“Long Overdue Reform of
Gun Control” October 8, 2017
*Prayer of Confession Dr.
Roger L. Ray
We stand today on blood soaked land we have
inherited
From a centuries long
heritage of violence
Which was born in the
genocide of the indigenous
And whose industry was
built by the forced labor of slaves. Our forbearers took the northern half of
Mexico
At the end of a bayonet
and rifle
And
we have often indulged ourselves with
The
trite phrase that America was built with
God,
guns, and guts when we have always known
It
was mostly guns.
The violence that today continues this unbroken
chain
No
longer has even the apologetic of
Taking
land or forcing labor.
Now
it is just violence that is random, senseless,
and incomprehensible.
We will not ask forgiveness again
since this is a sin that
is within our power to stop.
We ask only for the
courage to try again,
To work harder,
To be more successful
In changing who we have
been into
The nation we long to
be. Amen.
Wisdom Lesson
Adam Gopnik wrote after the Sandy Hook shooting
for The New Yorker (https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-simple-truth-about-gun-control)
There are complex, hand-wringing-worthy problems
in our social life: deficits and debts and climate change. Gun violence, and
the work of eliminating gun massacres in schools and movie houses and the like,
is not one of them. Gun control works on gun violence as surely as antibiotics
do on bacterial infections. In Scotland, after Dunblane, in Australia, after
Tasmania, in Canada, after the Montreal massacre—in each case the necessary
laws were passed to make gun-owning hard, and in each case… well, you will note
the absence of massacre-condolence speeches made by the Prime Ministers of Canada
and Australia, in comparison with our own President …
Gun control is not a panacea, any more than
penicillin was. Some violence will always go on. What gun control is good at is
controlling guns. Gun control will eliminate gun massacres in America as surely
as antibiotics eliminate bacterial infections … Those who oppose it have
made a moral choice: that they would rather have gun massacres of children
continue rather than surrender whatever idea of freedom or pleasure they find
wrapped up in owning guns or seeing guns owned—just as the faith healers would
rather watch the children die than accept the reality of scientific medicine.
This is a moral choice; many faith healers make it to this day, and not just in
thought experiments. But it is absurd to shake our heads sapiently and say we
can’t possibly know what would have saved [all those lives].
Our city government has recently made
the decision to make it illegal to 
keep a Pit Bull as a pet. Many dog enthusiasts are outraged by this
decision and they are insisting that it is not the fault of the breed that
there are so many Pit Bull attacks. They insist that it is bad dog owners who
have given this breed a bad name.
keep a Pit Bull as a pet. Many dog enthusiasts are outraged by this
decision and they are insisting that it is not the fault of the breed that
there are so many Pit Bull attacks. They insist that it is bad dog owners who
have given this breed a bad name.
In a recent community conversation, I
made the observation that of all of the deaths from dog attacks that happen
every year in America, more than half of time, a Pit Bull is the dog that
killed them. That fact almost never has the slightest impact on the owners of
Pit Bulls who insist that their dog is loving and sweet and would never hurt
anyone.
Thomas Paine, one of the intellectual giants from the early days of our
nation said: To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like
administering medicine to the dead. The hard facts are in. Looked at purely
from a mathematical perspective, Pit Bulls are the most dangerous dogs on the
planet.
But if you happen to love your own Pit
Bull, that fact is often rendered meaningless. Not because the fact is mistaken
but because the owner of a Pit Bull simply does not want for that fact to be
true.
To really understand a Pit Bull owner,
you have to also ask what owning a Pit Bull does for the dog owner. How does
having an efficient killing machine in the house make them feel? And, in fact,
in most cases, it makes a person who is afraid of crime or violence, or rape,
feel more secure. Their dog is not at all likely to attack a member of the
family that feeds and houses it. The neighbor’s kids and visitors to the home,
however, are not so safe.
Still, in the overall scheme of things,
and I can’t believe that I am saying it just this way, but Pit Bulls only kill
about 25 people every year. In a country of 300 million people, statistically,
25 is not many. The fact that most of them are children changes the dynamic a
bit, but still, Pit Bulls only kill about twice as many people as dairy cows
and no one is suggesting that we outlaw dairy cows.
Controversial topics are controversial
because there are two or more plausible views at play but when emotions get
involved, reason is often the first casualty. But we are not here to talk about
Pit Bulls. Today, we’re talking about guns . . . which generates more
irrational and heated controversy than almost any other topic in America.
