Even the AMISH Are No Longer Exempt...

Yesterday's terrible shooting of Amish schoolgirls (between the ages of 6-15) in Lancaster county, PA, is going to send a mixed bag of messages that will reverberate across the nation for some time. Evil has come to a people who shrug away from "our world and it's ways".

The man who killed 8 of these children "because he had a 20 year grudge" is nothing short of a monster to be sure, but how wide were the cracks that the system provided for this family man (with 3 children himself) that he managed to fall through anyway? This man had neither a grudge against the Amish NOR young girls, but yet he went against every profile in the book when he went on his rampage. How do we prevent our children from aniother occurance such as this, and more imporantly, how do we begin to determine the standards by which a mild man such as this becomes a killer, seemingly overnight?

The ONE immediate result will be that the anti-gun lobbyists will be out in FORCE, make so mistake about that, decrying the fact that "these guns" took the lives of these children. WRONG! It was the acts of ONE MAN (with those guns however he managed to get them) that precipitated this call to action. That would be a travesty on top of the tragedy.

When a pattern of school shootings occur with a frequency not seen in this nation, we have to ask ourselves what the REAL cause of this is, and it is NOT guns. The REAL instrument of this, or any other similar crime is the PERSON wielding the gun....just as the drunken person BEHIND THE WHEEL of a car is the instrument of the crash.

Unfortunately, it takes situations such as this to motivate others into action. We see it happen on inner city streets every day, and have become an increasingly insular people, save for those willing to fight this status quo. Too many just shake their heads, saying it's such a shame, when we should be trying to figure out the HOWs and the WHYs behind things like this.

What of any justice for the Amish? Because the killer took HIS OWN life, does that become payment for the lives HE viciously took? Does denying one's own life become a substitute or recompense for the taking of other innocent lives?

I can only trust that the Amish will leave it up to God to decide.