Editor, Manteca Bulletin,
On Feb. 14, a 19-year-old kid slaughtered 17 other kids.  People are making statements such as: how could this happen?  Kids are not supposed to see this.  Why can’t Congress pass laws to prevent this from happening?  How did the FBI miss all the signs?  Common sense gun laws make sense.  No child should ever see or experience this level of violence. 
My heart goes out to those who experienced this tragedy, along with all the other millions of other tragedies: Little girls who are kidnaped into the sex trades; kids starving because their parents are high on opioids; gangs in the ghettos ordering kids to shoot kids; physical abuse at the hands of one’s own parents; kids killed while playing in the front yard because of a DUI driver; and parks and playgrounds filled with dirty needles from drug users.  The list goes on and on, but you get the idea.  Tragedy is all around us and children get exposed to violence every hour of every day.  In other countries, it is even worse than in America.   
There are two realities: The reality of the believer and the reality of the non-believer.  Most conservatives are believers while most liberals are non-believers.  In the reality of the believer, there is God and Satan.  This is the belief in good and evil, where the 10 Commandments guide the behavior of Man.  Morality is determined outside of Man’s control.  In the non-believer’s world, people are basically good.  There is no moral guide.  Morality is based on each man’s personal interpretation.  Every man is free to set his own interpretation and change it at any inclination or whim he so desires.  In both realities, the exact same violence and hate happens.  Believers understand that man has the capacity for great love as well as a great capacity to commit evil.  They understand that it will rain on the believer as well as the non-believer.  Bad things happen that man can’t control or stop, regardless of how hard man tries.  When tragedy strikes, believers find solaces and comfort in God to help them deal with it.  They know that to rid the darkness of evil, they must fill the world with the light of truth and love.  Non-believers wallow in anger and hate for the same tragic event.  To solve the problems that evil brings, non-believers focus on changing the laws of Man while letting the morality of Man continue to decline.  Man has thousands of laws that have not stopped even the simplest of crimes. 
To get rid of school shootings, you must get rid of evil.  And evil will always wear you down.  If you can’t write a law that completely stops a child from shoplifting, what law can you write that stops a child from murdering 17 school kids?  We have laws against drugs, but drugs are rampant.  We have laws against stealing, but stealing continues.  We have laws against DUI, but drinking and driving is all too common.  Gov. Kasich (R) stated that “common sense gun laws are common sense”.  What common sense laws can we make that will stop any crime or acts of violence much less then school shootings?  Evil men will not obey any law, much less a common sense law of Man.
Choose the world you wish to live in: The world of comfort and solace, or the world of hate and anger.  Neither world will stop tragedies such as this.  But one will reduce them more than the other.  The believer will understand this letter, while the non-believer will not.  The NRA has been blamed for supporting gun laws.  Mayim Bialik and others report the amount of money the NRA has given to politicians without questioning how the NRA gets all that money.  People from all walks of life, Republicans, Democrats, Independents, and others all donate money to the NRA.  This is because the majority of Americans support the 2nd amendment.  The anti-gun group twists the words of the majority such as; even most Republicans want laws that get guns out of the hands of those who should not have access to guns.  Or we are not being accurately represented by our leaders.  If the numbers the anti-2nd amendment proponents report were true, then we would have had gun laws a long time ago and the NRA would not be effective. 
There are many people like me who do not own a gun, nor give money to the NRA, but support the 2nd amendment.  This is because; we recognize that it is not the gun that is the issue.  We recognize that we need our own protection against criminals.  We recognize no law has ever stopped a criminal.  We recognize gun control hurts the law abiding and never takes a gun out of a criminal’s hand.  During the CNN Town Hall, the kids and adults were very angry that the policy makers are not trying to change gun laws.  Not one person at that Town Hall recognized evil, or laws can’t stop every tragedy, or that guns have saved people from being murdered.  Believers must follow the 10 Commandments, while non-believers are free from the 10 commandments.  These are the 2 realities — one of which works on changing people’s hearts and is successful much of the time.  The other works on changing laws, which rarely work.  Which reality do you want to live in?  Choose wisely if you want to protect our children.

Scott McComas
Manteca