2-22-18 The St. Valentine's Day Massacre

 

The St. Valentine's Day Massacre - J.L. Robb - http://www.omegaletter.com/articles/articles.asp?ArticleID=8594

 

Alphonse Gabriel Capone (1899-1947) died as a free man on January 25, 1947. Also known as Scarface, Al Capone was born in Brooklyn, New York. His parents were immigrants and poor, like so many immigrants.

 

Al Capone made a lot of money as the country's leading mobster, selling bootlegged liquor, prostitution and gambling. He also had a penchant for violence. His most famous brutality became known as the St. Valentine's Day Massacre in 1929 in which he ordered the murder of seven of his competitors, also gangsters. Books were written and movies made.

 

One has to wonder how many of our politicians were on-the-take, since Al was never tried for the massacre. He served a few years for tax evasion and then moved to Miami where he died in 1947.

 

That was the first St. Valentine's Day Massacre.

 

The second St. Valentine's Day Massacre was last Wednesday at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, Parkland, Florida. Thanks to Rev. Stephen Carretto, St. Paul Evangelical Lutheran Church in Boca Raton, FL, the school quickly had the benefit of the Lutheran Church Charities K-9 Comfort Dogs. He felt from experience that if anything could help the students dealing with the 17 deaths of their classmates, it would be the comfort dogs. I am sure he was correct.

 

Comfort dogs. What irony.

 

So now the debate continues about gun control and which ones to control, but the people need to be controlled. They are the ones shooting, plowing cars into people, throwing acid in the faces of Londoners, stabbing people and on-and-on.

 

There was a big difference between the first St. Valentine's Day Massacre of 1929 and the St. Valentine's Day Massacre of 2018, besides the number of people killed.

 

Al Capone, as deranged as he was, killed other gangsters. He did not walk into a public place and just start shooting, killing the innocent. To him, it was business. Other than the Mob, hardly anyone else did massacres.

 

Nikolas Cruz on the other hand, only 19, walked in a high school and started shooting after pulling a fire alarm to get the kids to go in the halls, with him. It was demented; and so far, no one seems to know the motive. When I heard the story, I wondered if Nikolas knew who God was, had he ever seen a Bible? He was also a victim in many ways.

Raised by his mother who died from the flu recently, he moved into a home of a family willing to help.

 

Many are calling for bans, bans on rifles, pistols, the whole shebang. This would be unconstitutional, but that does not seem to matter. What about tighter restrictions?

 

Before we rewrite the constitution, we need to remember that killers do not need guns. They will find other ways. There are probably a million bomb-making sites on the Internet.

 

What about buying the latest-greatest body scanners and metal detectors to put at the entries? Why not hire retired soldiers for school security?

 

While these are all pretty good ideas, they are simply Band-Aids. They do not get to the solution of the problem. We haven't even figured out what the problem is. The problem is the heinous evil person who does this type of thing. To get to a solution, it would be helpful to figure out why so many seem to have a heinous-evil problem. Where did it originate?

 

The United States did not ban guns after Al Capone was arrested; but there were no school massacres for nearly twenty years, 1966 when a gunman killed 16 students from the University of Texas Bell Tower. There were no school massacres at all, with two exceptions.

 

That first massacre was also followed 3 years after the Supreme Court Ruling banning the Bible and prayer from public schools, because of the separation of church and state clause.

 

One day maybe American society will realize, the problem was and is the elimination of God from most aspects of society, and especially the education system. It is interesting that the Founders of the nation wrote the separation clause and put the Bible in every school.

 

In the late 1940s until about 1960, we were very much a Judeo-Christian nation, at least in the South. After the war, everyone seemed to have found God. Maybe that was because of World War II ending.

 

The public schools at that time were like divinity schools when compared to today's. Country boys all had hunting rifles, all believed in God, Heaven and Hell and would not think about walking into school and shooting someone. Most pickup trucks in the school parking lots had gunracks. There were no metal detectors, not even in airports. There were no security guards. There was no need for comfort dogs.

 

Are there similarities between Al Capone's America and today's America?

 

After World War I ended in 1918 and Spanish Flu killed millions worldwide in 1918-1919, the nation did not get back to God like we did in 1945. Seems they had plenty of reasons to get right with The Almighty. Instead, the United States jumped directly into the Roaring Twenties. Alcohol became illegal, which was helpful to Capone and his crew; but cocaine and marijuana were legal. It was party time, and Al Capone's illegal liquor flowed freely. Fast dancing like the Charleston, flapper dresses and ragtime music filled the air. Instead of sex, drugs and rock and roll, it was sex, drugs and ragtime jazz. Narcissism for the commoner made its debut.

 

What about the United States today?

 

There are similar moralities to the Roaring Twenties, only we took it to a new level.  To satisfy societies sexual addictions, by 1973 (10 years after schools without God), for the first time in our history, we legalized abortion. That made it simple. No more homes for unwed mothers and shotgun weddings; and sex, whenever with whoever.

 

In the twenties however, it was fashionable to wait for marriage before having babies. There were also still Bibles in the schools.

 

My heart goes out to the families of these victims of the latest school massacre. My heart even goes out for the 19-year-old, very troubled shooter. How did society manage to let it get so out of control?

 

If we want to solve the school massacre problem, we need to stop listening to the people today who think they have a better handle on the church-state clause than the Founders did, because they do not believe in God. Some say they do, but they need to reread the first four commandments. Put God back in the school, like it was before the days of constant school shootings, or any school shootings. Will the believers in this nation demand it? I don't think so. Believers in 1963 stood by, let God be eliminated from schools, let prayers and Bibles be banned, let abortion become legal; and even today many churches are crying, "Be inclusive" with every breath without realizing, at least according to the Bible, God is not inclusive. He is exclusive. And He is jealous.

 

Put Him back in the school; and a generation from now we might have peace again. It will take a while.