“…including a focus on the root causes of gun violence…” Here’s your root cause. Pay careful attention, this is a test, no, there won’t be a test later, later will be too late, this IS the test! Our rights are not inherent by our nature. Sin is inherent by our nature. Our rights come as a blessing by accepting and executing our duties unto Holy God who then holds the penalty for our sin in abeyance. When those duties are neglected things start to turn. When those duties are rejected, you lose your rights, sin multiplies, and tyrants prevail. And then it gets so bad that nobody can even remember this [You are here]. Read Judges, or an American newspaper, both reveal this same truth. That’s why America is going downhill so fast, nobody [that’s you] even knows the truth anymore. Here are some of the symptoms quoted below. You being nurses might appreciate this analogy of finding symptoms. I was taught by the greatest Profit that ever lives to find you here, at the intersection of who you are now and what you could become in Him. These are some of the symptoms explained by some guy named malcolm: “I am 61 years old. I grew up in a rural area of west-central New Jersey. When I was a boy, all the households around me had a gun or two. We boys used to stack up hay-bales and put targets on them (a charcoal briquette was a favorite choice) to shoot at with a .22. Schools and scout-troops often had rifle ranges; I myself got a marksmanship Merit Badge while at summer camp with the Boy Scouts. I don’t recall being aware of any gun laws at all; you could buy ammo at the general store. (Gun safety was a big deal, though, and kids were taught to handle firearms carefully and respectfully.) This was the state of normal (non-urban, middle-class, predominantly white) American culture half a century ago. Guns were an unexceptional part of that bygone world, and were easily accessible to all of us (you could order pretty much any gun you liked through the mail, by sending cash in an envelope!). Somehow, though, we hardly ever murdered each other, and mass shootings were very, very rare. Something has changed, obviously. And it isn’t access to guns. To those on the Left, shrieking for the government to make the pain stop by exerting more control — you celebrities, politicians, editors, and yes, you goodthinkful liberals that I know personally here in New York, many of whom I have called friends — I’ll say this: While you were, over the last half-century, systematically destroying, displacing, denouncing, and dismantling the historic American nation and its civil society — all moral norms, every basis of public commonality, all respect for our history and heritage, public expression of religion, the nuclear family, sexual restraint, and every natural structure and category and hierarchy that held civilization together and gave young people a… Read more »