I May Make You Angry. I Hope to Make You Think.

Whether you think of yourself as a gun rights person or a gun control person, if your response to yet another mass shooting is to articulate your position and denigrate other positions, you are contributing to the intransigence that is costing people their lives. Anything you do to preclude or prevent analysis and critique of your position adds to deadlocking the dialog needed to work together to save people’s lives. Citing selective statistics to stifle conversation has fatal consequences. Deflecting culpability from your position by saying “gun (rights or controls) are not the problem, but the problem is mental health, drugs, political or religious extremism, not enforcing existing laws (or even removing prayer and the Ten Commandments from school, for those who connect that sort of thing) prevents taking practical steps to save lives. Indeed mental health, drugs, extremism and law enforcement are all part of the problem, but guns are absolutely in the middle of this mix. Refusing to address all of this simultaneously is killing people. But these things only begin to scratch the surface of comprehensively addressing mass killings. Notice I did not say shootings. Timothy McVeigh used fertilizer and fuel oil.

Seeking simplistic single solutions that distance ourselves from culpability perpetuates the environment in which deadly violence flourishes. In 1624 John Donne wrote in his poem No Man Is An Island, “Any man's death diminishes me,/ Because I am involved in mankind,/ And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;/ It tolls for thee.” Walt Kelly’s (1913-1973) comic strip character Pogo frequently said, “We have me the enemy, and he is us.” Addressing mass killings must begin by acknowledging that each one of us participates in a culture that glorifies violence for excitement, entertainment and assumes it is suitable for problem solving. Though it cuts across the grain of our American hyper-individualism, all who have any respect for Judeo-Christian Scripture and faith should seriously consider Daniel’s prayer of confession (Daniel 9:4-19) and note that Daniel confessed as though he was personally responsible for the sins of Judah in which he did not himself participate. Psalm 106:6 confesses, “Both we and our ancestors have sinned.”

Chris Mintz has, rightly I believe, been hailed as a hero in the recent shooting in Oregon. Though his military background may have helped him respond rapidly and effectively, he was not a “good guy with a gun” who shot the “bad guy with a gun.” He relinquished self-protection and intervened for the good of others. Yes, he took several bullets and might well have been killed, but he effectively saved lives. Imagine if he had tried the “good guy with a gun” strategy and shot at the shooter. Other such “good guys with guns” might easily have mistaken him for a second gunman and shot at him, arousing other “good guys with guns” to shoot at them. The prospect for geometric escalation is real. Only a split second hesitation prevented a “good guy with a gun” in the parking lot where Gabby Giffords was shot from shooting the man who intervened to disable that shooter. I am convinced that such self-surrender is the most effective and moral form of heroism in such cases.

I feel compelled to add a theological excurses on the US Constitution. While I have a great deal of respect for the US Constitution (what other country has had the same foundational document for over two and a quarter centuries?), but the framers knew it was a fallible, human document, so they built in a realistic but arduous amendment process. They knew, and I vigorously affirm, that for all its merits (even allowing for God’s sovereign supervision of its framing, though God is not mentioned in it), the US Constitution is not divinely inspired, reliable and authoritative Scripture, as I consider the Bible to be.

More than once I have heard the Second Amendment cited as supporting “my God-given rights to keep and bear arms.” God did not give the right to keep and bear arms. That was a human, political decision. I was taught in high school (’64) and college (’69) that it addressed state militias to a support a citizen army, and in part for the pursuit, capture and return of runaway slaves. Only recently have the courts extended the right to keep and bear arms to individuals. I wouldn’t presume to imagine what the founders would think of modern firearms technology, but it is certainly a far cry from the late Eighteenth Century when a rifle was an essential agricultural tool.

I am not suggesting a constitutional debate or revision. I am pleading for life saving action. In grief I have written from a deep yearning that people in this country, especially those of us who consider ourselves to be serious disciples of Jesus Christ, refuse to participate in the stalemated gun debate and begin to explore how to reduce lethal violence in our society without preconditions or preconceptions. Recognizing the political polarization and gridlock of our country, I still have hope and believe that if we will listen to learn from each other and work together rather than try to convince each other and win debate points, we can change the deadly trap we have built for ourselves and save the lives of many people.