 |
| Guns need a license to bear Chuck Norris |
I recently heard (or
read) a lady say that she would like to hear more Christian voices on the topic
of gun control. Apparently after searching online for Christian views on gun control
it only yielded voices of those who want to protect their rights to own
weapons. Since I was already planning on making some of my upcoming posts about
restorative-justice, I thought gun control might actually be a great intro to
that series, though they may not seem congruent at first. Nevertheless, here it
goes.
If
we are honest about the Christian gun control view that this search revealed we
are actually seeing the Republican political stance to protect the American
Amendments which is not inherently a discussion on “Christian” views toward gun
control. Before I offer any critiques on
the political conservatives, however, I would like to point out that I do agree
with part of their argument.
As
most of this debate has stemmed from the US’s mass shootings, one evident aspect
in many of these cases is that the situations have less to do with weapons of
choice and more to do with mental health and our lack of healthcare towards it.
Most of our mass shootings were committed by mentally ill people so to only
focus on guns misses the deeper problem and I could not agree more. Now I have
yet to see many Republicans go beyond using it as an argumentative tool (for
keeping weapons) and actually work toward or even propose ideas to better our mental
healthcare, but as far as I am concerned peoples and communities with a vested interest need not wait for them.
With
that said the other popular argument from Republicans for keeping weapons is
centered on the misnomer that the only way to stop a “bad guy” with a gun is to
make sure the “good guy” has a gun.
Aside from the fact that they just reduced many mentally ill from the
first part of their argument to that of a wild-west villain, now they are
personal arbiters of who the good vs bad gunslingers are.
My
critique is that neither part of the argument is based on the interest of needs
(though many will try and say it is) so much as just keeping weapons available in
major part for financial gain. It is nearly a $15 billion dollar industry that
American citizens contribute a large percentage to.[1] Of course the average
citizen is convinced they will have personal security and hold all the cards during
moments of surprise, but I’m
not sure they understand how surprise tactics work. You will almost never be in total
control of the situation even with weapon in hand. My bigger point is when people see mass
shootings they are understandably struck by fear and the reflexive action is
toward self-protection. But, guns seem like the logical response because, I
think, we just don’t know what else to do.
We are caught in the binary (either/or) trap of kill or be killed.
Perhaps
we do not know what else to do simply because it is never encouraged or brought
to our attention that we can practice other responses. My logic is this, if somebody wants to be
good at war, or mirror the offensive action of a shooter in an equally devastating
manner, then you put in a lot of time, energy and money into becoming good
weapon owners. Case and point, US
military has a $601 billion budget[2]
and puts in lots of time, training and expertise into violating privacy and
making war. It is more than they do for hunger
($167.5 billion dollar problem)[3] and it shows.
We have sustained a war for the last 14 years and there are still unfed people in
the US.
Christians,
however, are not called to vengeance or violence (Rom.12:14-21), that is the
beast’s job (Rev. 13:5-7), but we are called to make shalom (Matt, 5:9). We should invest a large amount of time and
energy into learning how to do that. Wendell
Berry made a similar point when he suggested this: “What leads to peace is not
violence but peaceableness, which is not passivity, but an alert, informed,
practiced, and active state of being. We should recognize that while we have
extravagantly subsidized the means of war, we have almost totally neglected the
ways of peaceableness… And here we have an inescapable duty to notice also that
war is profitable, whereas the means of peaceableness, being cheap or free,
make no money.”[4] Therefore, it is up to those who see past illusions of wealth to create rhythms and investments that actually build something of worth.
What does that look like? As
I said before, it is a vision of building shalom and also creating sanctuary,
so it will look like faithfulness with what does matter: you, me, the other and
creation. Whether guns are legal, the
real question is will owning one contribute to this? I don’t believe Christians
can say yes. Certainly we will have to
consider responses to unintended brazen attacks especially when we take killing
responses off the table (and I will propose more concrete ideas in a coming
post about it). Nevertheless, this decision will be best formed by each community.
If you want to search out for yourself what can be done, look up all the work
that has been done in the areas of conflict transformation and de-escalation,
strategic peacebuilding and restorative justice, just to name a few.
It
still stands that the Church is to be a people who clothe ourselves in compassion,
kindness, gentleness and patience (Col. 3:12) and realize no one is disposable. We carry the responsibility to create healthy
communities with seriousness. This is a community that:
1. Actively pursues peace
processes amid initial conflict (not only after escalation);
2. Invests in the
development of others now (not arming up for when our failure takes its toll);
3. Creates broad social plans that reinforce community (within the social,
educational, business, judicial, medical and so on).
We
will also need to address areas of discontent of those who have existed on the
fringes of communities and require their voice back. From my standpoint gun ownership at best must
be reserved for those who just like shooting at targets or who hunt out of pure necessity.
This certainly is not good Republican thinking, or Democratic thinking, or
American thinking, but it is the thinking of someone who wants to follow Jesus.
[1] Catey Hill 10 Things the gun industry won’t tell you Retrieved
From http://www.marketwatch.com/story/10-things-the-gun-industry-wont-tell-you-2014-03-07
[3] CFAP. Hunger in America Retrieved From https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/poverty/report/2011/10/05/10504/hunger-in-america/
[4] Wendell
Berry. Thoughts in the Presence of Fear Retrieved
From https://orionmagazine.org/article/thoughts-in-the-presence-of-fear/
No comments:
Post a Comment