A City Of Refuge

ARTICLE BY DAVID CLOUD,
on THE RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS.
 The Friday Church News Notes is designed for use in churches and is published by Way of Life Literature's Fundamental Baptist Information Service. Unless otherwise stated, the Notes are written by David Cloud. Of necessity we quote from a wide variety of sources, though this does not imply an endorsement.

  On Tuesday, March 20, a student at Great Mills High School in Maryland opened fire on fellow students with a handgun. Within one minute, Blaine Gaskill, an armed sheriff’s deputy on duty as a “school resource officer” (SRO) and a SWAT team member, engaged the shooter and stopped further harm to the student population. The shooter, 17-year-old Austin Rollins, died in the conflict. Since prayer and Bible reading were removed from American schools in the 1960s by Supreme Court rulings and since the schools have become cesspools of moral relativism and evolutionary/humanistic propaganda, they have been plagued with violence to an ever-increasing degree. The actions of Blaine Gaskill demonstrate the right use of guns in a fallen and dangerous world. He used the gun to stop evil. He was authorized by the government to use it (Romans 13:1-4), skilled in its use, and mentally prepared to confront oppressors. He did not hesitate. He ran toward the offender and engaged him. Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan said, “This is a tough guy who closed in quickly and took the right action” (“Student gunman dies,” The
Washington Post, Mar. 20, 2018). In these perilous times (2 Timothy 3:1-4), it is wise for schools to hire men of Blaine Gaskill’s caliber to protect their students from hate-filled people (often) inflamed by drugs and the more destructive elements of the pop culture such as dark music, dark video games, and pornography.
A KEY COMMONALITY IN SCHOOL SHOOTERS (Friday Church News Notes, March 23, 2018, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “A Key Commonality,” DailyWire.com, Feb. 26, 2018: “In the wake of the tragic South Florida high school shooting [on Feb. 14] which ended with 17 deaths, Democrats and their allies in the mainstream media have launched a full-scale attack on the National Rife Association (NRA), Republican politicians, American gun owners, and the Second Amendment. And while there is chatter about so-called ‘toxic masculinity’ bubbling up on left-wing blogs, there is deafening silence regarding a glaring commonality among a majority of school shooters: fatherless homes. As noted by University of Virginia Professor Brad Wilcox in 2013, ‘nearly every shooting over the last year in Wikipedia’s list of U.S. school attacks involved a young man whose parents divorced or never married in the first place.’ Additionally, a study on older male shooters found similar connections to growing up fatherless. Writing at The Federalist in 2015, Peter Hasson highlighted the fact that of all the shootings on CNN's ‘27 Deadliest Mass Shootings in U.S. History’ list committed by young males, only one was raised by his biological father. The most recent Florida school shooter, too, had no father figure, as his adoptive father died when the suspect was just a boy. Hasson also distilled the jarring correlation between fatherless homes and general male violence: ‘Violence? There’s a direct correlation between fatherless children and teen violence. Suicide? Fatherless children are more than twice as likely to commit suicide. Dropping out of school? Seventy-one percent of high school dropouts came from a fatherless background. Drug use? According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, “Fatherless children are at a dramatically greater risk of drug and alcohol abuse.” How about guns? Two of the strongest correlations with gun homicides are growing up in a fatherless household and dropping out of school, which itself is directly related to lack of an active or present father.’ This clear connection is being lazily and intentionally addressed by the Left--if at all--as more evidence to further squash masculinity, which they’ve deemed ‘toxic.’”