Tag Archives: mass murder

August 3, 2019 · 22:16

Dare Call it What it Is: Race Hatred Blessed By the President

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Another day, another race based mass killing, another fake message of support from the President.

This time it was El Paso, Texas. A young white man from Dallas, an admitted White Supremacist went to a Walmart at a mall. Using an AK-47 he went on a killing spree. When police confronted him he offered no resistance.  The latest casualty count is 20 dead and 26 wounded, but the count is still fluctuating.  In his manifesto retrieved from the 8Chan site preferred by violent White Supremacists, he wrote:

“This attack is a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas. They are the instigators, not me. I am simply defending my country from cultural and ethnic replacement brought on by an invasion.” 

There was a lot more damning information in the manifesto, but this stuck out to me because he used the exact same language to describe Hispanics that President Trump has done since he came down the escalator at Trump Tower to declare his candidacy for President in 2015. The same man who at his rallies mocks the disabled, urges his followers to violence against any opponent, and threatens members of the press and the opposing party by name. He is the President who wants a fortress like military solution to the border crisis, whose administration promotes policies which separate families and imprison children in cages.

Sadly, as much as we would not like to admit it this is nothing new in American history, and I will not make any Nazi comparisons because the American precedents helped to inspire the Nazis. The extermination of the Native American tribes; the invasion and takeover of over 40% of Mexico; American slavery, Jim Crow, segregation, “Sundown Towns,” the KKK in its various iterations, the Know Nothings, violence against Irish, German, Italian, Easter European, Jewish, Arab, and Asian immigrants. Medical experiments on African Americans and the disabled, Eugenics, the list can go on and on. Hitler’s lawyer’s loved U.S. precedents, but didn’t think they went far enough.

I could go on but a won’t. Another racially motivated mass murder, more wringing of hands, and nothing will change.

I hate that it is that way, but it is the truth. These racist movements predate the President, he is not directly responsible for any of them. That being said, he has opened the floodgates for these open displays of violent race hatred through his tweets and his rallies.

Until tomorrow,

Peace,

Padre Steve+

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October 1, 2015 · 22:25

How Many More? The Umpqua Community College Massacre

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Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Tonight just a short thought about the latest mass shooting in the United States, this one at Umpqua Community College, in Roseburg, Oregon.

I won’t say much, except that I have a hard time imagining that a society such as ours would continue to tolerate events like this on such a regular basis. Maybe I feel this way because I have been held up at gunpoint in my hometown in 1979. Maybe it is because I have been to war and been shot at by enemy forces. Maybe it is because I remember when the elementary school that I attended when I was a child, Grover Cleveland Elementary School in Stockton California became the scene of a massacre in 1989, some 17 years after I had gone there. Maybe it is because I know too many people who have be affected by gun violence.

Whatever the reason I find it troubling. For the first time in a long time I turned on the television news, and listened to President Obama speak about this. I had to agree with everything that he said; the fact is that such massacres have become routine to us, almost as routine as is the violence of the so-called Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or the “Troubles” of Northern Ireland. The fact is that after every one of these events; Stockton, Columbine, Virginia Tech, Newtown, Tucson, Aurora, the Washington Naval Yard, San Ysidro, Fort Hood, Charleston and so many others; many of which never hit anything but local media really do not move us to do anything. We have accepted them as part of life, and despite our protestations, our “prayers” and our outward sympathy for the victims we seem unwilling to do anything about them.

Guns are certainly a part of the problem; but there is something far deeper that we should be concerned about in all of this, it is who we are as a people. These events are not new, they have been occurring for well over a century in our country; lynching, bombing, gangland shootings, some committed by individuals, some by criminal organizations. But in addition to the true murderous sociopaths, many more seriously disturbed and even mentally ill individuals, who should have no access to weapons, commit many of these shootings.

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As yet we do not know much about the shooter, his motivations or his victims. We do know that his name is Chris Harper Mercer, a twenty-six year old student at the college. According to a dating profile said that he was a “conservative Republican” who “doesn’t like organized religion.” But most of us only care about those details to either titillate our need for information, or to back whatever our political position is regarding laws about gun ownership. The fact is that we don’t know why Mercer did this; evidently during the attack he was asking people to state their religion as he shot them. We will find out more as the investigation unfolds, but again to most of us the details won’t matter as our minds are made up, and we accept this as a way of life.

Some say we should take drastic measures to control guns; others that we should have more training and screening of potential guy buyers; others say ban certain types of weapons; still others say to eliminate all restrictions on gun ownership; while others say to increase the mental health screenings to keep mentally ill or potentially disturbed people from purchasing guns. Sadly, those who most loudly proclaim eliminating restrictions on any kind of gun ownership, even for the most lethal weapons are the same people who support politicians who constantly vote down funding for mental health care and restrictions on law enforcement in dealing with guns.

