Stanek wkend questions: Why the surge in violence? How do we stop it?
If you’re like me, you can’t dwell too long on the massacre of 20 school children yesterday (and six adults) at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.
As psychiatrist Dr. Keith Ablow of Fox News wrote, “Adam Lanza opened the door to a new kind of horror in America – the massacre of children.”
That’s not true, but I know what he was trying to say.
There was a personal reason President Obama cried during his press conference. We can all put ourselves in the place of those parents whose babies didn’t walk out of that school.
There is talk now of having police at every school in America, and also at malls and shops. The Lane Bryant store where five people were gunned down in 2008 is 10 minutes from my home. (That shooter is still at large.)
And churches. My own now has at least one off-duty policeman at every service. My pastor has a personal security guard.
Speaking of, Megyn Kelly of Fox News thought the crumbling faith community was a contributing factor:
America looks very different than it looked 30 years ago. We don’t interact with each other the way we used to, and faith has been diminished as well. And that’s not to diminish the position that is held by atheists, which is valid and to which they are entitled, but faith has something that’s been a common thread in America that has bound us for so long.
It’s not just “faith” that has bound us, it is the object of our faith, Yahweh. As John Cahn, author of the recemt bestselling book, The Harbinger, wrote, America and Israel are the only two nations whose founders “saw themselves in covenant with God…. [T]he Puritans, America’s founders, established America after the pattern of ancient Israel.”
Back to Adam Lanza, the 20-yr-old Sandy Hook killer who shot his own mother, an employee of the school, in the face before setting off for the school, Ablow wrote:
Perhaps there is a genetic vulnerability in such individuals. Perhaps there is a defect in the serotonin (a calming brain chemical messenger) systems of such people. Perhaps head trauma can play a role in damaging the frontal lobes. Some will even claim symptoms of autism could be involved. But consider this: In every case I have ever treated in which empathy is in short supply or absent, it was eroded through suffering inflicted upon that person himself or herself, usually early in life. Psychological trauma – whether chronic or acute – has been present in every violent person I have ever evaluated during the past two decades.
I think there are numerous forces at work contributing to the surge in destructive tendencies not just in America but around the world, including turning away from God; yes, abortion; violence in the home; even environmental toxins; and so much more.
What are your thoughts? Do you think the abyss can be averted? If so, how?
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
If we can eliminate 4000 children every day through abortion, then why are we surprised when one mad man shoots 20 children?
The violence in the womb which is hidden from public eyes is now being seen in the violence that grows inside troubled souls.
This man was probably also on Prozac for depression and I think the medical community needs to take a hard look at what all these drugs are doing to our young people.
I think it’s also the culture of divorce and broken families. I’ll guess we’ll have lots of time to analyze what happened, but here you had a mentally unstable young man and no man in the house for several years. I don’t know the circumstances of the divorce situation and I know it’s not very PC to say, but divorce and fatherless homes have torn the fabric of society to almost unsustainable levels. It’s not a so called “gun culture” that’s as much as a problem as a fatherless and divorce culture. Both feed into the culture of death by the refusal to take responsibility at some level, and it’s the children who suffer. Abortion is def. a symptom of the disorder we have brought on ourselves.
Prov 8:30-31, 34-36
30 Then I [Wisdom] was beside Him as a master and director of the work; and I was daily His delight, rejoicing before Him always, [Matt 3:17; John 1:2,18.]
31 Rejoicing in His inhabited earth and delighting in the sons of men. [Ps 16:3.]
34 Blessed (happy, fortunate, to be envied) is the man who listens to me, watching daily at my gates, waiting at the posts of my doors.
35 For whoever finds me [Wisdom] finds life and draws forth and obtains favor from the Lord.
36 But he who misses me or sins against me wrongs and injures himself; all who hate me love and court death.
AMP
Deut 30:15, 19
15″See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, and death and adversity;”…
19 ” I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. So choose life in order that you may live, you and your descendants,…NASU
Hi Julie,
Your point about “anti-depressents” is a very good one. For very good reasons of my own, my faith in the psychiatric profession is extremely limited at best, these “anti-depressents” being one of the reasons. A dear friend of mine has spent years in the “mental health” machine, with ect, hospitals, drugs, “therapy”, you name it. They finally figured out she has borderline personality disorder, which I long suspected, and none of this crap is the treatment of choice, but of course that doesn’t stop them. Tragic thing is she knows no other life and she is so destroyed now its not like she can turn things around and ever have any kind of normal life.
When the mere mention of GOD elicits a chorus of boos from an assembly of elected representatives of all 50 states and the chairman of the meeting has to ask 3 separate times for a voice vote, before he unilaterally overrules the crowd and declares the motion passed then I would say that is petty good indication that good percentage of Americans have ‘lightly esteemed’ GOD and chosen death.
Is this any different thant that video clip of the little chinese girl being deliberately run down by the driver of a van?
[I am equally grieved by both incidents.]
Humans are stupid and they have the capacity to increase their stupidity to biblical proportions when the ‘restrainer’ is removed.
Hi Ken 9:28am
Well why are we surprised about the little Chinese girl run down by a van? We know the great respect and esteem Chinese girls are held in. Now, if a boy had been run down instead, that would be a real tragedy.
I agree with all of the comments here, faithlessness, mental illness, and broken families are huge factors. I would also add to this mix of facotrs, the proliferation of violent video games and the availability of pornography. These desensitize people to violence and carelessness for humanity, and they do some serious, damaging re-wiring in the neuroloy. This combined with many other factors is disaster. I don’t know of course, if this perpetrator was involved in violent gaming or pornography, but given how common this is, I would not be surprised at all.
Great, great comments. I agree with all of you. I was encouraged by Obama’s tears. His eyes were red. This wasn’t a photo op. He was truly choked up and I thought “So he DOES have a heart after all!” This gives me hope. God can break his heart of stone and lead him to repentance for the role he has played in ending the lives of unborn children by supporting pro-abortion and pro-infanticide legislation. I saw Obama in a different light yesterday for the first time ever.
My heart breaks for these precious parents mourning the loss of their children. I have a kindergartner and I gave him a huge hug when he stepped off the bus yesterday.
Richard Dawkins said that this was “a pitiless universe with no good or evil and no justice.” To evolutionists, this is not evil, just survival of the fittest. There is no God and no absolute truth.
To us Christians, this is an evil act committed by a sinful man. This is not a surprising act, as this nation has been rejecting God for 60+ years. We have been killing children for decades–now to call it evil by the left is hypocritical at best.
