On Tuesday, an 18-year-old murdered 19 children and 2 adults at Robb Elementary School, one of the public schools in Uvalde, Texas - 80 miles west of downtown San Antonio, 54 miles east of the border with Mexico.
The Wall Street Journal reports the gunman was shooting outside the school for 12-minutes before entering the building through a propped-open door and barricading himself in a classroom full of children.
The Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) has confirmed that the shooter “was not confronted by law enforcement before he entered Robb Elementary School...”
Amanda Prestigiacomo at the Daily Wire reports that parents gathered outside of the school urged law enforcement to enter the school to confront the shooter, but were ignored. Some were allegedly even handcuffed, tackled, thrown to the ground, and pepper-sprayed by authorities when they attempted anyways.
According to Not the Bee, Robb Elementary is a 4-minute drive from the police station. Law enforcement took 15-minutes to get there.
“By most reports, there was a 40-minute window where police stood down and did nothing to stop the shooter.” And not only did law enforcement not go in, they used less-than-lethal measures to prevent parents from entering the school.
Whether we’re talking sins of commission or sins of omission, this horrific incident was caused not by firearms or mental illness; this was caused by man’s sinful nature run amok in our country.
For starters, a pattern of excessive reliance on civil authorities, over and against parental engagement, directly contributed to this. The same U.S. government that has told us for nearly 50-years that it’s okay to abort our children also implores us to send our children off to them for instruction. And far too many of us give our consent, all too happy to be affirmed in doing so.
But when the government tells us we’re not allowed to rescue our own children in an active shooter scenario, even as they too stand by until an hour has passed with the gunman on the grounds and in the building - here also too many of us will all-too-meekly obey because we long ago abdicated.
It doesn’t take a village to raise a child, it takes a Mom and Dad. Mothers and fathers are the primary caregivers and caretakers of children by God's design. But if you wait until an incident like this to realize that, or act accordingly, you have waited too long and it’s already too late.
The bystander effect says that when something is everyone’s responsibility, that’s near enough to saying that thing is no one’s responsibility. And that's how we need to think of the assertion that it takes a village, or the government, to raise our children.
I say this what great sadness and heaviness of heart - what happened in Uvalde, Texas on Tuesday is exactly the sort of thing that happens when godless collectivism is embraced and then breaks down. Yet those who contributed to this tragedy by demanding godlessness and collectivism will insist on ever more of the same as a solution.
Governing authority is God-given and God-ordained, and should be a blessing to a nation exalted by righteousness. But the role of godly government is two-fold: to reward those who do good and to punish those who do evil. Human flourishing and civilization crumbles when government either refuses to do both, or else does their opposites – rewarding those who do evil and punishing those who do good.
So also here, the solution of more gun control is problematic on two fronts. For one, it promises to punish and constrict those who exercise their Constitutional and God-given right to self-defense by infringing more and more on their ability to do so against wicked men. But perhaps most importantly, such measures miss the point entirely, and distract from one simple truth - that these shootings are happening because we have celebrated all our sin instead of repenting of it.
