The English language does not provide us with sufficient words to describe the evil of walking into an elementary school and shooting up children. It would be no better had the victims been exclusively adult, but there is something particularly vile about shooting children. The murderer, however insane he might have been, is now in hell suffering for all eternity the punishment his crimes deserve.

I understand the desire for gun control, even though I do not agree with it. When we see a mass murder scene, we want to do whatever we can to prevent such things in the future. We feel desperate to do something, and gun control is the easiest way to do something – at least to feel like we are doing something. It’s far easier than transforming our violent culture (something God alone can do) and raising our children in the fear and admonition of the Lord. It is the lazy man’s solution. However, the traditional arguments against gun control have never been overcome by liberals. These arguments are not “old tired arguments.” They are arguments that have never been successfully defeated. They are as follows:

1) The second amendment guarantees the right to bear arms. No matter what tragedies may occur by the means of guns, American citizens have the right to bear arms. The only legal way of dealing with this obstacle is to amend the second amendment, thereby abolishing it or by passing the UNCRC treaty (UN Convention on the Rights of a Child) – something President Obama and Democratic senators hope to do this coming term. But pretending the second amendment doesn’t exist is not an option. It is unlikely the American people will vote for such a thing in sufficient numbers to accomplish such an amendment.

2) Criminals are not concerned with the rules. They don’t respect laws and wouldn’t respect gun control laws. They wouldn’t turn in their guns. They wouldn’t admit to having them. They would lie, cheat and steal and do whatever they had to do to obtain guns or keep their guns. They wouldn’t observe little signs on buildings signifying that guns are not allowed in such buildings. Even if psychopaths could not get guns, they could easily use other weapons. In China, a man just went into a school and injured 23 people with a knife. Shall we ban knives? What about kitchen knives and all sharp instruments? What about bombs? How would we ban all the materials people use to make bombs? A ban on guns would not have prevented the Oklahoma City bombing. It would not prevent mass poisoning. Furthermore, the gun laws in Connecticut are some of the strictest in the nation. Gun laws did not help. The killer got the guns from his mom. He didn’t even have to buy them. Gun control is too simplistic.

3) A gun ban would penalize multitudes of people who use guns properly, while doing nothing to prevent those who use guns for murder, thereby doing far more harm than good. In every situation wherein a person with a concealed carry permit has stepped up and used their gun to defend unarmed people against a psychopath, lives have been saved. More lives would be lost if guns were banned, because those who use guns to protect others would be stripped of their power to do so.

4) Gun control is like administering aspirin to a cancer patient. Giving aspirin may make us feel better that we are doing something. It may make the patient feel slightly better for an hour or two, but it fails to address the deeper disease on the inside. It deals only with the surface symptom. In other words, the gun is only an instrument. It is external. The problem is the human heart. The problem is American depravity. Our nation has had the right to bear arms from the beginning. We have always had guns with us. But we have not had school shootings, mall shootings, movie theater shootings, federal building explosions, etc. For the most part, those phenomena are recent. Why are they happening now? What has changed? Not the availability of guns. We have always had guns. The problem is our wickedness as a society. We have become so degenerate that we are routinely raising up homegrown terrorists on our own soil, in our own families, in our own schools. We are now in as much danger from within as from without. Some of our own citizens are as much a threat to our society as Muslim jihadists. We have rejected God, and we are cursed. We are suffering the wrath of God as a consequence for our love of sin, sexual immorality and violence. We approve of fornication, adultery and homosexuality. We love violent sports and movies. We play violent games and violent video games. We justify all of it by our right to free speech and expression and then we are shocked when our children grow up and kill us. Like fools, we then think the answer is to ban the second amendment instead of re-evaluating our interpretation of the first amendment. We ban God from schools and then are amazed when schools become a godless place. We teach evolution and mock creation, and then we’re dumbfounded when our children grow up without any appreciation for right and wrong.

Jesus once gave us God’s perspective on human tragedy (or whatever we call it). His words in Luke 13:1-5 were not politically correct.

“Now on the same occasion there were some present who reported to Him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. And Jesus said to them, ‘Do you suppose that these Galileans were greater sinners than all other Galileans because they suffered this fate? I tell you, no, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. Or do you suppose that those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them were worse culprits than all the men who live in Jerusalem? I tell you, no, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.’" (Luke 13:1-5)

If a preacher today responded in a way remotely similar to Jesus, he would be crucified in the media.