I have read people online saying, “I still believe that people are good at heart”. Is this a noble view, or rebellion against the obvious? As a Christian who has read and studied the Bible for decades, I do not see anything about the goodness of man therein. It is the common thread throughout the Bible that man is lost, deceived, and depraved. One particular scripture comes to mind: “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it?” Jeremiah 17:9. This horrible act of slaughtering children has already been going on against those in the womb, worldwide forever. Murder and mass murder and brutality and mercilessness has regularly been a part of human history. This is not a medication problem or a security problem or a problem of a good therapist or good ‘crystal ball’ techniques.. This is a problem of the human heart. We cannot possibly begin to contain it’s evil with dollars, government and professionals. An incident like this, I believe, is supposed to tell us something about ourselves and what we are capable of, absent the restraining grace of God. This, I believe, should drive us to our knees and to the Lord to save us from ourselves. You may think I am being cold to say this, but I will say it anyway. How is it that a president sheds a tear over the children who didn’t have a chance to live and grow up, yet chooses for born alive children from botched abortions to die in a dirty bucket or on a cold steel table, alone, like trash? Here again is an example of the hypocrisy and deceitfulness of the human heart. Examples are there in plain sight, everywhere. The question is, will we, by the grace of God, see it? We need Jesus! Individuals make up society. Individuals that lay their hearts before God because they know they need Him, make for a better society. Our society is deteriorating on the inside (faith) while constantly scrambling to patch things up on the outside. I’m not saying not to do practical things to avoid tragic incidents like this, but I am speaking about the bottom line of the problem which seems to be virtually ignored by an increasingly Christianity-hostile society, and a growing propensity to not call things what they really ARE, in order to justify our evil. Therein is the problem. Calling evil good, such as the murder of babies being labeled “women’s health”, almost seems to me to be a worse evil, if possible, than the act itself. How can this rampant media age, with it’s constant drum-beat of smiling, lying politicians and hypocritical talking heads do any good for society at large? We need Jesus. We need truth.
Hi Sydney M 10:22am
I respect and appreciate your perspective and charitable Christian attitude. I will only say be very careful about jumping to any conclusions, and out of respect to this situation, is all I will say and caution.
Prayers for the families of the people killed by one more confused and crazy guy, reared in the cognitive dissonance of America’s increasing spiritual vacuum. How was he to know that killing kids is objectively wrong, when his own president thinks it should be legal to throw newborn babies in a soiled linen room of a hospital to die?
Faithless /= violence and nihilism. There is no need to believe in a god to have a moral code. I really don’t want to bang that drum again.
I don’t know that violence is actually surging. I think that we perceive that it is. But earlier the century we had two world wars with a much higher death toll than we have now with our current wars, we have had genocides all over the place, tons of violence and horror and we always have. Actually, according to statistics violent crime in the US went down for twenties year, a steady drop until 2011, where simple assaults rose 22% (murder, rape and aggravated assault stayed steady or dropped). I am not sure why we would have two decades (even with all the horror of secularism ;)) of reduction in violent crime and then suddenly have a surge in 2011. It might have something to do with the economy and hopelessness that people feel, that would be my guess.
Of course, none of the surveys for violent crime take abortion into account, but abortion numbers have steadily declined since the eighties and nineties too. So it’s not all hopeless.
Simple: Follow the example of the Harrold Independent School District in Texas.
Mary, what conclusions did I jump to? not sure what you mean “out of respect to this situation”. How was I not respectful of this situation? Can you explain further?
“As a Christian who has read and studied the Bible for decades, I do not see anything about the goodness of man therein. It is the common thread throughout the Bible that man is lost, deceived, and depraved.”
Ha, well I am an agnostic and I would agree with the Bible. People are not good at heart, and I think most people are capable of terrible things. I agree with the Bible on the nature of man.
First off – there really hasn’t been a surge in violence – we had higher rates of homicides in this nation in the past…but the mass shootings seem to be up – I haven’t looked up any numbers on that, but there definitely is a sense there are more mass shootings these days.
People are quick to rush to point fingers at guns (the number of guns and types of guns), our collective valuing of life, lack of God or too much God – and all are areas to explore and have some validity.
One I’ll throw out – the age of social media and lack of community. I think as lives have become more ‘plugged-in’, people are separated from each other more. My dad told me yesterday about his growing up – and how parents parented their own kids and other kids, and it was just the way it was. You knew as much about the neighborhood kids as your own some times, and correction, love, guidance and protection had a wider net. I don’t know how you get back to that. I don’t know if you can get back to that. But I think there is some truth in that.
Thoughts on decline of American culture:
Here is the history of the so called “sexual revolution” in America in a nutshell. Some medical bioscientist researcher discovered that if you juggle the female horomones you can stop ovulation of the female egg, therefore the infamous “Pill” was discovered and mass produced for profit by pharmaceutical companies under the guise of liberating women to enjoy sex without being worried about becoming pregnant or to control the birth rate among those who should not be giving birth. The medical doctors where given a sales pitch about the positive outcome this would have. This happened in the early 1960’s. Thereafter we began to observe the era of the “Flower Children” who were supposely enjoying all the great sexual freedom. The “Pill” was being prescribed on college campuses to woman freely. Then arrived the co-ed dorms. Then along comes Planned Parenthood sometime in the late 60’s and early seventies to set up shop and make the “Pill” available for those who could not afford it. At the same time private clinics and insurers make it easier and easier for unmarried women to access the “Pill” even including adolescent girls when they come of child bearing age. The result of this is what we already know now based the current data available. The rate of abortion has raised dramatically because people fail to use the “pill” as prescribed, They fail to use other methods of birth control so that the rate of sexually transmitted disease has skyrocketed. Many of these diseases are life threatening and debilitating. Now millions of dollars are being spent to find cures for these diseases and treat those conditions that have rendered some “would be parents” in the future unable to conceive. Some scientists now think “the pill” is carcinogenic and who knows what else it may be doing to womens bodies and their children. And now they medical scientists have produced the “Testosterone Pill” which some some scientists think can put men at risk for prostate cancer. People are dying every day from all this high risk behavior not to mention the killing of the unborn in droves, all for profit!! Face it, all this so called liberation has not worked! It has had the reverse effect if you consider the failed marriages, single parent families and now same sex marriages.
So where should the Christian Church stand on this whole issue and when is this insanity going to end? How about just teaching Biblical TRUTH, about adultery, prostitution, sodomy and God’s SACRED purpose for human sexuality?
Hi Sydney M 11:10am
I was referring to your 10:22am conclusions concerning Obama. I encourage you to exercise extreme caution about assuming anything. I did not say you were disrespectful, I meant that I do no want to be disrespectful to the situation by going on any further concerning my opinion about Obama’s “conversion”.
