response will be to blame the tool. You see if America did not blame the tool, the gun, then it would have to take responsibility for creating the monster that used the tool. America, the gun is not the problem, you are.
Look what you have taught two generations of children, many now in their late teens to early 30s.
First, you have taken God out of our schools and taught them that God has no place in our public places. You have done all you can to replace faith in God with faith in government. Your news media and entertainment mock God before these children at every turn.
You have taught them there is no right or wrong. You have robbed them of their moral center and taught them to be the most self-centered of generations. It’s all about me.
If there is no moral center, there is no right or wrong, then I can do as I please. And they do.
A noted physicist once explained that darkness does not exist; it is only how we describe the absence of light. Cold does not exist; it is merely the absence of heat. And evil does not exist unto itself, but exists where there is an absence of God.
But the worst lesson you have taught our children is that life has no value. Today we will mourn desperately the deaths of those 20 children, ages 5 to 8. But we will shed not one tear for the 3,200 children under the age of 3 months who were murdered today.
I know you don’t like the term murder, but that’s what you do when you take an innocent life. You can Google abortion statistics and the latest data shows America murders 1.2 million children, most under 3 months of age, every year.
Divided by 365 days — death takes no holiday — that’s three thousand two hundred children murdered every day at your hands.
Worse yet, you are proud of it. It’s a woman’s right!
What lesson does that teach the survivors, the children we choose to keep? They learn that life has very little or no value if that life is going to be inconvenient to us.
As a society we are teaching them that killing an unborn child is perfectly acceptable if the child being born would in any way interfere with our life and happiness.
Life becomes cheap and disposable to these children as they grow into young adults. If killing a child of 3 months is OK, why not 3 years, why not 10 years? Life has no value.
Look at the games you allow your children to play. The most popular video game today is one titled something like “Call of Duty.” You score points by killing people. The more you kill the higher your score.
Again, you can Google the 10 most violent video games and see the blood and gore that numbs the young mind to the value of life. These games help you teach them that life has no value. Yet we allow, if not encourage, them to play these games hour after hour.
I would bet a large sum of money that the young monster in Connecticut was a violet video game aficionado. But you will hear no outcry for “video game control.”
America, I know you don’t want to hear this, but the gun is not the problem. You are. We are.
If we could magically remove every firearm in this country, but not restore the value of life as our moral compass, we will have achieved nothing. Man’s inhumanity to man existed long before gun powder and the Colt revolver.
We must teach our children that God — yes, God — gave us our life, and God values each life beyond measure. There is right and wrong.
Give them a moral center. Teach our children it’s not about how the world treats you, but how you treat the world.
By the way, America, when you stop killing 3,000 children a day, I’ll talk to you about gun control.
And Merry Christmas to you.
Briggs Arrington
Fayetteville, Ga.
