Mass Murder in a Post-Christian World

Disaster struck us again, this time in Las Vegas, Nevada with an unfortunately well-orchestrated plot to mass murder some 22,000, concert goers. Fifty-nine were killed and five-hundred were wounded.

Immediately, the questions – so routine now – poured in: could we have prevented this madman? Can we add new laws to prevent this from happening again? Can we simply ban all guns?

The answers to these first three questions are: probably not, maybe, but unlikely, and no. We live in a free society and until we give up our freedom for security where a secret police can follow everyone, nothing will change. Small laws can be passed, laws that criminals don’t follow anyway, hence the name criminal. But such laws only restrict the law-abiding. Simple. Elementary logic. Banning guns, on the other hand, is, by all measures, impossible. The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution ensures the right to own and bear arms. This amendment is part of the Bill of Rights, which was written in language that perpetually preserves the basic rights the first ten amendments covered. To amend the Bill of Rights is a doubly-daunting task on the implausible side.

The real problem in these massacres is not guns, because guns have no agency, people are the problem, fallen, sinful, often psychotic people who personally obtain the weapons, who personally load the weapons, and who personally use the weapons. Guns themselves require human intervention.

The problem of people is both simple and complex, and the answers are both simpler and more complex. The simple solution is to restore those things in our society that gave people a sense of direction and a personal prohibition from committing such heinous acts.

Looking at mass murder statistics, the rates have risen every decade – except the 2000s, maybe because of 9/11 and the ensuring wars in which Americans had a sense of purpose – since the 1960s. What changed? Postmodernism changed liberals into progressives, Roe v Wade changed our values for human life, made it cheap and disposable, divorce weakened the family – the building block of our society – and LBGT rights have overthrown religious freedom. Along with all this, since the 1960s, racism has been dragged into a brighter, harsher spotlight despite the legal framework in our country that demands equal justice for every citizen. Finally, God has been dragged out of the public square.

The simple fact is – even for those who don’t believe – God created the universe and saw that it was good. God created human life in His image – imago Dei – and bestowed upon all human beings equal dignity and a commandment to love on another.

Humans who chose to replace God with their own likeness are the purveyors of evil. Why? Because they move directly against God. Humans, left to the own designs, created the Holocaust, Communist purges, historical pogroms, ethnic cleansing, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, abortion, and mass murder with guns at Columbine, San Bernardino, Aurora, Tucson, Orlando, Washington, D.C., Sandy Hook, Virginia Tech, and Las Vegas. The guns made no plans, took no action on their own, and had no motives.

Only people, look at people.

Again, people choose, and it’s easier to kill with no Ten Commandments to look at or any greatest commandment of loving one another hanging over the conscience.

If a human being is simply a thing, it can be killed in the womb, or killed in a vacant lot at a concert; surely nameless, faceless, people are easier to intimidate, to terrorize, and to massacre.

Each of us Catholics have been called to spread the Good News of the Gospel – that we are freed from the shackles of death and have been given the right to choose what is right, to love and be loved.

Because truly loved people never pull the trigger.