“One I’ll throw out – the age of social media and lack of community. I think as lives have become more ‘plugged-in’, people are separated from each other more. My dad told me yesterday about his growing up – and how parents parented their own kids and other kids, and it was just the way it was. You knew as much about the neighborhood kids as your own some times, and correction, love, guidance and protection had a wider net. I don’t know how you get back to that. I don’t know if you can get back to that. But I think there is some truth in that. ”
I think this is a good point. Pretty much everyone I have ever met who is in a gang or is into heavy drugs had a lot of issues with being really disconnected, whether it was abuse at home, or a single-parent home where there mom was working all the time. There weren’t any other adults around to pick up the slack and help out, and so people gravitate towards things like gangs to get that sense of community and belonging. It’s a vicious cycle too, I’m not sure how to stop it.
Thank you for clarifying Mary. I will clarify myself further. I don’t believe he has converted. I don’t believe his heart has softened. What I meant is that I tend to think of him as so anti-life and so anti-God that I kinda give up praying for him. Yesterday his tears showed me there is some humanity there. There is some empathy. God is working and maybe Obama will respond! I shouldn’t assume anyone is out of God’s reach but sometimes I do. I feel resolved to keep praying for Obama. :-)
We need faith-fueled leaders in our schools who are allowed to rid our schools of bullying adults. I believe there are a couple of agendas being strongly pushed in our schools that are not in the best interest of children. From my perspective, those who claim to be the most tolerant of everyone, bully-out or put in their place those who agree to disagree with their ideologies.
I believe public schools are unbalanced due to a heavy influence of those with Democrat Party tendencies. Currently, the Democratic Party, the party that supports parents killing their children, has a strong-hold on our schools. Add this negative balance and influence to a child who has anger issues and problems at home and you have a recipe for disaster. If public schools don’t become more balanced, I believe there will be more violence.
There is a lot of talk about stopping bullying at schools. Do we really believe bullies magically stop bullying at age eighteen and don’t get back into education? I hear talk by adults about the problems in the families of angry kids. No doubt. However, there are adults (some in leadership roles) working in our schools who have just as many problems who contribute to a certain climate. Parents need to stay on top of who is influencing their children. We need to look at how those who should be role-models are leading their lives and ask ourselves do we really want this person to build a tight relationship with our children?
There also seems to be an issue of accountability. Are we treating the whole family or just the child? Is there support in the community, at the county and state levels or are they a big part of the problem as well? Are poor teachers given chance after chance to get it right? Are those who have concerns hushed up and their concerns swept under the carpet? Is it a matter of more gun-control or showing and teaching children self-control?
Had I not had a strong faith in Christ and had He not guided me to where I am at for a reason, I would have been bullied out of working at a public school the first year I was there.
I also disagree that Obama’s tears were real. I’ve known narcissistic folks who are great at turning on the water-works when it works to their benefit.
Abortion needs to be outlawed.
Hi Sydney M,
As I said I respect and appreciate your charitable Christianity, and out of respect for you and this situation will again only urge caution in concluding anything.
These mass shooting are a “meme“. Richard Dawkins was almost prophetic in his coining and definition of the term. We saw the explosion of memes on social media, evolving and adapting to the culture. Nearly all are funny and underscore certain things about society. The “Rage Faces” themselves demonstrate the evolution of a new type of written language similar to hieroglyphics.
Fast forward to now, and the dynamic of these mass shootings have morphed into that of a meme. Simply because of the fact we are in the real-time information age, we can see minute-by-minute details and chronology of each shooting as it happens. People pre-disposed to these types of violence have unprecedented access to any and all details, as well as the short and long-term fallout of these events. They now can see how they can make a substantial statement and cause devastation in a manner that was usually limited to military style incursions in the past. The mass shooting idea and event timeline has taken on a life of its own, and evolved within the fabric of the culture.
Unfortunately this is the price of a free society. What kind of powers do the Police need to have to prevent a lone wolf shooter? What types of freedom of speech and religion – or even the turning from religion – need to be prohibited in order to stop this nebulous “moral decay” some attribute to this?
Forget divorce, and any other “sin” the extreme right is saying caused this. Have we forgotten that every day, tens of thousands of police, Fire, and EMS people put it all on the line? Have we forgotten that in the face of tragedy, time and time and time again people rise to the challenge and demonstrate the good of the human race?
Here’s a proactive idea I saw from someone else and want to pass on: those with faith should start increasing the prayer covering in or around our schools. At the very least, prayer walk with some friends around a school after hours. The presence of God is powerful to change things.
Excellent comments, Dave.
The media. It’s saturating people with violence, details, and it’s manipulating your emotions. The media. Turn your television off for a while. When they keep saturating us with these stories, how can another violent person, or a sick person on psychotropic meds, not notice and not think about it? Be wary of the media. Use it, but don’t be used by it.
But, speaking of social media, there’s a film called Craigslist Joe, about a man who spends a month relying on the kindness of strangers. it’s very heatwarming, and I recommend it as a balance to all the bad news you’ve been watching.
Here’s a proactive idea I saw from someone else and want to pass on: those with faith should start increasing the prayer covering in or around our schools. At the very least, prayer walk with some friends around a school after hours. The presence of God is powerful to change things.
Yes! Some days I get so disheartened but then catch the eye of someone I know who has a strong faith and I am reminded that we have a responsibility to lift those around us up in prayer, stay strong and not allow any evil to keep us from doing what we are called to do. Thanks for the reminder, Carol; I need to remember to do more of this.
When the results of the toxicology tests come in we will probably find a toxic combination of substances. Or maybe he was, dare I say it…possessed?? I am not saying the perpetrator did not have some kind of control, but sometimes people get in to something that makes them lose all sense of reality. In my corner of the world a teen consumed some drugs and had such a terrible reaction he got into his car, floored it going down the nearest road and launched into a home at about 100 mph, killing himself instantly. Thankfully, the family was in the back of the house at the time.
Forget divorce, and any other “sin” the extreme right is saying caused this. Have we forgotten that every day, tens of thousands of police, Fire, and EMS people put it all on the line?
Dave, I hit the like button on your comment because I liked part of it.
I have to add, however, that I believe the breakdown of the traditional family definitely adds to violence. From what I see and from what statistics show, boys with absent dads are at the most risk of becoming violent. They are looking for someone to show them how to be a man and they are finding it in gangs and violent video games. Girls are becoming just as violent. Society telling them it is okay to have sex outside of marriage and then to kill their unborn children when they have a “contraceptive failure” makes girls just as violent but this isn’t being spread all over the media. There needs to be some accountability for actions.
To imply that those of us who believe divorce and other sins contribute to violence are forgetting the good people who put their lives on the line every day, is not a fair comment.
In my corner of the world a teen consumed some drugs and had such a terrible reaction he got into his car
Why did he turn to drugs? What was home and school like for him? Where did he get the drugs? Was he involved in a church community? Did anyone see he was having troubles and search for these truths and try to help?
