Prayers for the victims of the Marshall County High School shooting in Benton, KY.

We need a serious discussion about the culture of violence in our nation. Why is it that, when I was fifteen years old, conflicts between people or within the minds of individuals, were managed with fists, or words, but now they are managed with guns? What has changed? How can we turn this around?

Details about the perpetrator have not been released, but no one will be surprised if it is revealed that he came from a broken home, or a family where there was violence or little emotional support for whatever it was that was troubling him.

According to an article on Vox, there have been at least nine school shootings so far in 2018, including one just the day before the shooting in Benton, in Italy, TX, where a young girl was shot but, thankfully, not killed. Students in Knox County only just returned to school on January 8. If that holds roughly true for most of the country, then there have been nine school shootings in twelve school days.

Do we have a gun culture? Well, yes, that seems obvious. But, more than that, we have a culture that allows or even encourages the attempt to resolve or manage conflicts by gun violence. It hasn’t always been that way. That is something that has developed within the course of my lifetime. We can have all of the gun laws we want, and we have plenty (including laws on the books that were supposed to prevent these kinds of tragedies), but what we do not have is a culture of conflict resolution, or a culture of support for those who are fiercely troubled by demons.

Does anyone want to address that?

Be Christ for all. Bring Christ to all. See Christ in all.