School shootings

So today as I was failing to take a nap, I was listening to Jay Sekulow (for those not in the loop, America's biggest lawyer on the subject of defending rights of faith) talking to guests and callers about the recent school shootings.  He was making a fair point- if these things happen even with gun control laws and with items other than guns, then the 'solution' is to make our schools "hard targets" with metal detectors and beefed up security.  Which I suppose will help short term- and I am being a skeptic here for a reason- but one must remember the old saying:  "When man makes a better mousetrap, nature makes a better mouse."

For example, limited access facilities- herd kids through one entrance/exit or a limited number of them, so all can be checked for weapons.  So what then happens when a prospective shooter makes himself a 'nest' near one of those points of entry- instead of going in- and guns them in the crowd?  In 1966, 17 were killed from a tower.  What then happens if they come in with plasticized explosives to beat the metal detectors at the doors?  Or are we going to ban tall buildings in rifle range of a school? (good luck with that, Manhattan)  Oh, how about we just surround the schools with walls a la the border fence?

How much education will kids get in a prison?

My point not being something is right, something else is wrong.  But in a world where we are constantly finding ways to overcome the best defense, what good does it do?  First you had nutbags injecting Tylenol capsules with poison.  So we safety sealed everything.  Then it was anthrax letters, until the average nutbag discovered that it wasn't terribly effective as far as body counts.  Then it was Saren gas; then it was fertilizer truck bombs; then it was flying planes into buildings.  Each time we tried our best to secure the weak spot, and evil found a way around it.

This weekend, a father gathered his family in a restaurant, and once they were all seated, he drove his vehicle into the wall behind which they sat, killing his daughter and injuring others.  So lock down the school.  Then watch the nutbag du jour invite everyone to a party at say, the mall, and blow them away there.  Or even more creative- dump poison into the water supply.  Or the air ducts.  Legionnaire's disease proved how effective that is.


So I went looking for data on school shootings- and found it is a tricky task.  What is your definition of a school "mass shooting?"  Can you get reliable data seeing's as the Government in the '90s forbade the CDC from collecting data on gun deaths?  Amazingly, the best source- and God have mercy on my soul for using them- is Mother Jones.  They have a school shootings database which goes back to 1982.  So I began working with their numbers.  I decided that the best way to see a trend was to take a year by year average of how many average shootings a year.  And I found something pretty chilling.

The first 9 years, 1982-90, it stayed pretty flat in the 0.5- 1.0 shootings range.  Then, after a 2-year mild step up, it shot to 1.5 per in '93; and through '98, that became the approximate new normal.

Then came 1999, and Columbine.  the five incidents that year sent the average to 1.72- but from there it did a slow drift back down.  In 2002, MJ listed no incidents; by 2004, it was back to pre- Columbine levels.

And then, boom.  the last four years of the GW Bush presidency, it shot up to 1.74, the highest ever.  Obama's first term, it went up another .29; at the end of his presidency it had climbed another .4, and had spent the entire term climbing through the 2s to 2.43 in his last year.

Not blaming Obama.  The first year of Trump's presidency, it climbed another .24, and extrapolating for a full year 2018 would give us 3 more incidents yet this year and a whopping 2.81 average- nearly double what it was at that low spot in 2004.


What happened?  This is my speculation, in an area impossible to prove.  So from here, just hear me out and make your own decision.

In 2004, San Francisco legalized same-sex marriage, and shortly thereafter Massachusetts joined in.  I know, I know, but again, hear me out.  God has consistently warned repercussions on nations that reject him.  What are the main ways of rejecting him as a nation?  Well, for one would be idolatry.  Do we have idolatry?  When I was a kid, the minimum pay for a major league baseball player was $67,500; it is now 8 times that.  Throw in Entertainment tonight, the National Inquirer, TMZ, the Academy Awards, Keeping Up With The Kardashians, and you tell me.  Sacrificing to idols?  Ask 50 million aborted babies since Roe V Wade.  Failure to obey God's word?  How about driving out prayer in public, starting with schools?  And making a nation an abomination in God's eyes.  Was Same-sex marriage the last straw for God with the USA?

Consider this.  According to wikipedia, and here I myself am guilty a bit in manipulating data, from 1900 until the banning of prayer in schools in 1962, there were 17 school shootings that involved more than one death- and seven of those were 1900-1909.  So that gives you 10 such incidents in a tetch over 50 years.  From the prayer ruling to Roe V Wade, there were SEVEN shootings in 9 years- which takes us from 0.18 shootings a year for the previous 53 years to 0.77- a four-fold increase- in those nine years.  Then, from Roe V Wade to 1982 (When Mother Jones kicks in), we add another 5 in those nine years.  So, from 1900 to school prayer, we averaged 0.27 incidents a year; by Roe V Wade, we were at .32; by 1982, we are at .35; and when you combine these wiki numbers with Mother Jones, we would have been at .6 in 2004, and we are now at .88 since 1900.

When this latest shooting took place, I told Laurie, " Once you kick God from the school, what's to stop the demons from pouring in?"  But the school shootings are just a symptom.  When the school prayer decision hit, you made a decision that would be a slow ripple through a generation.  2004 was one generation from the school prayer verdict.  We are just past a generation from Roe V Wade.  Society has been fundamentally changed, and merely undoing what we did wouldn't be enough by half to fix things.  Ask Josiah of Judah.  He dedicated his life to rebuilding his nation's place with God; it took three months before his sons had cast it all away.

Yes, I'm a skeptic.  And that is because God promised Israel a remnant.  He made no such promise to George Washington.

"It is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor."
- George Washington