I do believe some people are possessed, too. Church influences are important to our communities and more parents need to get themselves and their kids there.
It’s not just “faith” that has bound us, it is the object of our faith, Yahweh. As John Cahn, author of the recemt bestselling book, The Harbinger, wrote, America and Israelare the only two nations whose founders “saw themselves in covenant with God…. [T]hePuritans, America’s founders, established America after the pattern of ancient Israel.”
With respect to everyone here, we need to recognize that there is no covenant between God and the USA. There never was, and plenty of the founders were not of that view because of the divergent positions of their religious beliefs cannot be reconciled with the idea that they believed such a thing. Of those that were adherents, many were all different flavors of unitarians and deists as well as agnostics and of course more traditional orthodox Christians who confessed the historic creeds. They did not believe there was a covenant between God and the USA and they did not claim such a thing. The fact that they would ask God’s blessing on the nation in no way supports the idea that they thought they could or even wanted to compel God into a covenant with the USA. If you are religious, this seems blasphemous. If not, just silly. Within the Judeo-Christian context, people cannot compel God to serve their interests or that of their nation by imagining a covenant. It is preposterous, and our educated founders would have at least known that even if they didn’t believe it. America has long been filled with lots of odd religious sects, and the author of the Harbinger is a case in point.
“What are your thoughts? Do you think the abyss can be averted? If so, how?”
No. There is a lack of collective will. Consider Chicago. How many school children have been gunned down there in the past month? And the residents just accept it. Sure it isn’t all in one hour but the per capita total for the year is probably the same in Chicago as it is in this shooting’s locale.
We need a police presence in each public school. We guard our money and drugs better than our kids. Hospitals and banks have better security. Schools are the ultimate soft targets, and it’s a disgrace. My mother is a teacher in CT. A cop was assigned to her hallway yesterday. That gives me far more peace than either more gun control or further arming civilians.
Leading a moral life is like running up the down escalator. You have to run your heart out just to stay put! If you slow down or stop, you are backsliding. If you get tired of the slog, you can decide to turn around and take the easy road to the bottom. We can all be Adam Lanza. And we can all be Mother Teresa. In a country that kills it’s own children, that upward slog just starts to feel a little pointless, a type of madness sets in–call it possession, it’s probably a type of demon–and you see no evil. We ask ourselves Why? Why didn’t he just kill himself if that was his bent? Why the 20 little ones? We have to posit complete loss of faculties in order to comprehend that level of depravity. A life of evil, even a short 20 years, is enough to explain this. A heart completely devoid of the grace of God.
Obama says, “The majority of those who died were children beautiful little kids between the ages of 5 and 10 years old”
I just cannot swallow this from a man who supports violence on children when they are the most dependent on their mothers. I pray and long for the day when we elect a real leader in our country who will say in regards to abortion, “The majority of those who died were children beautiful little kids between the ages of conception and birth”
The only difference between those beautiful, wonderful children in Connecticut and all those beautiful, wonderful children being killed in legal “medical facilities” across our nation today is age and location.
If our children are not safe in our wombs, they are not safe anywhere. Innocent blood is being shed so that we may wake up. Will we ever?
I’m really sad about this and sorry to say that I have no answers.
This is a result of excluding Jesus, the Prince of Peace, from our lives. Even those who do not believe that Jesus is God are influenced by his teachings of love and peace, which show us how to keep evil at bay. The spirit of envy, anger, hatred and wrath if left unchecked will result in atrocities such as this.
Although this shooting reaches a new level of horrifying, I have to say that I am surprised it doesn’t happen more often. With the way things are going – all the various interacting factors mentioned above – I have profound fear of what humans are capable of when they see life without any real meaning and full of unmanagable pain. All the causes that contribute to this effect can all be solved by having a personal relationship with God. Try as we may, nothing can take the place of basking in the perfect love of the creator of the world.
There is no surge in violence. This is sensationalist nonsense. Violent crime has dropped sharply since the early 1990’s.
Let’s see — we establish “Gun Free Zones” in which even trained people with concealed carry permits are not permitted to defend themselves. Then we wonder why nutcases go on unabated killing sprees there. We lame the lambs and wonder why the wolves eat so many.
I’m not sure if we can point to one root cause of nightmares like this. As for divorce and fatherless families — remember that the Columbine shooters, Klebold and Harris, and John Cho, the Virginia Tech shooter, came from stable, intact families. And please don’t point fingers at those of that are divorced. If you’re in an abusive relationship, what are you supposed to do?
I don’t think we’ll ever really know what goes on in the minds of these lunatics. They remind me of the poem “Alone,” by Edgar Allen Poe, where he says ”
“I see a demon in my view.”
And as for anti-depressants — no one can deny that there are problems with them, but I have been taking Paxil for years and they have helped me live a normal life. Without them and my other meds I couldn’t function very well.
Anyway. my daughter is a third grade teacher in ATL. She loves her “babies” as she calls them and is a good teacher. She told me that security is good in her school, but I still worry. Please surround Sam and all the teachers and children in our schools with prayer. Thank you.
Christina,
How would liberal gun laws that encourage every single person to have a gun have helped?
The man shot up an elementary school where there were 5-10 year old kids.
Unless you believe that 5 to 10 year old kids should have the right to bear arms to protect themselves the idea that this could have been prevented if we had MORE personal guns is asinine.
Do you think the abyss can be averted?
What abyss?
The abyss of historically low crime rates, apparently.
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/violent-crime/violent-crime
Behold the FBI’s violent crime statistics and see what contraception, abortion, pornography, violent video games and movies, and all the other artifacts of social rot that conservatives have helpfully identified hath wrought upon this once great land. We really need to go back to the gangland paradise of the early 20th century.
Why did he turn to drugs? What was home and school like for him? Where did he get the drugs? Was he involved in a church community? Did anyone see he was having troubles and search for these truths and try to help?
Good questions, Praxedes. Don’t have the answers but you put a finger on it…it is why a kid turns to drugs that is often the real problem, not so much the drugs themselves. Plenty of kids mess with drugs a bit and then move on without being affected, so it seems they must have more going for them. I do believe along with many others here that a strong faith life is integral to building character.
Guess I agre with much John L. says. But I have some personal-familial answers. When I was a spry (all 6-7 of us kids) became ‘rowdy’ at times. There would be all kinds of bickering. My Mom started us praying the rosary together. Like clockwork, our divisiveness would just melt away and would stay away for as long as we prayed together. This was a gift-stronger-than-magic. Not only is Jesus the Prince of Peace, but as St. Paul writes: ‘He is our peace.’ It is not ‘he gives us peace’; but, ‘He IS our peace.’ And Our Mother is “The Queen of Peace”.