It has not been uncommon, through the
years, for Sean and me to make a decision to completely redo a service in light
of a national tragedy. But, in spite of the fact that we are gathered in the
wake of our worst modern mass murder, that is not why I am talking about gun
control today. Today’s agenda was set weeks ago, long before the Las Vegas
shooting and, not to be flippant about it at all, but mass shootings is not the
real issue for me. These incidents get into the news because they are so random
and so tragic but I want to have a very sober and factual conversation with you
today about gun control and I want to start with the observation that mass
murder accounts for only a tiny fraction of the casualties from gun violence in
our country every year.
We have over 30,000 gun deaths in
America annually. About 60% of those are suicides, several thousand are the
result of domestic violence, several more thousand are murders, many are
accidents and a few are a result of police action. Almost none, about 250 per
year, are the result of self-defense, which is the reason most people give for
buying guns in the first place. Don’t let these statistics slip by you: for
every person shot in an act of self-defense, 60 die in a suicide, 35 are
murdered, and several die by accident. Less than 1% of gun deaths occur when the
gun is being used for its stated purpose.
Mass murders get into the news. Mass
murders get people interested in the topic and, for a little while, the enraged
public calls for action. But we know the steps to this public dance. We all
lived through Columbine, Aurora, Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook, Charleston, Dallas,
and Orlando, and we have a fairly clear idea how the news cycle will go after
Las Vegas.
At first the NRA will be silent. Some
politicians will insist that we not talk about it right now . . . we need to
show respect to the grieving and not try to turn a horrible incident into a
political opportunity. Someone will sincerely offer suggestions like having a
moment of silence, or donating blood, and a few will even try to nibble at the
heels of the gun industry, suggesting that we outlaw the firearms equivalent of
Pit Bulls.
Most people really are good. Most people
want to be helpful. And so there was an immediate response in Las Vegas of
hundreds of volunteers coming forward to donate blood. The blood center had to
announce that they had more than they needed and no one needed to donate
anymore. Whole blood has a shelf life and they had more than they could
possibly use.
Ironically, it was Congressman Steve
Scalise who stepped up and asked for volunteers to donate blood. Scalise had
only just returned to the Congress after having barely survived an
assassination attempt in June in which he was shot while playing baseball. He
is really lucky to be alive and is even still taking physical therapy to learn
how to walk again. As a victim of gun violence, he still provided cover for the
gun lobby by offering this suggestion that people donate blood when he had to
have known that the hospitals in Las Vegas were crying “no mass!”
That is the strength of the gun lobby in Washington. Even if you have
been shot, you still will tell public lies to cover for them because without
the NRA’s “A” rating for members of Congress and their political donations,
most of them could not keep their jobs. Sadly, after telling the public that
they didn’t need more blood donors, when Scalise and others were still calling
for blood donations, the hospitals backtracked and are playing along . . . but
it is a ruse that is only intended to trick the gullible.
Donating blood is usually a good thing
to do. I donate every time my waiting period is up and you should too but not
to give people the false sense that they have done something meaningful so that
they can forget about changing gun laws.
It is like telling someone that they are
in your thoughts and prayers. Thoughts and prayers have not worked. It is time
for something more serious.
There are 4 common lines of defense intended to shut down any meaningful
response to gun violence. Someone will say:
1)
Gun ownership is a right guaranteed by
the constitution.
2)
Guns don’t kill people, people kill
people. A corollary of this one claims that we do not have a gun problem, we
have a mental health problem.
3)
The only way to stop a bad person with a
gun is for a good person to have a gun.
4)
Gun laws don’t work, if they did,
Chicago and Washington, D.C. would not have such a high murder rate.
With your permission, I would like to
address each of these in the cold, clear light of reason. I will try to be
brief – and I will fail in my attempt at being brief.
The second amendment, which appears in
our Bill of Rights, guarantees to our citizens the right to bear arms because
that is crucial to maintain a citizen army . . . a well regulated militia. The
second amendment was not interpreted to mean that every citizen has a right to
own guns for the first 200 years of our nation’s history. The famous Supreme
Court decision in the Heller case literally changed a “well regulated militia”
into an individual’s right to own a gun. It was an example of an extreme
judicial over-reach but it is now the law of the land. But the Heller decision
did not grant citizens the right to own a tank, or a bazooka. The government
retains the right to regulate and restrict, within reason, who can own
particular kinds of guns.
That line has constantly been moving
through the years. The NRA
shifted in the 1960’s from being a hunting and sports organization into a gun
rights organization after Martin Luther King, Jr. and John and Bobby Kennedy
were assassinated. The Johnson administration started to press for gun control
and gun owners panicked in fear that the government would take all of their
guns. At that point the NRA started their irrational fear campaign saying that
if they ever give an inch the government might take a mile.
