“Sensible Gun Laws Save Lives” March 24, 2019 Dr. Roger Ray, pastor
“We are going to make this the voting issue. We are going to take this to every election, to every state and every city. When politicians send their thoughts and prayers with no action, we say, ‘No more.’ And to those politicians supported by the NRA, that allow the continued slaughter of our children and our future, I say get your resumes ready,”David Hogg, Parkland survivor, speaking at the March for our Lives rally in Washington, DC.
I had, of course, not heard the news about the shooting in the high school in Columbine, Colorado. They way my driver made it sound, steering the cab through heavy traffic in downtown Rome with one hand while he looked over his shoulder and waived the free hand in the air, I had the impression that an army had descended on a high school and killed everyone there.
In broken English sentences, punctuated with frequent announcements in Italian that Americans are stupid, “idiota,” he demanded some explanation for why Americans continue to allow this to happen. I kept trying to assure him that I was on his side of the issue but, you know, how innocent can you really be if you live here, you are a citizen here, and somehow you have allowed this to go on? It may be hard for you to remember what the world was like 20 years ago, but there was no internet and no English TV in my hotel room, so I was left to sit alone and try to interpret the Italian news reports about the shooting, piecing together that two students had killed 12 of their classmates, and a teacher, and wounded more than 20 more students, before taking their own lives.
I had a week in Italy to contemplate the tragedy, to compose my newspaper column in which I, colorfully, expressed my own belief that my American peers really are “idiotas,” to which I received several hundred responses from my readers suggestion that I return to Italy and never come back.
But I was younger then, and more naïve. I had already lost three church members to domestic gun violence, and I felt like Columbine would finally unite Americans in a move to enact sensible gun laws. But the next month, when there was a hearing before the House Judiciary committee in Washington, it was none other
There were, of course, parents and surviving students who disagreed with him, but Scott got the TV cameras and the wind went out of the sails of reform. In the 20 years since Columbine, there have been additions of metal detectors and armed guards and hardened entries to schools but when it comes to the guns, thoughts and prayers has been the answer from our government.
We have had 50 well publicized mass murders since Columbine. Too many to even read their names within the confines of a single sermon.
But the victims have been varied and the causes diverse:
In 2007 there were 32 killed at Virginia Tech University.
We held a midnight vigil here in July of 2012 when a dozen people were murdered at a movie theater in Aurora Colorado.
Again, we dared to believe that things would finally change when, in 2012, 27 were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut. So many little children . . . how could we stand it any longer?
In July of 2015 we took up an offering to help the Mother Emanuel Church in Colorado to repair their historic church after their pastor and 8 other members were murdered in a racially motivated murder. I delivered the check myself while the blood of the victims was still on the floor of their sanctuary.
The next year, a lone gunman, confused about his own sexual identity, went into a gay night-club in Orlando and killed a seemingly impossible 49 people . . . and they had armed security!
But the very next year, even that staggering number of casualties was topped when, 58 people were killed while attending a music event in Las Vegas.
The next month, 26 were killed on a Sunday morning in a little church in Sutherland Springs, Texas.
I mentioned last week that shooter in New Zealand was not a native. He is Australian but he could not carry out his evil plan in Australia because their gun laws are too restrictive for him to have gotten his hands on the hardware needed to commit this murderous crime.
It deserves to be said that the reason gun laws are so strict in Australia is because there was a mass murder at Port Arthur in 1996, in which a lone gunman killed 35
Did they know that they would be voted out of office? The ones I have heard interviewed certainly did but, they were the kind of people who believed that they were elected to represent the best interests of the people of their country and so, they committed political suicide, but political suicide is much to be preferred to mass murder. I suspect that New Zealand’s prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, once the dew of her current media status passes, will probably suffer a similar fate at the ballot box, but my sense is that she will not regret what she has done in the past week.
We do these sorts of things to keep Kentucky, Arkansas, Kansas, and Oklahoma from looking like the dumbest states in America.
