News of another mass shooting.
Confirmation that once again it’s a young boy behind the trigger.
We’re left to wonder why anyone would do such a thing.
Why is it always young boys, seemingly every month now, that walk into crowded buildings and open fire on innocent people?

Why don’t these boys see any value in human life?

With “big bang” being hammered into their heads as “fact” by public schools for the past 20 years, the real question becomes, why would they?  God has been increasingly “removed” from society by our government.  Prior generations of boys had much more exposure to the idea that humans were created in the image of God.

Even if administrators in the school system don’t believe in God, the last thing they should do is teach kids they’re an accident.  Don’t tell them that everything is over when we die – we’re just “ashes to ashes, dust to dust”.  Don’t remove any standard for morality beyond “don’t judge me and I won’t judge you.”  With that as the standard, homosexuality and marijuana is now ok.  “I can do what I want as long as it doesn’t hurt you.” Suddenly, abortion is commonplace – and little value is seen in those babies’ lives.

In the absence of a meaning for our lives and a moral code, the new foundation becomes a selfish one where my standards are all that matter.  No one else’s standards are relevant to me.

If you teach young boys these principles (that there are no principles), what do you expect the outcome to be?  James Dobson of Focus on the Family and author of the book “Bringing up Boys” predicted 20 years ago that what is happening today would happen.

But the solution being proposed to remedy the steady stream of boys that commit mass shootings is gun control.  Yet, grabbing a gun is the last step in the decision making process for these young men:

1. There is no God
2. We are all an accident
3. Those other kids are really mean to me
4. I see violence all around me on TV and video games
5. I wish those boys were dead
6. There are no consequences (i.e. hell) if I kill someone, as long as I kill myself afterward
7. Where can I find a gun?

Controlling access to semi-automatic weapons is not bad, but it’s a band-aid – an emotional reaction to the continued mass murders that doesn’t address their root cause.  The violent tendencies won’t decrease until young men are taught:

1. Humans have some value
2. There is a moral standard
3. There are (eternal) consequences for our actions, so killing myself after the mass murders is not a free pass

Even Alcoholics Anonymous knows that there’s no change in behavior without relying on something outside of ourselves.  Like AA, until you restore belief in a higher power, there is no “recovery” from the trends we’re seeing today.