By Larry Craig

Our local newspaper keeps printing editorials crying out for solutions to the problem of gun violence.

I think the thing that we seem to be forgetting here is that the key word in gun violence is violence and not gun.

We had a man just a few days ago who killed six people with his car.

We are making a big mistake if we think that these events are not related, that a man mowing down people with his car is a different problem than people mowing down people with a gun.

The problem is not the abundance of cars or guns. The problem is that we have people who want to hurt and kill other people, and they have no moral or mental constraints that prevent them from doing so. Sure, if you take away all the guns, you will cut down on gun violence. However, we laws against certain drugs, yet there seems to be little problem for people who want them to get them. I suspect that would be the same for guns.

You will probably see more car violence. And in some cultures, the preferred method of killing people is bombs.

Removing all the guns may reduce the number of total murders, but is that a win? You may think so, but if you don’t deal with people’s hearts, turning anger and hatred into peace and love, then you are setting your sights too low.

And this is the real problem.

You can’t give peace to angry hearts and turn hatred into love without God.

There. I did it. I said the G-word right out here in public.

So-called secular countries are a new thing in human history. Countries have always acknowledged God or a god in their lives. We started off with the communist countries that denied the very existence of God. Now the West joined in with secularism that, while not necessarily denying God’s existence, affirms that such belief is a private matter and not relevant to public life and policymaking.

But when we were not afraid to acknowledge God publicly in our country, that acknowledgement gave people pause in that they knew they were accountable to a Higher Power, people were created in God’s image and thus worthy of respect, and there were God-given rules for life: the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule.