To The Reader’s Forum:

Gun control in London has been such a flop that the push is on to impose knife control. After all the talk over here about gun violence, reasonable gun control and even revocation of the 2nd Amendment, the need for common sense could not have been better stated than in the wit of Walter Williams writing, “I’m tempted to ask those who believe that guns are today’s problem whether they think that guns were nicer yesteryear.” The hogwash of blaming inanimate objects and demonizing organizations defending the 2nd amendment may score feel-good political points, but totally misses the bulls-eye of substantive solutions by a long shot.

Last March in Mayville, Sheriff Joe Gerace hosted a timely workshop for places of worship to have a plan set in place for security and safety issues including the potential of a shooter. A lot of practical guidelines were offered, especially from former US Marshal Tina Lewis Roe. Another guest speaker Brent Isaacson, citing a source, said, “Imagined omnipotence… actually exists during the few moments of the mass murder.” For 12 minutes, a shooter feels omnipotent. This sick fantasy of omnipotence often results in a shooter committing suicide as a way to control the end of the event.

No person with common sense is going to miss seeing mental illness in a person thinking like that, but you would have to be blind not to spot the undeniable deep-seated spiritual problem present as well. Who but God is omnipotent? For a shooter to have such a depraved fantasy of feeling omnipotent is the height of sinful human arrogance.

However, we can no more discuss the dark spiritual component in school shootings than we can talk about the direct tie of Islam to terror without being labeled as a lunatic, hater or bigot. As important as it is to address the symptoms, there’s a hesitancy and resistance to confronting malevolence at the deepest root. Is mental illness or depraved human nature the source of the problem?

For lasting, effective and substantive solutions rather than just reaching for the cheap, quick-fix Band-aids, let’s get to the root of it. It’s not about an object and the lack of gun-control and government regulation, but the human heart and the absence of self-control and discipline. No matter how much helpful analysis and technique is done psychologically, the Bible gets us to the root of and the answer to the disturbing systemic problem.

The Rev. Mel McGinnis

Frewsburg