On the day after the horrific school shooting in Florida, I tuned into Dennis Prager’s talk show. Refraining from politics, his first take focused on the aggrieved, expressing prayer for the parents experiencing the insufferable agony of the horror.

His second take was prayer for mourning parents to someday smile again. There’s a ton of grief work to get through, but if the parents do not laugh and smile again, the murderer has claimed another set of victims.

The third take was the hope for the parents to stay together. Situations like this can drive parents apart. Divorce rates tend to go up in these instances. Those couples who make it through the dreadful struggle come out stronger together.

Cautioning about emotions crying for something to be done, he said, “When passion overwhelms reason, reason becomes useless” and followed that up with a question, “What gun law would have prevented the massacre?”

Appreciating the wisdom Prager imparted, I posted it on social media. Helpful and pastoral, it was something agreeable to all, or so I thought.

“Mel McGinnis,” someone sneered, “You’ve joined the deathcult … What is wrong with you? You know full well that the bloodbath never stops. Mass shootings are a weekly occurrence in this NRA nation.

It is time to talk about gun control and gun manufacturer liability … Every week your deathcult offers fresh victims to Mammon.” (FYI, I’m not a member of the NRA and no member of the NRA has ever committed a mass shooting.)

A respectful woman replied, “I am 55 years old and have owned guns since I was 21. My guns have never injured or killed anyone! It’s not the guns that are killing people! Sinful people with no respect for God or human life are killing people!”

The sneering individual fired back, “I am sorry that your life has led you to mock the dead with the thoughtlessness of gun industry talking points … You laughingly say they weren’t killed by the instruments that killed them. Six weeks into 2018 and there have been 19 school shootings (citing a bogus report). That’s what the spiritually dead crave…”

The first-class woman unmercifully slammed has a heart of gold and, far from spiritually dead, shines with life in Christ.

Ripping away at female Trump voters, his patronizing rhetoric ratcheted up: “Women, particularly women who voted for the admitted rapist currently in the Oval Office, can also experience sexual dysfunction that they cover up with gun ownership … One strategy to ‘cure’ themselves of a memory they don’t want to remember is the gun, the phallic substitute for the lack they dare not name. Rather than work through the traumatic memory, they buy a gun.”

Taking him to task, a reasonable person called him out, “With all due respect … those comments are out of line. You really need to educate yourself before making condescending comments.”

Unable to restrain himself, his condescension unloaded on the opposite sex too: “These men and women feel potent with their deadly metal fake phalluses. The NRA tells them it’s not perverted, it’s protective, and because this is all largely driven by sexual panic … The deplorables, with their guns and their ridiculous and faithless bible readings, really are a deathcult.”

(“Deplorables.” Hillary isn’t the only one circulating the put-down.)

He wasn’t done: “The deplorables like their metal penis-shaped weapons. Their explosive ejaculations … result in death, not life … but it never stops, neither do the deplorables … These deplorables … bark out NRA talking points to mock the dead each and every week, three school shootings per week!

But the Trumpist church, including at least one ‘church full of women who pack heat,’ believes in the strange white Jesus of gun ownership and border walls.”

This isn’t Michael “the NRA is ISIS” Moore or a Putin plant playing a wacko from Antifa saying these things, but a university law professor in New York.

“When emotion overwhelms reason, reason becomes useless.” Except in this case, it’s more like, “When irrationality overwhelms academia, universities become absurdities.”

We’re hearing a lot about the factor of mental illness, but next to nothing about the reality of evil and the effects of sin in a school culture teaching a godless worldview void of moral absolutes and absolute truth. It works out fine for any kind of socialistic system controlling every facet of your life, including your guns, but in a free society set up as a constitutional republic, God is imperative and practicing individual self-control neuters the need for government gun-control.

Guards with guns protect jewelry shops, Hollywood celebrities, NFL games and city halls, but progressive politicians push gun-free zones to “protect” children.

Would it not be wise for American schools to consider the tremendously successful Israeli protection policy of fully trained armed personnel on the school grounds?

Licensed to “conceal and carry,” government disallowed a security guard from having his gun on school grounds. When shots rang out with nothing to defend himself or others from the gunfire, he sacrificed his body absorbing the deadly shots to shield the defenseless students.

That unarmed security guard was Aaron Feis. Where’s the morality in stripping individuals the right to defend themselves and others?

From the FBI to the sheriff of Broward County, all levels of government failed to keep the school safe. Despite government dropping the ball on the most preventable mass shooting in history, the press, leftist special interest groups and liberal politicians point both barrels of blame at the NRA and the Second Amendment.

Misguided blame must stop. In a sensible society with a grip on reality, there’s no place for feckless, reckless and mindless suggestions, such as “Kill the NRA” or keep schools a soft target as gun-free zones.

A pastor from the left posted an attention-getting billboard by an outspoken Australian priest decrying the Florida shooting: “When will they love their kids more than they love their guns?”

I politely posted in response, “When will progressives in America care more for kids than their government-imposed gun-free zones?” It got deleted.

The Rev. Mel McGinnis is a Frewsburg resident.