Now is the Time for Gun Control!
Like many of you, I was saddened and shocked by the senseless mass murder of nineteen school children and two teachers in Uvalde, Texas.
I struggle to comprehend why anyone would do such a thing as shoot a poor innocent child; but I’m equally dumbfounded as to why this keeps happening in America and why Americans refuse to do anything meaningful about it.
While I understand that America has a unique history, a distinct culture, and a particular geography, surely it has reached a point where the gun culture that enables mass shootings simply has to stop. The culture of gun ownership, owning guns capable of committing mass murder, has to end. Death by shooting is now one of the major causes of child death in the USA, nowhere else in the world, only in the USA.
Glad to see that many people are beginning to think this way. Just look at this tweet by Dr. Danny Akin, president of South Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary.
I know Americans don’t like foreigners telling them how to live their lives. But those of us in the Anglophone world feel like we are wrapped up in the cultural meta-verse of the USA. We watch your news, we watch your movies, we eat at your global restaurant franchises, we follow you on twitter, and we visit your shores. We do feel kind of connected with America on some level, and in that connection, we plead with you all to do something about gun violence. By “do,” I mean, “make it stop … somehow … anyhow.”
I know many pro-life conservatives are pleased that Roe vs. Wade is probably going to be overturned by SCOTUS very soon. But the pro-life cause is bigger than abortion, it includes defending the voiceless and vulnerable, including innocent children at a school. Pro-life means being committed to ending or reducing the instruments of violence that can end a child’s life.
Being pro-life means standing up to Planned Parenthood and the National Rifle Association.
Let me tell you that gun control works. We had a mass shooting in Australia in 1996, then, immediately after a conservative government enacted gun control, and we’ve had no mass shootings since, and a reduction in homicides and suicides. Gun control doesn’t mean no guns ever, you can still get a bolt action rifle for hunting or some kind of shot gun, but it means no handguns and no semi-automatic rifles. It works and the country is safer!
If you’re rolling your eyes at this post, then I ask you, try reading something from outside your tribe, try read something that puts forward the case for gun control from a Christian perspective. Books I’d recommend are:
Michael Austin, God and Guns in America.
Taylor Schumann, When Thoughts and Prayers Aren’t Enough: A Shooting Survivor's Journey into the Realities of Gun Violence.
Christopher B. Hayes and C. L. Crouch, God and Guns: The Bible Against American Gun Culture.
Pro-life and pro-gun are a contradiction, I pray that Christian conservatives in America realize that and soon!
This is insightful and compelling and certainly careful thought must be given to substantive gun control. Having said that, may I give some of the reasons why many Americans would be staunchly opposed to it.
1. The right to bear arms (yes, military style arms) is seen as a deterrent to what many fear to be a Marxist socialist government that looms on the horizon. One of the first things that totalitarian governments do is to disarm the populace.
2. The cities, states, and even some countries that have enacted tough gun control laws have seen a precipitous rise in deaths involving guns - both pistols and semi-automatic weapons.
3. Our schools can be better served by changing them from soft targets to hard targets (metal detectors, cops stationed in the school, and teacher volunteers who undergo rigorous training being allowed to conceal carry).
4. Sadly, many that have slaughtered the innocents are mentally ill. We need better solutions and programs for identifying these potential domestic terrorists and providing comprehensive treatment for mental health.
For me personally I ask, "Is a political or constitutional right automatically the same right and practice for a Christian?" This issue at the very least gives me pause.