We may never make sense out of ‘evil’, but we should not fear it either. REMAIN IN HIS LOVE and PEACE.
Good to learn that violent crime is down in the United States. We can remind those people in Connecticut that truth. I can remind my psychologist daughter who counsels rape victims that – it’s all good because violent crime has decreased.
Barb -
Nobody has said that violence is gone.
The headline asks about the ‘surge in violence’. Statistically, there isn’t one. That was simply pointed out.
And please don’t point fingers at those of that are divorced. If you’re in an abusive relationship, what are you supposed to do?
Phillymiss, not pointing fingers at all; just speaking from experience and observations. I am a formerly battered wife who left and knows a bit about the effects of violence and divorce on families. “Stable and intact” families are not always as they appear. The shooters at Columbine were into things their parents did not make themselves aware of. Teens don’t like you to pry, but pry we must. Domestic abuse is a difficult and hidden subject, no doubt but we can all help in some way. Maybe just a smile and a prayer at times. Some more on the topic if interested: http://www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/marriage-and-family/marriage/domestic-violence/when-i-call-for-help.cfm
Jerry and John, I too believe that faith and the rosary are great preventative medicines to tragedies like this.
joan, your crime rate stats don’t factor in abortion. Abortion is both violent and criminal. Because you and current law don’t agree, doesn’t make it so.
Ok, Shannon. Breathe.
Nowhere on Christina’s post does she even remotely mention that little children should bear arms, so you can stop putting words in her mouth right about now.
Let’s focus on what she did say, shall we?
It is a fact that the vast majority of school campuses are gun-free zones.
It is a fact that Connecticut has restrictive gun control laws, relatively speaking. It is also a fact that the elementary school in question was a gun free zone that had just implemented security measures. It is a fact that Adam Lanza forced his way into the school in spite of those security measures.
Most folks with their wits about them (read “law abiding citizen”) would follow the rules and leave it at that. Not Adam Lanza.
He is precisely the reason why gun control laws are ineffective, since it restricts the ability of law abiding citizens to defend themselves and others should human time bombs like Adam Lanza seek to deprive others of their right to life.
I will not speak for Christina, but I will state on my own behalf that had the staff of that sweet little elementary school been armed and trained in self defense, we probably would not be mourning the loss of so many of those precious angels today.
I’m not trying to politicize this; it gets tedious when after every mass shooting the gun control chorus takes advantage of the situation and starts singing their tune.
Let Newton, CT mourn. And let the rest of us continue to defend our freedoms.
I don’t really understand the shock or surprise over the idea of armed police officers everywhere – in schools, churches, malls. Isn’t that the constant argument made against gun restrictions? That we should all be our own policeman? That we should just be a nation of millions of armies of one?
I am not anti-gun. for the record.
I’m not trying to politicize this; it gets tedious when after every mass shooting the gun control chorus takes advantage of the situation and starts singing their tune.
It gets really tedious when gun advocates take advantage of every gun-related tragedy to argue that the solution is even more guns.
Let it be known, I am not opposed to gun ownership. In principle, I’m not even opposed to concealed carry laws, but I am weary of gun owners taking the responsibilities of gun ownership lightly.
Owning a gun, carrying a gun, should be a heavy responsibility. The documentation, background, weapons security and training requirements currently in place are laughable. Witness the Trayvon Martin case, or has everyone already forgotten?
It must be corrected. It will corrected.
Shannon, that rat bastard never would have gotten past the principal’s office if any of the administrators had been armed. He’d have never made it 20 yards down the hall if the janitor had been armed.
“Gun Free School Zones” are a way of announcing to the unhinged that the victims are plentiful and utterly undefended. It’s EVIL to have disarmed the people who would have protected those kids. Those kids are DEAD because the anti-gun zealots painted a target on them.
“Gun Free School Zones” are a way of announcing to the unhinged that the victims are plentiful and utterly undefended.
You’re implying that the shooter chose that school because it was a “gun free school zone.”
What’s the source of your information?
The police haven’t even announced the results of their investigation unless you’re privy to somthing.
So, if not for yourself, for whom are you shilling?
I honestly am never going to understand the concept of “Gun Free” zones unless it’s to prevent gun accidents, which are admittedly a huge problem. If someone wants to bring a gun somewhere to do some harm, I can promise that it won’t matter whether it’s against the rules or not.
I don’t see a problem with school administration being armed as long as they get training up to at least the level I am trained at, to be an armed security guard. The last thing we need is people freezing up and accidentally shooting innocents because they don’t have the proper training.
As a society mothers are no longer expected to be there raising their children on a full time basis. They fact that we see it “ok” for mother’s to prioritize careers over their unborn children and kill their children in the womb is a glaring a glaring symptom of the mindset that leads us to the ever increasing incidence of this kind of unthinkable violence. On an ever-increasing basis families are making the decision to send mother’s into the workforce instead of being homemakers. The child-care void leads to children’s behavioral issues being control through medications instead. This may be the result of a kid that spent his formative years on drugs to keep him from acting out. Maybe society should put the focus back on valuing children above careers and quit drugging children cause we think it is the “easy way out”.
And because there will be more and more lawlessness, most people’s love will grow cold.
Matthew 24:12
Hi ts,
I think you idealize the past a bit here. Throughout history mothers have had to work. Some farmed, spent the days in the city selling their goods, were slaves, had careers, both reputable and disreputable, and assuming a child even had a living mother, her time was consumed with obtaining food, maintaining a home, or sometimes just trying to survive. Older children helped care for the younger. Mothers couldn’t, and didn’t, raise their children on a full time basis. Also widowhood or abandonment could force mothers to do desperate things, like put their children in orphanages, sell them into slavery, or as my great grandmother had to do, “farm them out” to families who cared for them in return for work, which was more like indentured servitude.
Life was certainly not idyllic for children either. They didn’t spend their days playing with friends or enjoying Twinkies and milk after school while mom cooked dinner.
Sorry ts, but I just don’t see where things are so different, if anything it may be better now than it was for our foremothers. I don’t have to chop wood, haul water, farm, can food, sit in the town all day hoping to sell enough to have enough food the next day, or read and work by candlelight, etc.
It seems like the pro-choicers and the pro-gun lobby have a similar argument – that their freedoms (perceived or otherwise) are so important that they outweigh anything else – that even if people die as a result of these freedoms, these freedoms are still too important to curb at all.
Look – we all agree that every weapon isn’t good – nobody here believes that private citizens should be able to have bombs or rocket launchers. As a society, we need to struggle to say where the line should be drawn – what guns should be allowed by what people, and what safeguards should be in place to prevent dangerous people from having guns.