The fact is that no matter which side is argued people continue to die in gun violence everyday, and not just mass shootings like the one we saw today. I think the President is right, Americans and our legislators at local, state and federal levels need to find solutions that protect constitutional liberties for responsible gun owners with the safety of the public. Honestly, I don’t know how that happens; far too many lobbyists, special interest groups with conflicting interests, and the gun industry are involved.

But I have to say, with unfettered honesty, I really don’t think that we care, we have become used to the routine of this; we are no longer shocked, we are no longer offended, and we lack the political will, the compassion, or the courage to do anything substantive about the problem. But most of all I think that we, as a people have lost any sense of empathy for those who are killed and those who are affected by such senseless violence. In the words of the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials Psychologist, Gustave Gilbert, is the absence of empathy.

President Obama was right; we have accepted these killings as a routine part of life. We say “how terrible, someone should do something” and then turn our backs until the next time. We should politicize the issue and through our political process try to find ways to deal with this with the appropriate checks and balances; because it affects every one of us. Every year over 10,000 people in this country die of gun violence committed by others. That number does not include the 20,000- 30,000 people who use guns to kill themselves every year.

How many more people need to die for us to recover any sense of empathy? How many more people need to die?

Peace

Padre Steve+

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December 17, 2012 · 01:24

God and Gun Violence: Mike Huckabee and Bryan Fischer Mock the Gospel in Comments about the Newtown Massacre

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I am still trying to comprehend the massacre in Newtown Connecticut. It seems to be an evil committed by a young man who was quite possibly mentally ill. He used an arsenal of weapons kept by his mother, a woman who ensured that he was able to handle weapons, and who he killed before he went on his rampage. He may have been evil. He may have been mentally ill. He may very well have been both, but more importantly he was well trained in the use of firearms and very well armed.

This is not an article about gun control. However after seeing the effects of these types of weapons on civilians in this country and US military personnel and Iraqi civilians in Iraq I wonder about the wisdom of allowing just anyone to own a military grade assault weapon and enough ammunition to lay waste to a town. No, this is my criticism of fellow “Christian” ministers that attempt to reduce all the ills of our society and crimes of individuals to the lack of government enforcement of their religious views in public schools.

In the wake of the massacre certain religious-political leaders on the political right. Former Arkansas Governor and current Fox News commentator Mike Huckabee, who dropped out of the seminary that I graduated made this comment:

“We ask why there is violence in our schools, but we have systematically removed God from our schools…Should we be so surprised that schools would become a place of carnage?”

Not to be outdone failed former pastor Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association said on his radio program:

“The question is going to come up, where was God? I though God cared about the little children. God protects the little children. Where was God when all this went down. Here’s the bottom line, God is not going to go where he is not wanted….God would say to us, ‘Hey, I’ll be glad to protect your children, but you’ve got to invite me back into your world first. I’m not going to go where I’m not wanted. I am a gentlemen.”

Personally I think that the comments by both men do a grave disservice to God and God’s people. Men like these and their political hack allies use such language to attempt to blame everyone but the culture of death that their worldview helps promote. A culture that makes it easier and cheaper to obtain a military grade assault weapon than health care, that glorifies a perplexing blend of vigilantism and militarism mixed with apocalyptic religious views is not healthy. It is not Christian. It is not Pro-life. Of course the people of Newtown will also have to deal with the cultists of radical hate, Westboro Baptist Church as those professional religious hate spewers attempt to protest the funerals of the victims.

The fact is that there is little linkage to what these men preach and the facts. If there was such a direct correlation one would think that the liberal-secular humanist countries of Western Europe would have astronomically high rates of gun violence. You would think that the same would be true of other countries as well. But the fact is that the United States has one of the highest gun violence and deaths per 100,000 of any country in the world. In fact our rates of death by guns dwarf those of any Western European countries, most Asian countries and are only exceeded by countries of Central America that are wracked by drug violence, much of which is enabled by the consumption of drugs by Americans, or countries wracked by full scale civil war. The fact is that in most instances you seldom see school shoots and mass murder on a scale seen in this country in Western Europe, most of Eastern Europe, Japan, Korea or other industrialized societies, most of which are far more secular than the United States.

If we want to look at history we can find that in almost any era, even in the days where American Christians dominated the political and moral landscape of the country that we were a country in love with guns and enamored with gun violence. The big difference now is the amount of firepower easily available to anyone that can afford it, or in the case of the latest maniac took from the mother that he murdered with her own weapons.

To be so crass as the seminary dropout turned political hack Huckabee and the professional hate monger Fischer to blame this on the lack of prayer in schools, or that “God will not go where he is not wanted” is nothing more than worst kind of religious abuse. It is shameful and it makes a mockery of the Gospel. God goes exactly where he is not wanted, and died on a Cross for it. In the midst of Good Friday and for that matter all Good Friday experiences, especially that horrible Friday in Newtown, God is there, not in power but in suffering, his name Emmanuel, “God with us.”

Peace

Padre Steve+

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