The Horror of Murder

It’s that time of year again: graduations, proms, school shootings.

I’m seriously not trying to make light of what the kids and families in Parkland or Santa Fe or any other location have gone through. I tried to read a few of the articles…and had to stop. I can’t imagine what they saw or heard. How frightened they were. How long – if ever – it will take for the scars to heal. I don’t ever want such an experience. And I certainly don’t want my children to have such an experience. Yet another reason they will be homeschooled.

But I am sick and tired of a bunch of high school kids, many of whom are not even old enough to drive, getting up on soapboxes and screaming about things they haven’t thought through. Or that adults with agendas tell them to shout. Or the media raises to such heights one would think fourteen years olds suddenly have the wisdom of Solomon when most of them can’t even diagram a sentence. Or spell on their Twitter. Something is very wrong with our world.

Because here are a few facts these teenagers don’t even know about. Or, if they do happen to be informed, don’t think about. Because adults don’t want them to. The media and liberals certainly don’t want them to. And their world as a whole has immunized them to. School shootings (or any shootings) are terrible…but the loss of life is nothing compared to what teenagers on a daily basis do that takes away life.

One: drunk driving. Drinking is illegal under the age of 21 across the entire United States. Therefore, any teenager drinking is committing a crime. (Something most school shooters are not doing when they have a gun. In most – not all – cases, the shooter is of age to have a gun in possession and even legally owns the weapon they just committed a crime with.) And yet, approximately eleven million teenagers drink. A very large percentage of these teenagers then go and drive a vehicle while intoxicated. It is estimated that 4,300 deaths are caused on a yearly basis by a teenager driving under the influence of alcohol – 2,333 of these deaths are teenagers themselves. That means six teenagers die every day from motor vehicle injuries caused by a teenage drunk driver.

But does anyone say anything about those deaths? Or tightening laws on teenagers getting their hands on alcohol? Or keeping teenagers from driving at all? No. Of course not. That’s just life.

And number two is even worse: abortion.  Numbers attributed to abortion are extremely hard to pin down. Even abortions committed in a clinic don’t necessarily have to be reported to the state or any other entity, not to mention self-inflicted ones or the thousands committed in some apartment somewhere. But even if I throw in the low estimate of one million babies die in the United States of America (alone) from abortion a year, approximately 10.4% of those are given to teenage girls who wanted to get rid of the “problem” their jerk of a boyfriend just handed to them. That means that 104,000 babies are murdered by their teenage mothers on a yearly basis. Which equals 285 babies a day.

But does anyone say a single world about those lives that haven’t even had the opportunity to see the world God created? Or the teenage mothers who brutally murder them, often without a second thought? Is a needle sucking out your brains any more compassionate than a bullet in the head? No. Of course not. But, again, that’s life.

I do pray for those who have gone through the horror of a mass shooting. But I just think that before a single one of them gets up on their soapbox they ought to consider the thousands of lives that are taken away on a daily basis through the means of something besides a gun. Because it isn’t the weapon that caused the crime, the horror, the death or the pain. It’s the person behind the weapon. A person who, like ourselves, is a heinous sinner and needs a Savior.