I don’t understand the defeated attitude – heck, somebody even argued that we should just arm these schools (if anybody wants to debate that one with me, I’m more than willing!). The argument that some controls won’t work at all is hogwash – that argument is essentially saying that Americans are uniquely violent in this world – uniquely without morals or controls that things that do work in other countries wouldn’t work here.
Off my soapbox and heading to church.
Carder, Christina and others.
I want you to really consider what you are advocating. You think it would have been better had the teachers had guns?
Sure maybe if all of those teachers had police training. But they wouldn’t. Very few people especially those who don’t routinely shoot people are equiped to locate, load and use their gun without harming others. Nor do most people without police training know how to make those spiit second decisions–who to shoot and who not to shoot.
Furthermore. Where would the teachers keep these guns? If they were in a super secret safe out of the reach of children, the administrators wouldn’t be able to get them fast enough in case of emergency. If the guns are left in the classroom or on the teachers person could you imagine what would happen if one of the students got hold of the gun? or if the teacher accidentally shot it. You think the headlines are crazy now, you think parents are outraged now, just wait until their children make a game of trying to pull the handgun off of the teacher to play with or the teacher inadvertantly shooting one of kids, or the teacher getting frustrated and shooting the gun, or the gun going missing and it turns out that someone stole it to commit another crime.
Mary, Mothers worked outside the home yes. But not even close to the extent they do today. And in my post that was a ‘symptom’ and not the cause. What they didn’t used to do is get doctors to prescribe mind-altering drugs to keep them under control. These drugs are all over in the schools now. Elementary students through high-school. My point was that putting kids through their formative years controlling their behaviour with mind-altering drugs didn’t used to be the way and now it is much more common. Really, what would you expect?
Maybe I didn’t express myself clearly Mary. The cause here would be the ‘boon ‘ in prescribing mind-altering drugs to control our kids behavior;(ADD etc.). The fact that we ‘don’t have time’ to raise them without the drugs is a symptom of society. Abortion is a glaring symbol of this symptom where we are told that careers are more important then the lives of our unborn children. Maybe when parents/society realizes how this leaves their kids (no tools to cope w/o mind-altering meds) they will stop doing this to their children.
But it is far easier to place oneself in denial that we could be responsible for these kids actions (prescribing prolonged use mind-altering medication) and to blame guns instead. News flash: guns aren’t just walking themselves into schools and theatres and pulling the trigger.
Place the kids with the sickness we call ADD on mind-altering drugs. Place the adolescent girls vulnerable to the sickness society calls pregnancy on BC to prevent their illness. Parenting in a pill.
“I don’t understand the defeated attitude – heck, somebody even argued that we should just arm these schools (if anybody wants to debate that one with me, I’m more than willing!). The argument that some controls won’t work at all is hogwash – that argument is essentially saying that Americans are uniquely violent in this world – uniquely without morals or controls that things that do work in other countries wouldn’t work here.”
I don’t think we should arm schools, I just don’t see a problem with a couple school administrators being taught crisis training and some really good firearm training. Or maybe having an armed security guard on campus during school hours.
I do believe in some restrictions for guns, I haven’t heard a valid argument that people should own automatics, for example. I just think it’s kinda a losing battle. The US may not be uniquely violent, but we do have some unique situations that make just focusing on gun control difficult (compared to Europe for example). Our prison system is one, we have some of the worst recidivism in developed countries, and we have more of our population in prison/ex-cons than any other developed country (and we are worse than some developing countries too!). Our mental healthcare is abysmal, people aren’t able to access proper mental health services, what they can access is underfunded and inadequate, we have extremely limited criteria for involuntary commitments when someone is a danger to themselves/others, and there’s still a huge stigma for seeking mental healthcare in the first place. Also to go along with the mental healthcare angle is drug abuse and addiction, our way of dealing with that is pretty terrible as well. Most gun violence in the US, from what I have read, is drug related, and our “war on drugs” nonsense is making that a lot worse. Those things, I think, are some of the real problems.
We can restrict guns all we want, but while these problems still exist in the magnitude that they do now we will just end up with an even bigger illegal arms trade, they come in with drugs from South America and Asia.
So I don’t know, I don’t think it’s guns that are the issue, and I think we are getting nowhere if we continue to fight about that rather than to look at why we are struggling with this stuff in this country.
“Mary, Mothers worked outside the home yes. But not even close to the extent they do today. ”
It depends on the era, the country and class of the mother you are talking about. You’re just picking a certain time in your head (fifties maybe? ;)) to make your hypothesis fit. I was reading about medieval nobility yesterday, for example, and apparently noblewomen didn’t do most of the typical things we think of as “mothering” now, and their kids were quite often fostered out at other noble’s houses at early ages for much of their childhood.
It’s actually interesting to read about different parenting expectations throughout the ages, our’s isn’t even remotely close to the the “worst” era for moms not spending time with their kids.
Hi ts, 10:51am
I don’t agree. Just maintaining a home meant continuous work like chopping wood, cooking from scratch, farming, gathering, making clothing, washing and cleaning, etc. This left precious little time for childcare, and remember children were put to work as soon as they were able. Desperate poverty often drove women to work as prostitutes. The victims of Jack the Ripper weren’t walking the streets because they found it glamorous.
Pregnant women, mothers, and children would follow their menfolk to war.
My great grandmother, like many immigrant women, was a domestic, and these were 12-14 hour days with maybe Sunday off to go to church. No one asked who was caring for the domestic’s children while she was caring for the children of others.
Also ts, hospitals were and still are largely staffed by females and have been for decades. What about their children?
Oh and ts, kids were using drugs on their own, just as mind altering, long before they were routinely described. Drug abuse is as old as the human race. I would agree that the way kids are prescribed drugs nowadays is a travesty. Also, decades and centuries ago, kids formed gangs, they robbed and killed, they were used as soldiers, they drank dad’s liquor, they dropped out of school. They grew into good human beings and terrible human beings.
I find it interesting that the focus here and in some news articles that I’ve read, the focus is on the relationship the shooter had with his mother. I suppose maybe since she is the one he killed and he used her guns?
What was his relationship like with his father? His stepmother? His brother? What was the relationship between the parents like? One article I saw mentioned both parents were required to take parenting classes around the time of their divorce.
My ex and I were required to take a parenting class before we were divorced as well. I told the guardian ad litem that I did not want to take the class with my ex because he had threatened my life the week before but I told her I would take it any other time. This pegged me from the get-go as an “uncooperative parent” and she wrote me down as such. Many years later I tried to track down if my ex ever actually took the parenting class. No one seems to have any records of if he did or not. Some of our “systems” appear to me to be broken although I do believe abortion has a big underlying affect on violence in our society.
