Congressman Pearce on Dallas Shooting: America Has to Address 'Spiritual Sickness'

Congressman Pearce on Dallas Shooting: America Has to Address ‘Spiritual Sickness’

By

jporterfield

July 8, 2016

On Thursday afternoon, Congressman Steve Pearce (R-New Mexico) told students attending the Young America’s Foundation National High School Leadership Conference the hard truth in the aftermath of the shooting that killed five police officers in Dallas, TX last night: there is a spiritual sickness running rampant in America today that needs addressing. The topic came up in a Q & A session with the congressman when a student asked about recent police involved shootings, saying “What do you think is going to have to happen for these things to change?” “It’s going to come down to the heart of America,” Rep. Pearce told the students. “We have a spiritual sickness in this country that drives us. We’re about three or four percent of the world’s population, but that spiritual emptiness drives us to consume about 75 percent of the world’s illegal drugs. That same spiritual emptiness is causing violence to play out.” “There’s a much deeper problem than just police violence or just, you know, a group moving back toward the police. The sickness is in America, and we’re going to have to address the moral situation in our hearts as a country– each one of us individually — before we deal with this,” the congressman responded. Rep. Pearce explained that the Left often likes to spin issues like this by saying, “Oh, you gotta control the guns,” but pointed out that places with the strictest gun control are often cities with the greatest violence. “California has the most restrictive laws against assault weapons but the shooting that occurred out in San Bernardino was with an assault weapon in a state where they’re prohibited, so gun control laws will never work,” the congressman noted. “It is the heart of people we need to be addressing,” Rep. Pearce emphasized. “And the Left hates to talk like that cause that leads us to the discussion that maybe we ought to not be excluding God from every conversation that’s going on in the country.”