GUNS, GOD and GOVERNMENT - Of Mass murders, gun control, and the elusive magic solution. What's Wrong With America?

Across the nation, the question reverberates, "What is wrong with
America?" How can the Aurora, Colorado horror happen? What 'trips the
switch' in a person's mind? What is the solution? Is gun control
really the answer?

Carl Gallups is a former Florida lawman, a 26-year senior pastor of a
large Gulf Coast church, a veteran host of conservative talk radio and
a coast-to-coast radio talk show guest commentator. Gallups is also a
best selling author of the recent Christian apologetics hit, THE MAGICMAN IN THE SKY: Effectively Defending The Christian Faith. The book
consistently hits the #1 mark on Amazon in Science and Religion and
has been rave reviewed by the Washington Times. The Times called it a
“must read book.” Gallups has been busy giving interviews across the
nation regarding the Aurora, Colorado theater shooting.

One of his most recent interviews was on KLDC radio in Denver, serving
the Aurora community.

Gallups told WND, "America wants to know 'what is wrong with us?' How
can a young man, enrolled in a PhD program, walk into a packed out
theater with the desire to randomly destroy as many lives as possible
and then booby trap his apartment in the hopes of destroying even more
lives in the aftermath? The media reporters, politicians, media
opiners, and social engineers, are all looking for that magical
'problem' so that another law can be passed, another regulation
enacted, another drug invented or another public service announcement
can be aired. Our microwave culture of instant solutions desperately
wants to 'fix' this problem. They want to know 'what was it that was
in his life that caused him to do such an unthinkable thing?'” 

Gallups went on to say, "And so, the talking heads line up night after
night to debate gun control, bullying, public security, video game
violence, and mental illnesses. They talk and reflect around the clock
in the 24/7 news cycle - hoping that someone, somehow, somewhere will
say the 'magic words.' 

"The problem," Gallups says, "Is that they are not asking the right
questions. They are not talking about the core of the problem. They
are painfully avoiding the presenting issue." 

When asked what he thought the 'presenting issue' was, Gallups
responded, “Unapologetically, I come from a Biblical worldview. The
presenting issue is the crux of the message of my entire book as well
as the Bible itself. The message is that we are not a mere animal with
purely instinctive responses to life and our surrounding environment.
Humans are created in the image of God. We have the ability to think,
create, invent, communicate, write books, build computers and Internet
systems, and land on the moon. Chimps do what chimps have always done
- they eat bananas and swing in trees. Humans are emotional, social,
psychological, physical, and spiritual beings. We are amazingly
complex creations. We might spend a lifetime analyzing what 'was in'
the Aurora killer's life that caused him to step over the line of
common morality, but the real issue is what was 'not in' his life." 

"Because," Gallups said, "It is a certain fact that had this disturbed
young man had a contextual biblical worldview - if he had a living
relationship with God, his creator, through Jesus Christ - if the
young man walked in the love and teachings of Jesus Christ and genuine
Biblical faith, I am convinced that this horror would have never
happened. You notice that I use the words, 'genuine and contextual.'
Certainly there have been atrocities committed in the name of Christ -
but those actions are not based upon a contextual understanding of the
Word of God or a genuine walk with God through Jesus Christ."

"Our culture," Gallups says, "Is spiritually starving and quickly
becoming spiritually and biblically bankrupt. We often wonder and
analyze what it is that we are doing. I am convinced the problem is
what most of us are not doing." 

"Here is the crux of the matter," Gallups said, "We decided, a couple
of generations ago, that God didn't exist. We convinced ourselves that
'science' has explained away the need for an intelligent designer.
From there, it has been a downward spiral into an abyss of despair and
violence. We now place more value upon the protection of a turtle egg
or an eagle's egg than upon that of a human child with a functioning
brain, heartbeat and the ability to feel - in the its mother's womb.
We don't know the definition of marriage anymore. Practically every
sexual perversion and physiologically illogical sexual arrangement
that man can envision is now called normal.” 

Gallups continued, “We freak out if the 10 commandments are displayed
on the walls of our school buildings. Then we teach our children that
they are merely an accidental conjoining of chemicals from a magical
pool of muck. We make certain that they are taught that there is no
intelligent designer, thus there is no accountability to our creator,
and that moral absolutes do not exist. Yet we wring our hands in
despair when these same people act like the animals, with no moral
foundation, that we told them they were." 

WND asked Gallups, based upon his past law enforcement experience, if
stricter gun control was the answer. 

Gallups responded, "Certainly, I believe there should be a minimum of
common sense regulations. We don't allow people to do any and
everything they want with an automobile, for example. However, we do
have a God given right, as individuals, to defend and protect
ourselves. We have a constitutional right to do so as well. I defend
that right wholeheartedly. I am strong and active proponent of second
amendment freedoms. No - stricter gun control is not the answer to
what happened in Aurora. Logical reasoning answers that question for
us. All one has to do is ask a few basic, rational questions, such as:
If the killer had no access to guns would it have stopped him from
killing people in the theater? Absolutely not. He used incendiary
devices as well as guns. He certainly would have devised another way
to commit mass murder and mayhem. If the killer knew for a fact that
everyone in the theater was carrying a firearm that night in the
theater - would he have entered and opened fire as he did? More than
likely not. Is there any gun law that man can devise that would have
stopped this deranged killer from inflicting terror upon that crowd
that night, or gaining access to an illegal weapon if he so desired? I
cannot imagine that there is one." 

Gallups went on to say, "You must remember, it is being widely
reported that the Aurora theater was a strict gun-free zone. That is,
legal patrons of the theater were not allowed by law to carry a
weapon, concealed or otherwise, into the theater. I cannot imagine
that the killer did not know this. He picked the easiest target. I
know the cliché is well worn, but it is nonetheless true; it is the
deranged mind that kills people, not the gun. To further restrict, or
even ban, guns in America because a deranged killer decided to use a
gun to destroy lives is as illogical as saying that we must ban all
automobiles, or baseball bats, or knives, or rocks - because, after
all, these are used all the time as weapons of destruction and death.
No - the answer is not more gun control. The answer, in my biblical
opinion, is more heart-control. I am striving to turn America's heart
back to God, His Word, and the understanding that we are created in
His image and we are eternally accountable for our lives and our
actions." 

Gallups said, "I know this position is not the most popular position
in our secular, skeptical, politically correct world - but it is the
correct view, it is the most logical view. It is the worldview that
our nation must embrace – or there will be no healing for our land."

Source http://www.wnd.com/2012/07/why-do-people-act-like-animals/?cat_orig=faith