I wonder if we will ever hear the full, true story of what this lost young man’s formative years at both school and home were like. I’m guessing there were signs and that this didn’t happen just because.
Mary,
Tell me any other time in society where large percentages of our children were being prescribed mind-altering drugs in order to make them “fit in”? I OK, you can’t cause anti-psychotic drugs weren’t being prescribed for all the “new” illnesses like ADD. Now think about children growing up with prolonged use of these drugs eventually getting to the age where they are making the big decisions for themselves. The problem is that at this point there is no ‘themselves’. The only one that ever had any experience learning how to behave is the one on anti-psychotic drugs. What do you expect?
And there is a HUGE difference between a kid making the decision for himself or herself to take a psychedellic drug then for society to administer the drugs in order to control the kids behavior. And it is happening at very young ages.
Truth, ADD medications are not anti-psychotics. I actually share your concern about overmedication of children, my son’s pediatrician tried to tell me that he’s going to have problems with ADD in school and wanted to put him on Adderall when he’s school age. He’s four! He acts like a four year old! So, I get your concern. But stick to facts, we aren’t massively dosing our kids with anti-psychotics.
“guns aren’t just walking themselves into schools and theatres and pulling the trigger.”
No, but they sure make it easier to kill a lot of people in a short amount of time. A crazy person also walked into a school in China last week, but they had a knife instead of a gun – so the results were much different.
Hi ts,
That’s the point I made, that the way children are prescribed drugs these days is a travesty.
However, in the past young teens did, and now do, drugs. Illegally, yes. So we have always dealt with drug issues of some kind or another.
Hi Jack 11:53am
Also, the mothers in military societies like the Spartans who would turn their children over to the state and viewed their children as owned by the state.
Among nobility and the wealthy, breast feeding was relegated to a “wet nurse”. Children were raised by governesses or nannies. They might see mom and dad at mealtime
Parenting techniques have definitely, and still do vary .
Mary,
It should be obvious that there is a HUGE difference between kids making the decision for themselves to experiment with psychadellic drugs on a recreational basis then for society to administer the anti-psychotic drugs on a non-stop basis in order to control the kids behavior. There is no normal for these kids.
Jack, what is the ADD if not an anti-psychotic. It is used for behavioral modification. It stops kids from acting out and increases their aptitude right? I am glad you stood up for your kid. A lot of parents just hand over judgement to the “doctors”.
ADD meds are stimulants, truth, not anti-psychotics. It’s just not the right term. Anti-depressants are also not anti-psychotics but they are mood altering.
I didn’t want my kid on ADD meds because they are basically cleaner crack, when I was a kid I used to use them to get spun out of my mind. With all my family’s addiction issues I didn’t think it was a good idea to get him on amphetamines at age four, and I don’t think my kid actually has ADD, he’s just boisterous. I do agree with you that people are over-prescribing, but you can’t forget that ADD is actually a real disorder, and some people may actually need the drug therapy. I think that drugs should be used as a last resort though, which doesn’t seem to be the case with a lot of people.
Ex-RINO, The Glock semi-automtic handguns have been sold for decades. Guns don’t go on shooting sprees people do. The answer to the “why” lies within why these kids are now taking them into schools and theaters and shopping malls and opening fire on people.
So truth – you seem to then be of the opinion that Americans are uniquely immoral – much more savage of people than other industrialized nations – is that your thought?
The US rate for firearms deaths are over double Canada, three times France, four times Israel, nine times Australia or Ireland – and I’m struggling to even do the match against countries such as Spain, the UK, and Japan.
So all those countries are simply more moral than us?
I refuse to believe that.
“So truth – you seem to then be of the opinion that Americans are uniquely immoral – much more savage of people than other industrialized nations – is that your thought?”
I don’t get where you are getting this, you’ve said it a couple times. Do you think that if people think that our issue isn’t guns, it’s a lot of underlying things that gun control isn’t even going to touch, that they are just thinking Americans are some kind of barbarians?
Jack, what is going to be the end result when we put our kids on methaamphetamines or mind-altering anti-depressants throughout their formative years. It keeps them under control for a while but you end up with young adults that have no ‘normal’. Kids are being used as guinea pigs by the pharmaceutical industry and the doctors who get spiffs for pushing them. I can’t say that this is definitively the “why” to what happened in Connecticut. I don’t claim to know the background in detail and I came up with the theory on my own. I wanted to put it out there for discussion cause none of the other things people are saying seem to logically address the “why”. The possibility that this kid was on drugs like that as an adolescent and then ‘snapped’ makes sense to me.
Jack –
My question is, why is the US rate of gun violence so much higher than similar nations?
“My question is, why is the US rate of gun violence so much higher than similar nations?”
Well, look at what the usual gun violence crimes are related to. A lot of it is related to drug crime, we have pretty terrible drug laws that actually create more crime. Our prison system basically takes minor offenders and spits out hardened criminals. We have terrible mental healthcare. We have pretty high rates of child physical and sexual abuse. I would have to do some more research, but I do know that at least our prison system is really subpar compared to other developed countries. I wonder how we hold up on the other factors compared to other countries.
I think it’s Switzerland that has a higher private gun ownership rate than we do, but still a lot less gun crime. That might be a good comparison.
Edit: I was wrong, Switzerland has less gun ownership than we do. Teach me to post before I look things up.
Jack – here’s the countries above us on the list, or very close to us:
– El Salvador, Jamaica, Honduras, Guatemala, Swaziland, Colombia, Brazil, Panama, Mexico, Philippines, South Africa, Montenegro.
Lovely company.
Look – I believe certain people should be allowed to have guns, and certain people shouldn’t. Guns aren’t bad in an of themselves. I haven’t found a good argument though why certain guns are allowed in society, and why some common sense pieces of legislation are fought so heavily against. Doesn’t make sense to me.
A principal wanted me to put our oldest on adderall when he was in kindergarten because he was impulsive (chair tipping, getting out of his seat, budging in line) and had focus issues (didn’t listen, daydreamt). I refused and told her teachers need to teach all children, not just those who sit quietly and raise their hands.
This was a few years before I was willing to admit what was going on at home. I was still in denial and sending the message to others that all was well when it wasn’t. I believe part of my son’s issues are hereditary (predisposed to be more impulsive and aggressive) but another part of them is what he was exposed to at home and then repeated at school.
Kids that misbehave and/or drift off in school are targets for ostracizing and bullying. They in turn fight back and bully others and it becomes a vicious cycle. We need adults in schools who are able to reach kids and teach them appropriate behavior in spite of what they might be or have learned at home. We can not have adults that bully kids in schools.
Hurt people, hurt people.
Lol Ex most of those countries on that list are where we get our cocaine! Billion dollar industry! That’s what I think will happen with guns with too tight restrictions, more illegal firearms coming through with the drugs.
