Guns, God, and Government

Nothing makes me angrier than dead children. How could something so senseless, so inhumane continue in a country that is so quick to claim its exceptionalism? That is a question I have repeatedly asked myself in the wake of yet another school shooting, this time in Oregon at Umpqua Community College (UCC Mike Huckabee, not USS). Just before the shooting, I had stumbled on a piece on student loans. In the comment section, an insane right-winger ranted about how people who can’t afford to go to “elite schools,” should simply go to “community college where the rest of the worthless burger flippers go.” As I watched the news (the news, not FauxNews), I wondered if his heart had been turned by the carnage reported by our living room gods. I wondered if he had been moved to appreciation by the heroic actions of fellow student, Chris Mintz, who took seven bullets to protect his classmates in full demonstration of what Christ said when he stated, “There is no greater love than the love of someone who lays down his life for his friends.” I wondered if the hate in his heart had been drowned out by tears, or compassion, or empathy. Then the synic in me came to the belief that he probably couldn’t hear the crying over the sound of his firearm, as he put down his copy of National Review to shoot above his head Yosemite Sam style & scream, “You can have my gun when you take it from my cold dead fingers, Obama!”

I truly felt for the President, as he made an impassioned plea to change our gun laws. He did everything short of get on his knees and beg Congress to make changes to the lax gun laws that permeate our Nation. This is the fifteenth mass shooting during his Presidency and his hands our tied, truly. He can’t do anything unless Congress acts and the more the NRA, Faux News, and the ilk brainwash the American people into believing guns are not the problem, the more unlikely it is that Congress will ever act. Even though they are owned primarily by banks, Congress are our public servants and they often sway to the beat of public opinion, as their greatest fear is not getting re-elected and then having to face the prospects of getting a real job. In a recent poll only 25% of Americans believe that stricter gun laws would do anything to prevent shooting massacres, despite the overwhelming evidence that gun control works (and works really really well) around the world. Americans against gun control, along with those silenced from fear (i.e. the Church) have become complicit in these tragedies. As we turn a blind eye and cuddle our sidepieces, people are being massacred, families are being broken, and our little ones are being raised in a country that knows no safe place. In fact, in the wake of recent shooting scandals, gun sales went up. Our moral compass is so aloof, we run the risk of mass shootings becoming an actual business model for the NRA and weapon manufacturers. The blood of the Oregon victims had not yet run dry before people took to the Internet fighting for their gun rights. In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, many showed their lack of humanity by making gun rights their primary concern. Radical conservatives argued that if schools weren’t gun free zones, this wouldn’t happen; but, UCC in Oregon wasn’t a gun free zone. Oregon is an open carry state and no college has the authority to overturn state law. John Parker, Jr. admitted to having a gun on campus during the shooting; but, wisely and with a great deal of common sense, chose not to use it out of fear that he would be mistaken for the perpetrator and shot dead by police (imagine that). Other far-right extremists argued that taking guns away wouldn’t work and that the issue was the human heart. Of course the issue is the human heart; but, these mass shootings aren’t occurring with spitballs (shout out to Zell Miller). Besides, if one really believed the issue was the human heart, why make it easier for evil people to own firearms? So many on the right are up in arms about Iran potentially owning a nuclear weapon; but, why be so terrified? Nuclear weapons don’t kill people. Evil people kill people.  Conservatives took to the Internet in masses, encouraged by brain-dead knuckleheads like Mike Huckabee and Donald Trump to say, “Criminals don’t follow laws.” What a novel argument! Why have any laws then? Why have laws against larceny, or fraud, or immigration. I seem to remember this group of people being very devoted to drug laws and using them to throw people (mostly minorities) in jail with glee; but, maybe my memory is shaken after the trauma of watching guns claim the lives of nine more people, when they should be home with their families, right now. Additionally, weapons were purchased legally for eight of the eleven mass shootings President Obama has addressed publicly. Conservatives argued that mental illness is the problem. They argued that it is anti-Christian bigotry. Yet, there is mental illness everywhere & bigotry everywhere; but, what separates America from the rest of the world is a lack of sensible gun laws that prevent this sort of nonsense. A day after an Australian mass shooting in 1996, Australians had had enough and passed sensible gun legislation that cut gun related deaths by 50%. Japan has gun control and .06 gun deaths per every 100,000 people each year. Norway has gun control and less than 2 gun deaths per 100,000 people. The UK also has gun control and has .25 per 100,000 people killed by a gun every year. The United States, with the most lax gun laws of any industrialized nation, has 10 gun deaths per 100,000 people. One study showed that more than 35,000 Americans die by the gun each year, which is more than 85 dead by the gun per day, and 3 dead by the gun every hour. By comparison, the Vietnam War cost the lives of 58,000 American soldiers over a 20 year span. Guns take American lives at more than half that rate…..every two years. Statistics show that you are much safer not having a gun in your home than you are having one. I remember a really intelligent holy man once saying something along the lines of, “He who lives by the sword (gun), will die by the sword (gun).” Speaking of holiness, there’s the other argument, “If we only let God back into schools, these events wouldn’t happen.” To which I reply, “Which God?” Should we allow Allah, or Baal, or the God of the Old Testament, or perhaps Thor to return to be our Nation's Almighty Superintendent? If disallowing God is the problem (which is a strawman by the way), then why do the most atheistic countries put us to shame when it comes to their low rates of school shootings and gun deaths?

As I held my three year old daughter after the shooting, I came to the sickening realization that there is no safe place for her in America. Schools and Churches, which are supposed to be sanctuaries, have become places of carnage and death because we love our guns more than we love the Prince of Peace who commanded us to, “Lay down our swords.” As my daughter grows up, she will likely face a country where metal detectors are everywhere and armed guards are an unwelcome reminder of our country’s infatuation with tools of murder and weapons of destruction. Each and every day we are commanded to fear “the other,” whether those are immigrants, or Muslims, or homosexuals, or  liberals. Perhaps all the fear mongering is to keep us away from seeing that “the other” fails in comparison to the beast within. When we have a country that sees families grieve over their dead loved ones and our response is, “We love our guns,” than we have most definitely become the beast.

There is still hope. There are plenty of Americans that believe in America, that believe we can progress to making America a better place, a place where children are safe to return to schools and Churches, a place where mass shootings are a sad remnant of a barbaric past, a place where guns (like the Confederate Flag) are nothing more than museum pieces, locked away with the rest of history. I long for that day when one of my grand-children, will turn to my daughter and point to a gun safely locked away in a museum and ask, “What’s that mommy?”