In the most recent mass murder, the domestic
terrorist used what is called a “bump stock” to convert a semi-automatic rifle
into an automatic rifle. Clearly, if automatic rifles are not legal to own, the
ability to buy an inexpensive upgrade that turns your semi-automatic rifle into
an automatic rifle shouldn’t be legal but these are the high weeds where the
argument always goes. For the NRA, saying “no” to anything is just the camel’s
nose under the tent and so they will defend the most indefensible hardware,
always leading a paranoid charge against the day when Johnson, or Carter, or
Clinton, or Obama will come for your guns.
If they chose to do so, Congress could make a
rational case to limit gun ownership to weapons appropriate to home defense or
hunting. The NRA won’t like it but the 2nd Amendment does not
guarantee anyone a military style weapon, or armor piercing ammunition, or high
capacity ammunition drums or clips.
The second argument I mentioned, “guns don’t
kill people, people kill people.” Yes, a gun, on its own, is unlikely to kill
anyone but we have not approached the problem with North Korea telling
ourselves that nuclear bombs don’t kill people, people kill people. We have a
reasonable fear that a rogue state with nuclear weapons would be more likely to
kill people.
People are killed with baseball bats and knives
but you don’t kill sixty people from a 32nd story hotel window with
knives or baseball bats. And, yes,
people can commit suicide in very many ways, from taking pills, to cutting
their wrists, hanging, or just falling asleep in their running car in a garage.
You can easily kill yourself by just pouring bleach and ammonia into a bowl and
breathing the fumes.
But I can tell you this: in my nearly 40 years
of ministry, I have lost five parishioners to suicide and all five of them used
a gun. Many others have made either suicidal gestures or attempts but they all
had a chance to get medical help and counseling and they all survived.
Self-inflicted gunshots rarely allow a person to either change their mind or be
found in time to be saved.
If you are so callous that you don’t care that
16,000 people kill themselves every year with a gun then please let me tell you
about the five people I personally knew who died by their own hand or let me
introduce you to families who have lost someone to suicide because you really
need an education on this topic. Suicide is preventable but it is very hard to
prevent when there is a gun in the house.
I mentioned that the corollary to this one is
the claim that we don’t have a gun problem, we have a mental health problem. I
have a couple of things that I need to say about that. On the one hand there is a certain truth to
this. There are about 400 million guns in the United States which is about half
of all of the guns in the world. Only a third of Americans own guns and so, do
the math, some of those people own a whole lot of guns. We have more than twice
as many guns per capita than any other nation in the world but there are
countries where there are a lot of guns but there are not many gun deaths. Hunting is very much a part of the culture of
Canada and Denmark, but they have a very low incidence of gun related deaths.
You can reasonably say that there is something
wrong with Americans. Canadians have about a third as many guns, per capita, as
we do in the United States but we have about 200 times as many gun related
deaths. They have mental illness in Canada, just like we do in the USA, just
without all of the mass murder and domestic killing.
So, yes, something is wrong with us but as in
the most recent event in Las Vegas, there was no way to tell that this white
guy with a lot of guns was any more likely to shoot 500 people than any of the
white guys I know here in the Ozarks who own as many guns as he did. There is
no way to know which person is going to express their depression, cope with
their bankruptcy, divorce, or miserable home life, by shooting up a theater, a
nightclub, a school, or a concert. The only part of this we can even begin to
control is the access to weapons and ammunition.
As our friend, Dr. Paul Thomlinson, has
mentioned very recently from this pulpit, the mentally ill are much more likely
to be the victims of violence than they are to be the perpetrators of violence.
Blaming mental illness is just another deception used to shut down conversation
about gun control.
In
fact, in the absolute height of hypocrisy, Speaker Paul Ryan trotted out this
old saw about mental illness in less than 48 hours after the Las Vegas shooting
but earlier this year he martialed legislation through the house to remove
restrictions against the mentally ill being able to buy guns.
Trump signed this into law in February, one of
the only pieces of legislation actually passed by his administration. They then
went to work trying to make it legal to buy silencers. Tump’s own son made TV
commercials supporting the legislation to allow people like the murderer in Las
Vegas to put silencers on their weapons of mass destruction. And yet, Paul Ryan comes out in front of the
TV cameras blaming this incident on an undiagnosed mental illness.
I want this conversation to be rational and
factual but there is no way around calling out Paul Ryan for this massive
attempt at deception. If you believe there is a shortage of treatment for
mental illness in this country then I agree. Put more money into mental health,
but don’t put more guns in the hands of people with serious and persistent
mental illness. That would be, and forgive me for saying it this way, “crazy.”
The third argument we will hear raised this week
is that the answer to gun violence is more guns. Good guys should be armed to
stop bad guys who are armed. It is sort of like saying in an A.A. meeting that
the solution to alcoholism is to drink more . . . but I digress.