There are guns I don’t think should be available to civilians, for sure. I don’t see why anyone needs an automatic assault rifle for self-defense. Even for work I only have a semi-automatic, and my personal handgun is a revolver.
Which common sense pieces of legislation are you talking about?
Jack -
Other countries have people that use guns, and have more restrictions – do we see evidence of high importation that leads to higher rates?
Some ideas of legislation:
– Better background checks across states – tie funding to the states with meeting some certain requirements.
– Limit the size of high-capacity magazines (10 rounds makes sense don’t you think?)
– Close the gun show loophole.
– Regulate sniper rifles more heavily than they are now.
That would be a good start…what’s so controversial about any of those?
“Other countries have people that use guns, and have more restrictions – do we see evidence of high importation that leads to higher rates? ”
I don’t know. I do know that we have some issues as a country that might affect us more than the countries you mentioned.
” – Better background checks across states – tie funding to the states with meeting some certain requirements. ”
Yeah, I can get on that one.
“- Limit the size of high-capacity magazines (10 rounds makes sense don’t you think?)”
Eh, maybe if there’s an exception for people who need to target practice for their job, ten rounds is really not much for target shooting. At all. I do think it might end up being like the laws where cough syrup used in meth production was restricted, people ran around to different stores and bought the limit at each store. But it might do some good.
“- Close the gun show loophole.”
Agreed.
“- Regulate sniper rifles more heavily than they are now.”
I don’t get why civilians need to be able to purchase sniper rifles anyway.
So I can dig those restrictions, the only one I see an issue with is is limiting rounds purchases. We don’t disagree on that at least.
We seem to be avoiding the idea that this is really a suicide problem. In Japan, there are more of them. But here, there is the tendency to “take everybody down with me” or selfishly wipe out your family, because you consider them an extension of yourself.
I don’t see society calming down enough to reduce these outbursts. As stated, all these meds affect some for the worse, just as all meds have different side effects for different people.
Although many gun control proponents are abortion legalizers, the truth is that gun control laws have many of the same problems as anti-abortion laws. We are awash in guns. They’re not going to disappear and people will always be able to get them one way or another.
Yes, it might stop a bad person here and there from getting a gun and doing something bad with it. Similarly, anti-abortion laws will lead at least some women to carry to term or to refuse the sort of sex that leads to pregnancy.
But both types of laws will be widely disobeyed.
From what I’ve read the guns were bought legally. I’m not trying to place the blame on her, but why would she have firearms around someone who was not stable? That does not make sense.
Can we talk a little about ‘respect’? It seems to me, that Americans believe that a person with a gun commands greater RESPECT, somehow. Those without the ability to blast away, are weak and inconsequential.
From what I’ve read the guns were bought legally. I’m not trying to place the blame on her, but why would she have firearms around someone who was not stable? That does not make sense.
WORD.
After reading more this does not appear to be a case where a mother left her children to be raised by others. According to reports from the shooter’s aunt; the shooters mother spent a lot of time with her son including staying at home and schooling him because she didn’t like what was going on with her son at school. So I wouldn’t blame the ‘unattentive mother’ possibility that I brought up earlier. I am unsure of what meds if any were involved but that does still seem likely to have been a driving factor.
I don’t know precisely when he was taken out of school (I have seen a picture of him in a high-school club photo).
The guy was just insane.
None of the regulations proposed on this thread would have stopped him. If the only gun he had access to was a youth model shotgun, he could have done the exact same thing. It doesn’t take that much fire power to mow down little kids at point blank range.
We would have to lock up tons of people with mental problems to get that one in a million homicidal maniac.
This is a really tough situation for these families. If my kid needed drug treatment for behavioral issues I would avoid the drugs for “mental disorders” and try valium or some other sedative.
Posted this elsewhere, but I really want to know if anyone else caught this and if I heard Obama correctly …
Was not recording Obama’s address, so I could be wrong, but did he just quote Ecclesiastes 11:5? And can you guess which part he seemed to omit?
Ecclesiastes 11:5 ….
5 As you do not know the path of the wind,
or how the body is formed[a] in a mother’s womb,
so you cannot understand the work of God,
the Maker of all things.
Ok, so I think I’m wrong now on the Ecclesiastes thing. Sorry. Should always wait to read the transcript.
It was very helpful to me to read the facts about mass murders in our history.
http://legalinsurrection.com/2012/12/no-mass-shootings-are-not-on-the-increase/#more
LifeJoy says: December 16, 2012 at 10:15 pm
Ecclesiastes 11:5 ….
5 As you do not know the path of the wind,
or how the body is formed[a] in a mother’s womb,
so you cannot understand the work of God,
the Maker of all things.
LJ,
An alternative translation of that same verse could read, Just as you do not know the path of the spirit so you do not know how the soul enters the child in the womb.
Contrast that with Jesus said in John 3:8, “The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going; so is everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
An alternative translation of that same verse could read, Just as you do not know the path of the spirit so you do not know how the soul enters the child in the womb.
Contrast that with Jesus said in John 3:8, “The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going; so is everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
I like it, ktb. It is a beautiful mystery indeed. All glory to God.
Heaven’s Gate
Twas’ 11 days before Christmas, around 9:38
when 20 beautiful children stormed through heaven’s gate.
Their smiles were contagious, their laughter filled the air.
They could hardly believe all the beauty they saw there.
They were filled with such joy, they didn’t know what to say.
They remembered nothing of what had happened earlier that day.
“Where are we?” asked a little girl, as quiet as a mouse.
“This is heaven.” declared a small boy. “We’re spending Christmas at God’s house.”
When what to their wondering eyes did appear,
but Jesus, their Savior, the children gathered near.
He looked at them and smiled, and they smiled just the same.
Then He opened His arms and He called them by name.
And in that moment was joy, that only heaven can bring.
Those children all flew into the arms of their King.
And as they lingered in the warmth of His embrace,
one small girl turned and looked at Jesus’ face.
And as if He could read all the questions she had
He gently whispered to her, “I’ll take care of mom and dad.”
Then He looked down on earth, the world far below
He saw all of the hurt, the sorrow, and woe.
Then He closed His eyes and He outstretched His hand,
“Let My power and presence re-enter this land!”
“May this country be delivered from the hands of fools”
“I’m taking back my nation. I’m taking back my schools!”
Then He and the children stood up without a sound.
“Come now my children, let me show you around.”
Excitement filled the space, some skipped and some ran,
all displaying enthusiasm that only a small child can.
And I heard Him proclaim as He walked out of sight,
“In the midst of this darkness, I AM STILL THE LIGHT.”
Written by Cameo Smith, Mt. Wolf, PA