Sunday, December 16, 2012

Prayer and Bible Study in Schools Do Not Prevent Murder


I've had enough of religious opportunists using the massacre in Newtown, CT as a rallying cry to inject prayer and Bible study into public schools.  If that sort of thing would prevent murder, explain the following:

7 Dead, 3 wounded at a Christian vocational school:
http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2012/04/02/several-shot-inside-oakland-christian-school/

1 Dead, 7 wounded as they participated in a prayer circle at a Kentucky school:
http://articles.cnn.com/keyword/heath-high-school

Girl shoots fellow student at a Catholic school:
http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=93650&page=1#.UM5-7G_Acko

Man kills 5 girls, wounds 5 in an Amish school:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/03/us/03amish.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Man kills head of Episcopal school:
http://jacksonville.com/slideshow/slides-news/shane-schumerth-gunman-episcopal-school-jacksonville-shooting#slide-1

Man kills a rabbi and three children in a Jewish school:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19360803

Man kills seven, wounds three at a Christian college:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/9182343/Oakland-school-shooting-former-nursing-student-arrested.html

As I was finding more and more links, I found I couldn't stomach any more of these.  I think it makes the point: murder has nothing to do with prayer and Bible study in schools.  So please stop with that nonsense.   It's bad enough the Sandy Hook shooting is fresh in my mind.  To see all of these other incidents...and to have a visual from the details given regarding the shooting in the Amish school...I'm sick over it.  There are more examples.  I haven't gotten into any of the Muslim schools, for example, and I haven't checked the policy regarding school prayer in South American countries, where several shootings also occurred.

Now I'm going to go tuck my kid in and hope I don't ever have to deal with this kind of tragedy with my own child.