To everyone who wants to know why I'm so passionate about this...
I have a niece who just turned three. I have a nephew who will be seven in this year. I have another nephew who just celebrated his first birthday and a third on the way.
I don't want to have to wake up or come home or receive a call to hear someone came in and shot them at school, in public, wherever. They may not be my children, but they're the children of my brother and sister. When someone you love hurts that badly, it will hurt you just as much.
I'm sick and tired of all the back and forth yelling instead of putting aside politics and talking about how we can protect innocent people. There's a difference between gun violence and gun warfare. People who do not have any military training, people who are ordinary civilians, should not be able to purchase military style weapons.
So what if knives, bats, and cars also kill? When doing it with a gun, you do it from a distance, you detach yourself, you become desensitized, you don't get any blood on you. Cars are not consciously designed to kill. There are kitchen knives and baseball bats. Guns by their very nature require you to view the world through a lethal lens to the point where you might murder someone who's just reaching for their phone.
I'm not saying stop the manufacturing of guns. I'm saying we need to take responsibility. We can't keep doing the same thing over and over again. Neither more guns nor less guns are the answer.
Here’s one thing all Evangelicals — and Christians of every stripe, actually — hold to be true: humans are sinful. They cannot stop being sinful. They will always be sinful. This is why, according to the Christian gospel, the Father deployed his Son and that Son died; to take the rap for sin. If any human could have found a way to live a perfect life, then that sacrifice would not have been necessary. The sinfulness of all humanity is one of Christianity’s foundational beliefs.
Given that, why do so many Christians, particularly those on the right, so steadfastly oppose any kind of meaningful gun control? It’s true that guns don’t kill people on their own. People kill people. But since Christians believe that people cannot be perfected this side of Glory, why not limit the harm we fallen people are able to do? We can only change one side of the equation, and that’s the gun side.
Compare the Christian attitude to guns to the Christian attitude to marriage. It is not in the nature of mammals to be monogamous, and yet churches support marriage, offer couples counseling, discourage the watching of pornography or the solicitation of prostitutes or the secret affair. Churches acknowledge people are not perfect, so they endorse the introduction of some guardrails to help them do less damage to those around them. They promote some limitations on freedom to stop people getting hurt. Yes, the Lord said go forth and multiply, but Christian people do not then take that to mean you have the right to have children with whomever you wish at any time, after a three-day waiting period.
Or let’s look at the Christian perspective on giving. Traditionally, Christians believe in the tithe. That is, they give up 10% of their income to the church or some godly purpose. The thinking behind this is that since everything humans have comes from God, they are merely returning to God what is God’s. To hoard money is to rely on something other than God. To give it away is to acknowledge that God is the ultimate provider. So why do Christians rely on guns for protection at all times? Do Christians believe guns are stronger than God?
Why not then give up even 10% of the access to guns — say, just the semi-automatics?
Even so, I still have faith in the Christian God, but I've lost my faith in Evangelicals. I'm neither left nor right, conservative or liberal. I radically disagree with both parties. Politics has become way too toxic. But this is something no one can stay silent on. Not when innocent lives are being threatened.
God loves children, he loves the brokenhearted, he loves those in suffering and mourning. Why can't we?