Following Jesus without the Second Amendment

The Second Amendment reads:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Laws have to be interpreted and the Second Amendment has its own history of debate. A recent summary of discussions said this:

Notwithstanding the lengthy opinions in Heller and McDonald, they technically ruled only that government may not ban the possession of handguns by civilians in their homes. Heller tentatively suggested a list of “presumptively lawful” regulations, including bans on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, bans on carrying firearms in “sensitive places” such as schools and government buildings, laws restricting the commercial sale of arms, bans on the concealed carry of firearms, and bans on weapons “not typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes.” Many issues remain open, and the lower courts have disagreed with one another about some of them, including important questions involving restrictions on carrying weapons in public.

My contention is that the right to bear the kind of arms now legal to own and use in the American set of laws is not a moral good.

Photo by Tim Wildsmith on Unsplash

There may be a right for a 17 year old like Kyle Rittenhouse to carry a powerful weapon but it is reckless and foolish for any laws to permit that kind of gun to be carried in public by any person of that age. I understand his gun was adjusted enough for it to be within the law.

If the reports about the new case in Michigan we have a similar situation that implicates the parents even more.

What we have in the USA a Second Amendment right to bear arms that has been opened up so far we have reckless laws on guns.

The law is what the law is. Lawyers don’t make laws; they apply laws to specific cases.

Christians in the USA are both citizens of the USA and followers of Jesus. This is what Jesus said to his followers, at the end of which “session” on the mountain he told them that they would be judged according to their following of his teachings.

Matt. 5:38   “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ 39 But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; 40 and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; 41 and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile. 42 Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you.

Matt. 5:43   “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. 46 For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? 47 And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? 48 Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

My questions: How can a Christian follow these words of Jesus and defend the right for 17 yr olds to carry around a gun that can at least be considered an assault weapon?

Is it right for a Christian to break that command of Jesus because he or she has the right to bear arms?

Do Christians have a responsibility to live in a way that turns away from that right and says “Not for me”?

The issue, then, is not about what rights we have. The issue is how the Christian best follows Jesus in our world.

How about if we learned to follow Jesus without the Second Amendment?

Ask Australia about what is a moral good. From USAToday:

Twenty-two years ago, just weeks after the deadliest and last fatal mass shooting in Australia’s history, the country’s then-Prime Minister John Howard made it clear: Australia will not be like the United States.

“I would dread the thought that this country would go down the American path so far as the possession of firearms,” said Howard — at a gun rally.

Each time there’s a mass shooting like the one Wednesday in Parkland, Florida, where 17 were killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, attention turns to Australia and the changes it made to its gun laws two decades ago.

The country made sweeping gun control measures after a man killed 35 people with a semi-automatic weapon in a popular tourist area of Port Arthur, in Tasmania. Weeks after the April 1996 tragedy, the country and its states began banning rapid-fire guns to tamp down on mass shootings and then offered to buy the prohibited firearms.

Research suggests it’s worked.

The University of Sydney, in a 2016 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, found Australia hadn’t experienced a fatal mass shooting — one in which five or more people are killed — since the 1996 shooting. In the 18 years prior, 1979-1996, there were 13 fatal mass shootings in Australia.

Around 30,000 Americans are shot per year. More than 8500 have died from these gunshots. [Source]

Chicago has the strongest gun laws in the nation and those laws seem to have little slowing-down impact. Murderous people, of course, use guns for murder but gun laws can help. The numbers ought to stagger us but we’ve become numb to the pop of guns, even though they are used for murders.

The issue on this blog post is not to focus just on gun laws but on the idiocy of gun prevalence and gun violence in the USA. The issue today is gun violence against other humans. Americans, unlike any Western country, have a culture of gun violence.

James Atwood admits he has been waiting for more than three decades, but that wait (for all of us who have been waiting) is now over: What’s he been waiting for? After he buried one Herb Hunter who was killed by a reckless use of an easily-purchased handgun, he’s been waiting for someone to write a book that theologically reflects on guns in America. 30,000+ gun deaths per year in the USA if one combines homicides with suicides by guns. 30,000+. More than the population of the village in which we live. Wiped off the map every year. 30,000+.

Where there are more guns, there are more gun deaths. Guns are designed to kill.

