No Picture for this Post

A crazed lunatic murders 93 people - mostly children - in Norway, a peaceful country with a population less than the city of Boston. And how tired I am of this story. Not this particular one. But all of the stories that are exactly like it, varying only in the numbers killed and the reasons for the slaughter. Sadly, as the details emerge on this latest tragedy, I'm reminded that it is not the first such thing or even the worst to have occurred. Timothy McVeigh still holds the record for murdering 168 people when he detonated a truck bomb outside the Murrah Building in Olahoma City in 1995. And one of the earliest incidents - at least in this country - occurred in Bath, Michigan, in 1927, when Andrew Kehoe detonated several bombs, destroying the school and killing 45 people - again, mostly children. And of course, not a week goes by that we don't read of someone in this country going on a killing rampage and murdering their family, friends or coworkers. Some are sensational (Jared Loughner, Nidal Hasan or Charles Whitman), while others barely get a blurb in the national news. But they happen. Somebody kills two, five, ten, twenty, fifty-four, ninety-three. And they happen with more and more regularity and greater and greater ferocity. What we heard far less about in the news this weekend were the stories of the the Texas man who killed his wife and five other family members before turning the gun on himself, the Washington state man who gunned down his wife and six other people, the eight people who were wounded in a shooting at a Seattle area car show, and the three people who were shot dead at an Arizona motorcycle rally. And that was all just this weekend. In this country, at least, there'll be a big trial, the facts of which will make headline news for a few months and a few years, lots of people will make lots of money postulating on what could have made a good man go so bad, but in the end, nothing will change. There'll be another spree killing, followed by another and another. People tell me that this is just the way people are, that in a modern society you just have to accept that there are going to be a certain number of off-the-wall lunatics who feel the only way they can be heard is if they murder as many innocent people as possible. But I question this. I feel certain there are other things going on. I'm not talking conspiracy either. I don't think that the government is putting something in the drinking water or beaming radio messages into our brains or any other nonsense like that. But when I turn to the scriptures, the Savior says that "because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold" and that "the whole earth shall be in commotion and men's hearts shall fail them." Are we not seeing this today? Is not the love of many waxing cold when they can calmly and systematically slaughter innocent people? Are not men's hearts failing them when they decide that the only way they can make themselves heard is with a gun or a bomb? Is not the world - as my mother used to say - going to hell in a hand basket? And what is the answer? Maybe the problem is the easy access we have to guns and bomb making equipment. Maybe the problem is with our school systems. Or maybe the problem lies closer to home. Maybe the problem lies in the breakdown of the traditional family. Bruce D. Porter recently wrote, "If families do not fulfill their divinely appointed purpose of carrying on the light of truth and the torch of civilization to the next generation, then we can throw any amount of money or ideas or programs at our world’s problems, and we will assuredly fail." And all of these programs are failing, and the love of many is waxing cold, and men's (and women's) hearts are failing them, and the next massacre is just around the corner - tomorrow, or later in the week, or next week, but it will come as sure as the sun will rise tomorrow, and while everyone wrings their hands and frets about the problem, few will have the self-discipline and the will power to actually do anything about it. And thus is the world that we have made.