Before we get into our discussion, please understand that this is not a “put guns into schools” defense nor a “don’t put guns into schools” essay. In my comments, I’m not wanting to advocate either position. What I do want to emphasize is that while emotions are an important part of our human nature, when it comes to making decisions, our emotions need to be guided by facts. We will make the application to spiritual matters shortly…
In an article published online February 26, 2018, (http://news.northeastern.edu/2018/02/schools-are-still-one-of-the-safest-places-for-children-researcher-says/), James Alan Fox of Northeastern University related some findings he has made of school shootings in the United States since 1996. Our school children have experienced sixteen multiple victim shootings in this twenty-two year history, shootings which involve four or more victims and at least two deaths with firearms, not counting the shooter. Half of those are mass shootings involving four or more deaths, not counting the shooter.
Fox, and a doctoral student at the university, Emma Fridel, found that mass murders occur, on average, twenty to thirty times per year and one of those incidents takes place in a school. In their studies, they also found that shootings involving students have been declining since the decade of the 90s. In fact, Fox points out that four times as many kids were killed in schools in the 90s than today. In fact, more kids die from pool drownings or bicycle accidents. In the past twenty-five years, ten students are killed each year by gunfire, out of the 55 million students. One other point Fox makes is that in the past thirty-five years, there have only been five cases in which someone ages 18-20 used an “assault rifle” in a mass shooting.
Before we get to the application of my point, another article online, February 22, 2018, (https://www.dailywire.com/news/27440/what-percentage-mass-shootings-happen-gun-free-amanda-prestigiacomo) cites a study by the Crime Prevention Research Center to the effect that 98% of mass shootings occur in so-called “gun free zones.” That study goes back to 1950! Senator Joe Biden and President George H. W. Bush gave the country the “Gun-Free Zone Act” in 1990 so the act was bipartisan but it may not have had the desired outcome. In fact, it may have had the opposite effect: it created “soft zones” so criminals know where they can perpetrate their crimes with little to no retaliation.
As I said at the outset, I am not trying to suggest policy one way or the other. What I do want to suggest, even emphasize, is that policy needs to be guided by facts as opposed to simply knee-jerk emotional reactions. We don’t want any children, or anyone else innocent, to get killed. But, we need to use our brains and research to back up policy.
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Now, here’s the spiritual application… Many Christians and so-called Christians make spiritual decisions based on emotions and not research into the biblical text. From atheists to Protestants and Catholics, even members of the churches of Christ, set their brains and reasoning ability (logic) on a shelf and decide that they are going to do / believe whatever they want to do / believe regardless of what the biblical text says and does. That approach is illogical and ungodly.
Jesus said, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with …all your mind’” (Matt. 23:37). One of His inspired apostles wrote: “But examine everything carefully; hold fast to that which is good” (1 Thess. 5:21).
More importantly than American policy, in our practice of Christianity, let us make sure we are guided by facts and not just emotions
Paul Holland
