Is Mike Huckabee Right?

There seems to be a lot of outrage surrounding this comment by Mike Huckabee the other day. Huckabee notes on violence in the American school system:

You can take away every gun in America and somebody will use a bomb. When somebody has an intent to do incredible damage, they’re going to find a way to do it… People will want to pass new laws, but unless you change people’s hearts, they’re our transition to the pastor side. This is a heart issue, it’s not something, laws don’t change this kind of thing.We ask why there is violence in our schools, but we’ve systematically removed God from our schools. Should we be so surprised that schools would become a place of carnage because we’ve made it a place where we don’t want to talk about eternity, life, what responsibility means, accountability?

What is wrong and controversial about this?  Is it that Christian values aren’t good for society? Is it that Huckabee talks about “hearts” instead of the more scientific “mental health”? Is it that Huckabee is a naive idealist and not an scientific realist?  Or is just that Huckabee is a puppet for the NRA and not speaking truth to power?

Is Huckabee right? Will top-down laws from Washington D.C. fail to fix the root issue? And is a bottom-up local policy, which begins with the right conduct of one’s own life and one’s household, then extends to the community and nation, a more apt solution? Do laws and politicians save us? Or do the Christ-like values in our hearts and those of our neighbors make for a more healthy country?

What are we to do? Hopefully we work together civilly and respectfully for a solution.

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