Why Laws Alone Can’t Fix the Heartbreak of Tragedy

The sheer evil of a violent attack or mass shooting, such as occurred at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison Wisconsin earlier this week, elicits a number of appropriate responses. We rightly mourn the victims and marvel incredulously that a second grader made the 9-1-1 call. We grieve with and for parents who had no sense that they would lose a child just weeks before Christmas. We wonder how anyone, especially a fifteen-year-old girl, could harbor such hate and hopelessness. 

There are also inappropriate, albeit understandable, reactions. When people are afraid, they often either lash out against those they perceive as their “enemies” on the “other side,” or they look for something, anything, to fix what it is they fear. Both reactions have been on full display since Monday. 

“We need action, legislation, and laws to make sure that guns don’t get into the hands of people who don’t have them,” one Madison resident told CNN. ”It is unacceptable that we are unable to protect our children from this scourge of gun violence,” President Biden said in a statement. “We need Congress to act. Now.” 

The cry to “do something” is not uncommon at times like this. “Do something” is, in fact, a cry for help. However, it is not a strategy or tactic. Doing “something” isn’t helpful if that something is wrong, mistaken, or irrelevant. In fact, doing “something” could make matters worse.  

We must know what to do, and that requires being clear on what the problem is, what the solution is, and who is able to accomplish the something (or somethings) that need to be done. Perhaps the only thing that is clear in every debate that follows shootings and violent outbursts is that we’re not clear about any of these things. 

The demand to “do something” is almost always addressed to or claimed by the government. That assumes that it is within the power of the President, the governor, or Congress to fix what has gone wrong. They can make laws, but Wisconsin already had several gun laws in place that, if they were able, would have prevented this tragedy. But they didn’t, and the various calls for the government to do more indicates we are not clear what needs fixed in the first place. So often, calls for more government action, like the President’s comments earlier this week, treat evil and violence as a nameless, causeless thing that just happens.  

Until now, mass shootings at schools and elsewhere have largely been perpetuated by alienated, often fatherless, young men espousing either hateful extremism or nihilistic meaninglessness. Monday’s shooter, according to her own words, was broken by a broken family and captivated by a meaninglessness that led her to hate people and herself. That’s not a problem that government caused, and it’s not one that government can fix. 

Our tendency to think that all problems should be politically understood, are politically motivated, and can only be politically fixed is symptomatic of the political illusion, a social condition from which our culture suffers greatly. But no policy, political ideology, or bureaucracy can heal the epidemic of wounded hearts and minds, rebuild the mediating institutions of civil society that most fundamentally shape us, provide the meaning and the sense of belonging that we all crave, or overcome hatred with love. 

Those tasks belong to the institutions that have been dismissed and dismantled across Western culture: the family and the Church. As Thane Bellomo of the Federalist has noted, the decline of these institutions is “mirrored” not only in the rise in mass shooters “but more broadly in a host of statistics that reveal an epidemic of despair.”  

None of this means, of course, that the government won’t do something. We likely will see additional gun control legislation in the days ahead, but if we do, these laws will not be a solution. They will be a reaction, a consequence of young people who have untethered from reality, from meaning, from truth, and from love. The solution to that can only come from those institutions God has ordained to cultivate hearts and minds. 

I do predict that we will see some folks “doing something” that matters and helps. After the 2023 shooting at The Covenant School in Nashville, police and other public officials marveled at the Christian community of the school. God has placed His people at Abundant Life Christian too, for such a time as this. Please join me in praying for them and the other believers of Madison as they seek to be the church in this terrible cultural moment. 

Years ago, Chuck Colson said this:  

Where is the hope? The hope that each of us have is not in who governs us, or what laws are passed, or what great things that we do as a nation. Our hope is in the power of God working through the hearts of people, and that’s where our hope is in this country; that’s where our hope is in life.” 

That’s the “something” we must do.

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Published Date: December 19, 2024

John Stonestreet is President of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview, and radio host of BreakPoint, a daily national radio program providing thought-provoking commentaries on current events and life issues from a biblical worldview. John holds degrees from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (IL) and Bryan College (TN), and is the co-author of Making Sense of Your World: A Biblical Worldview.

The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of CrosswalkHeadlines.

BreakPoint is a program of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview. BreakPoint commentaries offer incisive content people can't find anywhere else; content that cuts through the fog of relativism and the news cycle with truth and compassion. Founded by Chuck Colson (1931 – 2012) in 1991 as a daily radio broadcast, BreakPoint provides a Christian perspective on today's news and trends. Today, you can get it in written and a variety of audio formats: on the web, the radio, or your favorite podcast app on the go.