More people now die of guns than of car accidents. In 2008, 17 in Finland, 35 in Australia, 39 in England and Wales, 60 in Spain, 194 in Germany, 200 in Canada, and 9484 were killed by guns in the USA. Atwood, who owns a gun and is a deer hunter,  was asked about five years ago to speak to the Presbyterian Peacemaking Forum about guns and gospel values and idolatry, and that book is called America and Its Guns: A Theological Exposé. Atwood is more than a concerned pastor; Atwood has been involved with The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence for 35+ years. He’s read all the materials; knows the evidence; has been active in the discussion and social struggle; and he has given us a gift. What we need is a balance between the right to bear arms and the right to live in safety. For change to occur, Atwood observes, requires “the leadership of an educated, spiritually aware, and committed community” (xvi).

The Gun Empire, he claims, has a stranglehold on America. He sees gun violence as the elephant in the room no one wants to look at or talk about. He thinks the stranglehold is about the “principalities and powers” and are nourished by death. It is not God’s will that more than 80 people die every day as a result of gun violence. The nonsense of the Gun Empire is that guns don’t kill people and that the answer to gun violence is more guns. Atwood thinks his previous strategies — through the federal government and legal process to create better laws —  didn’t work because he was too naive about the NRA’s use of funds to guide legislators. He thinks now that the way forward in gun violence and the way forward against the Gun Empire is to motivate and mobilize the church, the community of faith, to act on its faith. Here is how he says it:

On the moral high ground, with confidence in the rightness of our cause, with indisputable facts at our disposal, and with strong biblical and spiritual resources, people of faith will be able to convince those in Congress and in statehouses to vote for fair and balanced laws that they know in their hearts is the right thing to do.

Asking the “Congress to confront America’s idolatry of guns was asking the fox to guard the chickens.” In fact, as Upton Sinclair put it, “It is very difficult to get someone to understand something when his salary, or his power is dependent on not understanding it.” Whatever the church has done to cajole or convince Congress to take gun safety or control has been outdone by the NRA.

James Atwood, in fact, says he failed to take the Bible and Calvin more seriously. He was too optimistic about Congress and the good will of humans to realize that gun control/safety is more than willpower; it is not just a political issue; it is a spiritual issue; it is about idolatry.

It’s not right to dismiss it all with “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.”

We should be saying, “the only guns that kill people are guns used by humans.”

The church should lead the way in exhibiting peaceful approaches to life and conflict, and Christians should lead the way in seeking — at the least — serious examination of gun laws and gun safety and access to guns.

How many have to die before this is an issue for churches?
How about this being a topic for a Sunday sermon during Epiphany?
How many times do we have to say America has a gun violence problem?

Hear this: “Former NRA executive, Warren Cassidy, … ‘You would get a far better understanding of the NRA if you were approaching us as one of the great religions of the world'” (19-20). For some people, possession and use of a gun is intoxicating, and the intoxicant is power and the control of someone else’s life. But isn’t “idolatrous” too strong of a term?

James Atwood, who has probably thought about gun control as much, if not more, than any American alive today has reflected on this very issue and sees gun idolatry in the following three elements:

1. When an owner [of a gun] believes there are no circumstances when a regulation or restriction for public safety should be placed upon it [the gun/the owner].

2. When an owner believes that guns don’t kill; they only save lives.

3. When an owner has no doubt that guns preserve America’s most cherished values.

He also mentions other elements, like deep emotional attachment to guns, anger when anyone questions gun values, when no preventive measures are supported, show little to no grief for those who have experienced gun violence, vigorously oppose any restrictions of sales of guns, claim an absolute right to use their guns against the government if they consider it tyrannical, claim the blessing of God on the weapon, and believe the solution to gun violence is more guns.

There is a major question we need to ask as a society, but the question will come after a brief listing. It is a listing of violence we Americans are both exposed to throughout culture and which we engage — engage so much companies can make lots and lots of money from us by producing violent images. (By the way, in Europe violent movies create an R rating. Is it the same in the USA?)

Violent images are encountered in the USA in the following contexts:

1. Movies and TV
2. Video games
3. Western movies, Comic books, Cartoon figures
4. Toys
5. Use of the hand as a gun
6. Sports, especially football (of the American kind) and ice hockey
7. Mixed martial arts
8. NASCAR
9. Paintball games
10. Hunting for Bambi

Next to this set of violent images, what about a language? Big shot, shot in the dark, shoot kill, hit man, open season, shooting for gold, in the cross-hairs, a double-barreled approach… Or our belief that we are a Christian nation, a city on a hill, a chosen people? Do these create justification for violence? Is redemptive violence the way of Jesus?

The question: Is there a connection between these productions of violent images and American violence? Can we connect the dots? Are we more violent because of our images? Would minimizing the images reduce violence? From James Atwood,America and Its Guns: “Violence is a pervasive spirit that touches and affects everything we do and everything we are. … Violence captivates, thrills and fascinates us, and it starts beguiling us early in life…” (43).