The majority of gun deaths are suicides and the
chances of death from a suicide attempt are much smaller if there is no gun
present. Another of the top categories of death is domestic violence.
As tragic as the death toll in Las Vegas was,
there were that many women shot and killed by their husbands or boyfriends last
month, in September. That many were killed in August, July, June, May, April,
March, February, and January. That’s right, more than 50 women are shot and
killed by their husband or boyfriend every month. There is a lot of domestic
violence in our country but if there is a gun in the home, the woman is five
times as likely to be killed. A woman who buys a gun to protect herself is much
more likely to be killed with that gun than she is likely to successfully use
it to defend herself. Some estimates are as high as 17 times more likely to be
killed if a woman pulls a gun on an assailant.
We are talking about math here. One of the
things to love about math is, numbers don’t care what your opinion is or what
you want to believe. Math is math. And the math is that 50 more women will be
killed in November and 50 more in December unless we find the will to do
something to change the trend.
Finally, the 4th argument claims that
gun control laws don’t work . . . just look at Chicago and Washington, D.C. That
is true enough. The gun laws in Chicago and Washington have done little to
solve the gun violence in those cities but, folks, in Missouri, it is illegal
to sell alcohol within 100 feet of a church or a school but that has not kept
church members or college students from drinking.
A
city’s gun laws hardly matter to anyone who has a car or who is capable of
taking a train or a bus out of town. Gun laws do work in Canada, the UK,
Denmark, Japan, Germany, New Zealand . . . In Australia, following a mass
murder at Port Arthur on April 28, 1996, in just 12 days, legislators passed
sweeping gun control laws and the government instituted a massive buy back
program that netted over a million guns. Australia had previously suffered a
mass killing at a rate of about one a year. Since Port Arthur, there have been
none . . . 21 years and counting.
People in Australia didn’t like it. They had a
gun culture much like ours. Many of the legislators who enacted these strict
gun laws were not re-elected. They all knew that they were falling on their
political swords, but they did what was right to protect the lives of
Australians. Can you, in your wildest dreams, imagine Paul Ryan, or Mitch
McConnell, or Donald Trump, doing what is right because it is right even if it
cost them their next election? There is something wrong with Americans . . .
primarily, we need to be more like Australians.
Usually, when there has been a mass murder, I go
to the Bass Pro Shop gun counter and hang around for a while, watching to see
who all comes to buy guns in the predictable rush after a mass murder. I didn’t
go this time because I was just too sick about Las Vegas but I know from news
reports that the manufacturer has run out of bump-stocks, even after increasing
the price by ten times. There has been a
predictable rise in gun manufacturer’s stock, and a massive increase in sales
of hardware and ammunition.
A part of that is the fear of the changes in gun
laws that never seem to materialize but that is not all of it.
When I began, I posed the question, how does
owning a Pit Bull make the owner feel? The same question has to be asked about
gun owners. When they go to the store and buy a semi-automatic rifle, armor
piercing ammunition, and a bump stock…. How do they feel?
When people at gun ranges have been interviewed
after shooting an altered weapon that fires dozens rounds in mere seconds . . .
they often report feeling elation. It was exciting, rewarding, it made them
feel powerful. Is that because they made dozens of holes in a paper target? Or
was it because they fanaticized about how many people they could kill with that
weapon?
How does it feel to own several military styled
weapons? Do you think any of these repressed, fearful, gun collectors watched
the same news that we watched . . . 500 injured, 59 dead, and thought to
themselves, “I could do better than that.”
That’s part of the problem with announcing that
this was the largest, the worst, the most deadly . . . because, for a certain
portion of the NRA crowd, that is a challenge. This shooter didn’t take all of
his guns and ammo to that hotel room. He even had a stockpile of explosives and
a fairly elaborate escape plan. He meant to do more. This was supposed to be
his first attack.
Part of the problem with giving these monsters a
name and news coverage is that every part of their plan becomes a lesson plan.
Their death becomes an object lesson for future murderers.
Folks, as with so many other of the modern
challenges we have looked at these past few months, there is a simple, evident,
and obvious solution to carnage we see every year in America. Every other
developed nation in the world has already done what we have refused to do.
It is not the 59 people who died last week in
Las Vegas or the fifty women who will die next month in their own homes . . .
it is the very predictable 32,000 people who will needlessly die next year if
we cannot muster the political will to do what is right, and obvious, and
necessary. No more thoughts and prayers. No more asking for forgiveness or
holding memorials or blood drives. This is a problem that can be solved and
there is nothing but moral shame in store for us if we don’t get it done.