There are reasons for America’s resistance to change. Our political system has become very cash dependent so that the political donations of special interests can easily outweigh the wishes of the voters. There is a history of a gun culture in America that is rooted in the fact that took this continent and built our infrastructure by killing millions of Native Americans, enslaving millions of Africans, and militarily taking half of the nation from Mexico at the end of a gun. My ancestors used guns to steal land and force Africans to do the work they were too lazy to do. And for the past few generations, the unresolved crimes of murder and slavery have kept us on edge with good reason.
But our story has corollaries in New Zealand, Australia, Canada. There have been seasons of national madness in Japan, Germany, and in other places. And there is currently domestic gun violence in Mexico, Venezuela, and South Africa, largely due to much of the same reasons we have it here.
The problem we have to consider is that though fascist sentiments remain in Germany, and there is still racism in Japan, they saw what these sentiments led their nation to do and they have made changes to make sure that they never go down that road again. Australia saw what their gun culture led to and they changed their laws. New Zealand got just a taste of this kind of insanity and in 6 days, changed their laws.
In conclusion then I have these two points: the first is that I want to take back our democracy and the other is that I want to take back our churches.
The difference between an oligarchy and a democracy is that in an oligarchy the country is managed by a few, eight or so, special interests, while in a democracy, power resides in the popular vote. Most serious political analysts tell us that we have already evolved away from democracy and have become an oligarchy. Large corporations, and special interests, are in charge.
Last year, after the Parkland massacre, NPR polled Americans and found that 75% of us favor sensible gun control legislation. That was 92% of Democrats and 59% of Republicans and 68% of independence. If we had a democracy, we would have better, more reasonable gun laws but the oligarchy that runs our government is unimpressed by the 30,000 gun deaths we have every year and they choose their own profits over the lives of Americans and over the will of Americans.
Even if you get into such a specific group as the gun owning and advocating NRA, 72% of NRA members favor background checks before guns can be purchased.
Men and women, America has to get its democracy back so that our votes matter and a majority opinion about something as important as this can become law. New Zealand got it done in 6 days. Australia got it done in 12 days. We have been awash in senseless murders for decades and we are not a nation of idiotas. We can do this.
Now, if I may be indulged a moment of personal privilege: I have been preaching and writing newspaper articles in favor of gun control for more than 30 years. An awful lot of people, both within the church and in my reading public, have told me that I have no business talking about politics, either in print or in the pulpit. And I want to drill down on that for a minute:
What is a political issue and what is an issue of morality which is the direct area of interest to the church? I have been at this for a long time and I can tell you what the difference is – when someone disagrees with what I say, it is politics, and when they agree, I’m being a prophetic preacher.
There are websites that will carry the video of the message who have rejected columns and sermons of mine in the past when I talked about gun control. Why have they changed? Only because the issue has become popular among their constituency. It was politics when they didn’t want to alienate some of their subscribers, but it became fair game when it became an overwhelmingly popular idea.
So, as to my second point, taking back the churches, I would like to ask my sisters and brothers who are still in the Christian ministry: Do you think that they nailed Jesus to the cross because he was a moderate? Do you believe that Jesus always looked for the middle way? Do you think that Jesus shied away from controversial topics because some of his wealthy donors might be offended?
Churches remain silent on difficult ethical issues out of fear of losing church members and donors. I get that. I have run off major donors on a regular basis and it directly affects our bottom line and it holds our salaries down.
But when I look in the mirror in the morning and hold a razor in my hands, the decision about whether I am going to shave or cut my throat doesn’t take me very long. When you are afraid to speak up on a matter that is costing us more than 30,000 lives every year because some gun nut in your congregation might not agree with you, well, if I were you, I would stay away from sharp objects.
Martin Luther King, Jr. used to say that our country needs our churches to be the headlights and not the tail lights of social change but in almost every difficult topic: gay rights, women’s rights, civil rights, the church has been in the caboose and almost never driving the locomotive. A church that cannot come out strongly in favor of sensible gun laws should seriously consider closing and allowing their building to be used for public housing, or a flea market, or something useful, like a parking lot.
The middle of the road is for yellow stripes and dead armadillos . . . not churches. That is, of course, my opinion. It just so happens that I am right.
