Abundant Life And Death At School

Abundant Life and Death at School

“Jesus loves the little children” is a hymn we sing in my church. The parents and teachers of Abundant Life Christian School, like Jesus, love children. Yet, these precious children live daily with the terror of facing the flash and smoke of a gun aimed directly at them. Abundant Life and Death at School come together.

Abundant Life and Death at School came together on Monday, December 16, 2024, when a fifteen year old female shooter opened fire with a 9 millimeter pistol. As I write this, three are dead. Six others are hospitalized. The shooter is among the deceased along with one teacher and one pupil.

Madison Police Department Chief Shon Barnes described it as a “sad day…that will live in our collective minds for a very long time.” He added, “enough is enough!” Chief Barnes is looking for a way to “prevent” future such incidents. What might prevention mean? Visit the FBI program to prevent mass violence.

Now to the matter of guns galore.

A Billion Bucks for Bullets and Blood

So far in 2024, CNN tells us we’ve had 83 school shootings. The Independent K-12 School Shooting Data Base puts it at 322 school shootings. [“All shootings at schools includes when a gun is brandished, is fired, or a bullet hits school property for any reason, regardless of the number of victims, time, or day of the week”]. Regardless of the number, we note that with news of mass shootings of innocent people, gun sales boom. Profits rise.

In another Patheos article, A Billion Bucks for Bullets and Blood, I tried to follow the money. A billion bucks in gunmaker profits over the last decade were made from the sale of AR-15 style assault rifles in America. That’s what a U.S. House of Representatives investigation uncovered. “In total, five gun manufacturers collected more than $1bn from the sale of assault rifles over the last decade, the investigation found,” reports the Guardian. NPR puts the figure at $3 billion.

Perhaps it’s time to alter the words of the Lord’s Prayer. Currently we ask God to “give us this day our daily bread.” Perhaps the gun lobby would prefer “give us this day our daily dread.”

Is today the day I will die in a school shooting?

Terror sells. When you and I and our nestlings fear setting foot in a public space — such as a school — we rightly tremble at the thought that a well armed malcontent will blast us to kingdom come. Gone are the days when our cherished children saunter heedless of danger in and out of school laughing with delight when engaging their friends, their teachers, and even the janitor. There are those among us who take the profits from our dread straight to the bank.

Remember Leona’s Law of Evil: You know it’s the voice of Satan when you hear the call to shed innocent blood.

It appears the juvenile shooter took her own life. In my study of premeditated murder when writing a book about sin and evil, I found that this is not infrequent. The call to shed innocent blood applies to both murder and suicide.

Conclusion

In the series of espionage thrillers including one plot involving Satanism, The Moon Turns to Blood, the protagonist, Leona Foxx, formulates her law of evil. Here it is. You know it’s the voice of Satan when you hear the call to shed innocent blood. We found this to be the case when Jesus was crucified. Might this be the case today as we hear the call to shed the innocent blood of our school children?