The United States: One Nation Under the Gun

These most aggressive gun enthusiasts are not putting their faith in God, they trust only guns to save them. In Guns They Trust.

Guns are the issue in the endless mass shootings – and there have been 20 more now since the slaughters in Buffalo and Uvalde, Texas, and add to that the killings that occur almost everyday, especially in urban areas. To say otherwise is to lie, distort and distract from the facts. 

In particular, military weapons of war, automatic weapons designed to kill as many people as fast as possible, are the primary cause of the mass shootings that have produced such heartache and unimaginable suffering for many families whose lives have been ruined by killing machines in schools, grocery stores, houses of worship, musical concerts, and street corners.

In Uvalde this week, mothers and fathers are now having to find small coffins to bury children murdered in their elementary school. I can’t get over the small coffins discussions. The other thing I can’t get over is the DNA issue: parents have to identify their murdered kids with their own DNA as the bodies of their beloved children are too mutilated to recognize. Maybe we should all have to see those destroyed children to get the point about guns, how they tear flesh and faces apart.

The argument you often hear from gun advocates is that guns are necessary for self-defense. No one can explain why anyone needs an AR-15 for self-defense. Do they expect an army to invade their homes? Perhaps some of these gun owners are themselves preparing to wage war. When I hear talk about a second Insurrection or read the news about militia-members who tried to kidnap Michigan’s governor in 2020, I see my worst fears realized. Many of the most vocal gun proponents claim to be Christian. But faith in guns is a lie. True faith, as Jesus taught us, involves loving and serving our neighbors, even laying down our lives for our brothers and sisters, not killing them. These most aggressive gun enthusiasts are not putting their faith in God, they put their faith guns to save them. In Guns They Trust.   

The biggest moral problem is our public acceptance of such indefensible weapons in civil society. If we can’t expect any moral or responsible behavior from the gun lobby or political leaders, who block all gun regulations, maybe it’s finally time to take responsibility ourselves. 

We know that gun manufacturers choose profits over people, no matter what the cost in human lives, even our children’s lives. And too many politicians choose votes from their gun-loving base or money from the gun lobby over the lives of the citizens and their families and children. And now a whole party, the Republican Party, has made that choice of guns over public safety and security. So when people say this isn’t or shouldn’t be about politics, tell them it is about politics – Republican Party politics.

You have heard the statistics: 

• 88% of all Americans support universal background checks.

• 84% support “red flag laws” that help locate and intervene in gun purchasing by people with histories of mental health or troubled family issues.  

• 67% of all Americans support the banning of automatic assault rifles and their rounds of ammunition.

Yet – and it is such a big “yet” – our political system is structured to prevent politicians from doing anything about the grave threat these guns pose to our children. So far, we can’t get ten Republicans in the Senate to vote for any gun safety protection. Common sense, safety for our kids and protection in all our public places has been ruled out by Republicans at the national, state, and local levels across the country.

Even our police officers are now outgunned by the shooters massacring our neighbors and families. That was the case in Buffalo and apparently played a role in Uvalde, where law enforcement failed to confront the shooter for 40 minutes – even as children begged for help on 9-1-1 calls. 

Senator Chris Murphy, who has been a champion for shattered families and gun reform groups since the brutal killings of 20 elementary children and 6 of their teachers in Sandy Hook, Connecticut, his state. This week, Murphy is working with Republicans to get something — anything — done on federal gun legislation. We don’t know the specifics of these private negotiations, but the issues reportedly under discussion include full universal background checks and investing in states to pass and enforce red flag laws to find mentally ill or troubled people who have or could obtain dangerous guns. 

The only mention of assault weapons or multiple bullet magazines is the possibility of extending the age of those who could buy such automatic rifles from 18 to 21, as has been done in some states already. Six of the nine deadliest mass shootings in the United States since 2018 were by people who were 21 or younger. The brain development of adolescents on processing information and emotions seems to be a decisive factor here, which should make the age restriction an absolute no-brainer. 

As to the success of these incremental and  inadequate measures, I will wear my Christian hat of hope instead of optimism, that if something happens it could lead to next steps. If we truly want to stop these slaughters, it will have to.

So what do we do when gun lobbies and our country’s rampant gun culture rule out moral decision-making on the part of the Republican Party? I believe we have to run and vote against them on that one issue.

Until Republican elected officials believe their re-elections are at stake they will not make either “common sense” or “moral decisions.” Democrats must find the courage to run on guns, which could be a winning issue for them. And the rest of us must be willing to join campaigns against any candidate who will not support common-sense gun safety laws or takes money from the NRA or any gun lobby. It is time to organize and mobilize against lethal gun violence. 

What else can people of faith say and do?

First, our utter lament over these killings and pastoral care for so many families and communities devastated by these guns must be lifted up collectively and broadly, across all our theological, denominational, and political lines.

But lament, theologically, means that that grief, shame, and repentance must lead to action, which must be determined by prayerful discernment now.

What if our faith institutions called for a complete boycott of the NRA and all the gun lobbies as we did with apartheid in South Africa–in all of our denominational and educational institutions.

What if we, as we also did during the South African campaign for freedom, leverage our financial resources at corporate meetings that involve any gun manufacturers? And what if we helped to lead legal efforts to sue gun manufacturers for the deaths they have caused? Some of those suits have already been successful and it could be pastorally and theologically significant if faith communities lined up in solidarity with the family victims to sue the gun makers who helped kill their children and loved ones.

If democracy hasn’t worked yet – and let’s be honest, Washington has failed us miserably on gun safety – perhaps we should put our faith and our voices in America’s other governing system: capitalism. 

And while we don’t embrace partisan politics in election seasons, we can and do preach and tell our congregations what we believe the most important moral and religious issues are. Gun violence must now be named as such an issue, and our pulpits could say so.

The Pew Research Center says that 50% of white men own guns in America. I am certain that very few of their white pastors have raised any moral or ethical issues of guns and gun violence in their congregations. That needs to change.

Let me close this column with a reflection by Garry Wills after the last mass shooting of children a decade ago at Sandy Hook.

Few crimes are more harshly forbidden in the Old Testament than sacrifice to the god Moloch (for which see Leviticus 18.21, 20.1-5). The sacrifice referred to was of living children consumed in the fires of offering to Moloch. Ever since then, worship of Moloch has been the sign of a deeply degraded culture. Ancient Romans justified the destruction of Carthage by noting that children were sacrificed to Moloch there. Milton represented Moloch as the first pagan god who joined Satan’s war on humankind:

First Moloch, horrid king, besmear’d with blood

Of human sacrifice, and parents’ tears,

Though for the noise of Drums and Timbrels loud

Their children’s cries unheard, that pass’d through fire

To his grim idol. (Paradise Lost 1.392-96)

Read again those lines, with recent images seared into our brains—“besmeared with blood” and “parents’ tears.” They give the real meaning of what happened at Sandy Hook Elementary School. That horror cannot be blamed just on one unhinged person. It was the sacrifice we as a culture made, and continually make, to our demonic god. We guarantee that crazed man after crazed man will have a flood of killing power readily supplied to him. We have to make that offering, out of devotion to our Moloch, our god. The gun is our Moloch. We sacrifice children to him daily.

So do Americans worship God or Guns? That is the moral and religious choice we need to make.