The other morning morning I woke up to a social media feed blowing up with one single topic: the shooting that took place in Orlando, Florida, killing 50 individuals with the death count expecting to rise as victims succumbed to their injuries.
It was an awful massacre. It was a hate crime. It was an act of terrorism proclaimed by the shooter who outspokenly pledged his allegiance to ISIS.
However, this isn't the only sickening part about the shooting. What followed afterwards through backlash on social media was even worse. I saw countless news articles on Facebook and Twitter that held comments that made my stomach churn. Comments like these:
It's sickening, right?
We devalue life so much and make a joke out of something that should break our hearts. There are some people who say that as Christians we should see that these gays, lesbians, and transgenders "had it coming to them." An Anti-Gay Texas Lt. Gov Dan Patrick posted a tweet in response to the Orlando Shooting. This tweet was a Bible verse taken from Galatians 6:7 which says, "Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows."
There is a time and place to quote the Bible. However, in the midst of death, in the midst of life being taken away, how can this be said?
How can you look at the bloodied bodies lying on the ground and hear the screams of the injured and think, This is what God wanted. Or think, They deserved this for being homosexual.
How is that a Christian response? I'm not saying that as a Christian we are supposed to support homosexuals. There's a huge controversy in the Church over this topic as it is. What I'm saying is that as Christians, God calls us to love. He calls us to turn away from our hatred and see the value of life. The value of every life. Not just the lives of those who are straight.
To say that these people (who, yes, despite being gay and lesbian and transgender, are still people) do not deserve to live, well, that takes away the value of human life. A value that is not being taught to our generation at all.
After reading these sickening comments of hatred on social media, the next big thing I saw was the controversial issue of gun control.
I was raised in the South. I was raised in a place where having guns was a right. I was raised by parents who believe that by taking away those guns, then the very amendments established in this country by our forefathers were also being taken away. I was also raised to know that guns were only used towards another person as a form of self-protection or to protect other people.
I was raised to not go into a school, or concert, or LGBT club and unload fire. I was raised to value human life. Yes, if I knew that taking away a gun would stop people from these massacres, then I would agree in a heartbeat. But that isn't the world we live in. We live in a world that finds a way to acquire items that are still illegal.
We can try gun control, but that will not change the hearts of people. People will always, always find a way to do what they want out of their hatred. And that's both the heartbreakingly horrid and sad part of all of this.
As humans, we all have a desire to find something to blame when something goes wrong. Every time a shooting occurs, we seek to blame the guns. The debates are never about the person behind the trigger. It's always about the trigger itself. If guns didn't exist there would be some other form of weapon that would replace it.
I'll say what you have heard countless times with each shooting. For some, it is the side that they don't agree on, but I still believe with everything in me that it's true: guns are not the issue. I don't know about you, but I've never seen a gun jump off of a table, aim itself at someone, and pull its own trigger all by itself. Yes, they are dangerous. But, do you know what else is dangerous? Knives, crossbows, cars, electricity, drugs, alcohol. The list could go on and on. Guns aren't the issue.
People are the issue. I don't want my children to grow up with the knowledge that guns are all bad and no good. I won't raise my children that way. I want my children to know that they are dangerous when they are not used for the right purpose. I want them to know that guns are capable of life and death. My children will know the value of life.
Because when it comes down to it, it wasn't the gun that killed 50 people in an LGBT club in Orlando, Florida. It wasn't the gun that killed Christina Grimmie the night before. It wasn't a gun that killed nine people in church in Charleston, South Carolina. It was the person behind the gun that killed them. We need to stop putting the blame on guns instead of the people.
Taking away guns isn't going to solve anything. The only way change can occur is by teaching our children to value human life. The only way change can occur is by spreading love instead of hatred. The only way that change can occur is by rising up against the very group of people who wear their death count as a badge of honor all in the name of one group.
The same group that hijacked planes and ran them into our Twin Towers in New York. The same group that blew up a bomb in the middle of the Boston Marathon. The same group that not only has attacked our country, but has plotted against our allies. The same group that one gunman killed fifty people in a LGBT club in the name of.
Sitting back and watching these acts unfold goes against everything that we as Americans stand for. It goes against everything that our men and women have sacrificed their lives for. We can't be the nation that proclaims "tolerance" all across their newsstands. We can't be the nation that allows violence to occur against our own people. We can't be the nation that watches as our husbands and wives, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, are killed on their very own soil.
But we also have to realize that terrorism isn't simply foreign people from outside of our country. Believing that is simply ignorance.
Former BBC Governor Pauline Neville-Jones says it best: "Well, one thing's very clear, that terrorism isn't just a threat which is external to Western countries. It's not simply a menace that comes from overseas to strike our cities. It can and it does, as we now know, come from within our own countries and from inside our own populations."
