nothin After Parkland: Abraham And Child Sacrifice… | New Haven Independent

After Parkland: Abraham And Child Sacrifice In The 21st Century

John Cirello.

This past Sunday at church we heard the story of Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his only son, Isaac, to show his devotion and belief in God.

As Bible stories go, this is one that really stretches the bounds of our imagination. To understand the story of Abraham and Isaac, you must believe several things: First, that God spoke to Abraham; second, that Abraham understood it was God who was speaking to him, and; third, that Abraham was such a devout believer in God that he would not question an order to kill his son.

It is hard for us to imagine someone who believed in something so completely without question that he would sacrifice a child, let alone his own child, without argument, negotiation, questions, or protest. How could someone offer up a child to be killed without a fight?

As unbelievable as this is, I would argue that we are sacrificing our children, in America, in the 21st Century based upon a belief. This is not based on our belief in God, but in our belief in the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Every year we sacrifice our children because we refuse to debate, argue, negotiate, question or protest the unwavering belief that the Second Amendment to the Constitution is a God given right that should not be altered.

Are we any better than Abraham? Are we worse?

Almost 20 years ago, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold entered Columbine High School armed with automatic weapons and murdered 15 people and injured 21 others. This sparked a national dialogue about gun violence and gun control. Unfortunately, that’s all that happened. Dialogue.

In 2007, 33 were murdered and 23 were injured in the Virginia Tech shooting. In 2012, 28 were killed in Sandy Hook Connecticut. And most recently on Feb. 14, 17 were murdered in Parkland, Florida.

Since Columbine, hundreds of children have been killed in school shootings How many will die in the next 20 years?

Also, almost 20 years ago, 265 passengers were killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States. Those deaths caused argument, negotiation, questions, and protest — but most of all, action. In the wake of those attacks, the United States government started two wars, changed policies and procedures for air travel, created no fly lists,” conducted domestic and foreign surveillance, and enacted many other policies in response to these attacks. We spent billions of dollars in an effort to protect our citizens from this type of violence.

As a result of all of those efforts, have we eliminated terrorism? The answer is no. But we do feel safer because we are doing something about it. The fact that we can’t give a guarantee that there will be no terrorism does not stop us from acting.

What if the response from our political leaders after 9/11 was, There are some horrible people in this world. Our thoughts and prayers go out to the victims and their families”? We would be outraged. We would demand more for ourselves and for each other. We would demand action.

It is time to act to stop gun violence. Dollars need to be spent, action plans need to be made, and we must have argument, negotiation, questions, protest and action. Thoughts and prayers are not enough. If we rely on our belief in God to solve this, with thoughts and prayers, we are like Abraham — willing to sacrifice our own children. Haven’t we already sacrificed enough?

John A. Cirello is a New Haven attorney and civic leader.

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