The Steel Idol

Another school shooting.

Another damned school shooting.

And the lieutenant governor of Texas had the nerve (but not the courage) to say that the problem is that we have devalued life.

This is partially true…some have devalued life, and placed too much value on the right to own any damn gun they please, and take it anywhere they want.

He bemoaned the lack of religion in schools and our lives. I bemoan the lack of religion that tells us it’s important to protect our children, and trading it for the mess of pottage that is, again, the right to own any damn gun we please, and take it anywhere we want.

You want to talk about the role of religion in the wake of this latest shooting? Fine. I can do that. Aaron and the ancient Hebrews had their idol made of gold in the shape of a calf. We have ours made of steel, in the shape of a gun. And we are sacrificing our children to it.

I thought at first when the usual suspects talked about more armed guards, fewer entrances and exits to schools (a fire hazard), and armed teachers, that they had a failure of imagination, because they couldn’t think of other ways that a shooter with a powerful enough weapon could create massive carnage. I didn’t want to mention how easily that could happen lest I give anyone some horrible ideas. But it turns out that what these people have is a failure of memory…because you might remember that the Las Vegas shooting took place in a way that no security guard could’ve stopped, that decreasing the number of entrances and exits wouldn’t have prevented, and no “good guy” with a gun could’ve ended sooner.

In short, you can make every school in the country an armed camp in order to protect your right to own guns that no one has a chance against, and someone perched up on a hill can still pick people off from a distance.

Then what will you say? Then what solution will you give that involves everything except dealing with the gun problem?

Yes, I admit that there are other issues involved here too. We have a serious anger problem in this country. A serious problem with people thinking that if they don’t get what they want when they want it, someone has to pay for it. And when you combine that anger problem with our gun culture, it’s like combining a lit candle with gasoline. We’re no longer content to just punch someone out, we want to kill them…and we can.

Fortunately, the governor of Texas is a wiser man than his second in command, and wants to put everything on the table in order to prevent this from happening again. Some people doubt that anything will come of this because he’s been known as a strong pro-gun person, but sometimes, as Spock said in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, “Only Nixon can go to China.”

Let’s hope that he’s able to successfully go to China…and is able to come back with enough imagination to destroy this idol made of steel.