This story of who human beings are within the arc of God’s creating and redeeming activity is the backdrop I find most helpful as I think about the tragedy of gun violence. When we talk about guns we can talk about the machines themselves—about semi-automatics and large-capacity magazines—and we can talk about gun policies—about background checks and gun show sales and stolen guns and the gun lobby, but our conversation about gun violence has to be about us, too. Who are we, people who buy guns and use guns; people who are afraid of guns; people who are protected by, maimed by, and killed by guns? What is it that we want from guns--what do we need them to express about ourselves?
We disagree about a lot when it comes to guns, but it's my experience that we all actually agree on two basic truths about gun violence. First, none of us wants to live with mass shootings, where no public place, no gathering, is ever truly safe. Two, we agree that the world would be better if no person ever died from a gunshot. We agree, all of us, on these two things.
What we cannot figure out is how we get from the place we are now to the place where no one dies by gun.
When a gun is used to massacre people, my first instinct is “get these m-f-ing things out of human hands. No one needs to own killing machines.” I never have and never will own a gun. I’ve never been robbed, never been threatened at gunpoint (despite having lived in places where the chances were decent). I’ve never touched a gun. I never plan to.
Whenever I communicated my knee-jerk "anti-gun" responses to a gun owner, I have gotten a sharp, strong reaction. The first thing they tell me is how grossly unfair it is to lump responsible gun owners in with killers. And they’re right.
Guns are killing machines; it's what they're made to do. But to the millions of people who own guns and use guns responsibly for sport or protection, owning a gun is an expression of maturity and responsibility. Those who exercise the right to own a gun are doing something dangerous. But other constitutionally-protected rights are dangerous--speech and assembly can harm people, too. Yet, when these rights are exercised responsibly--with integrity and faithfulness, they build a strong citizenry. Responsible gun ownership is absolutely compatible with civic health. Our government does not monopolize the right to own arms; it trusts citizens to be armed, to protect themselves and their property, and as a bulwark against every government’s will to power.
No one has described a gun-owner's mindset better than author Dan Baum in his book Gun Guys. Baum, by his own description, is a “a stoop-shouldered, bald-headed, middle-aged Jew, in pleated pants and glasses.” He is a registered Democrat and a gun owner. While writing his book, he drove across American to talk to gun owners. Of all the things he found, his most surprising finding was that guns confer self-esteem. It’s not the self-esteem you might think—it’s not a power-trip. The self-esteem is that of personal responsibility: it comes from being able to manage and use these powerful tools while ensuring that no one is hurt. Many gun owners adamantly believe that carrying a gun turns them into better citizens and better people. Many who carry a gun say it forces them adopt a civility and politeness, because you're aware that any disagreement could end terribly. Gun owners talk about the heightened calm they feel as they carry.
You may not identify with this. But for many gun owners, handling a weapon promotes civility, citizenship, and a personal responsibility that contributes positively to our public good.
I used to roll my eyes when gun owners said, “An armed society is a polite society.” Just because you have a gun, I thought, it doesn't make you polite. But one statistic suggests a possible benefit of gun ownership that should not be ignored. In the last 20 years, gun laws have loosened and the number of guns in circulation has tripled; during that same period, violent crime has dropped drastically (mostly through a decrease in robberies, burglaries, vehicle thefts, and property crimes). It’s the fastest drop in violent crime in our nation’s history. Has owning guns had a civilizing effect on our whole culture? Is there less violent crime because the prevalence of guns deters it? Perhaps violent crime is down because a mix of fear and responsibility is helping us relate to each other, on the whole, less violently. Some say that all of the guns have made us generally safer from harm.
There's another set of statistics that undermines the first: Gun deaths are on the rise. While violent crime overall is down, if you own a gun, it is much more likely that you—or your family—will be the victim of a gunshot. America, the land of 350,000,000 guns, is by far the land of the most gun fatalities. 117,000 people every year are shot in America. 40,000 people die in America every year of gunshots--these numbers are going up, not down. The highest percentage of gun deaths are in urban areas, where Black men kill other Black men at a devastating rate, but gun violence in suburban and rural areas is catching up. And the chilling shadow side of the self-protection mentality that justifies much gun ownership is that more than half of all people who die from gunshot wounds in the United States fire the trigger on themselves. States with the most guns have the highest suicide rates by gun.
We live in a gun-saturated reality with all kinds of paradoxes. Guns have a historic connection to our nation’s identity; at best, they help our citizens to feel empowered and responsible--they may also play a role in lowering violent crime overall. Guns also enable us, at our worst moments of weakness and fear and anger, to commit horrible atrocities. 111 people made in the image of God are killed every day by guns; their families, sometimes whole communities, are devastated.
What do we do? What do we do if--as I believe is true--we all want to see gun violence end? If we want to stop watching massacres on TV, and prevent them from happening in our own communities, from taking our own loved ones?
Thoughtful gun restrictions should be part of the solution. Unrestricted access to guns equals more dead loved ones. Gun limits are needed. Certain weapons have no legitimate function in any individual's hands--they terror the might inflict isn't worth the benefit they bring to the owner. Every responsible gun owner should be able to demonstrate, via a background check of mental health and criminal history, that they can be trusted with the great moral burden of owning a deadly weapon. Every purchaser should go through a reasonable waiting period, and for certain weapons, it should be necessary for a purchaser to justify the reason that such a gun is needed.
Even if such restrictions were to be put in place--which is unlikely, given the romance that many have with the idea that unrestricted gun ownership is a human right--with 350 million guns already in private hands, gun violence won't go away. Restrictions on gun sales, background checks, and waiting periods can slow, but it won't stop gun violence. If we really want gun violence to end, what else can we do?
As with most important problems, the answer is complicated. But here's my attempt at a vision statement for enduring gun violence reduction: gun violence will decrease as we improve the emotional, economic, social, and spiritual wellbeing of the people who currently abuse guns.
Dan Baum notes that the fastest growing demographic of gun owners--and, I would add, a preponderance of those who commit mass shootings--is white men who have not finished college. Baum observes that is the same group who are most devastated in the new economy. For white men without a college degree, there has been no wage increase since 1978. White guys are angry—and the NRA has channeled that anger into gun ownership. What if the church, instead of trying to take away guns, fought for white men, fought for an economy in which economic benefits go to white (and Black and Latino/a) working people? A "gun violence strategy" might also look like a living wage strategy, a crackdown on corporate offshore tax havens strategy, or a reducing corporate stock buybacks strategy. Make companies invest in people--in good-paying jobs and in the generational wellbeing of local communities, instead of extractive profit-seeking.
A different gun violence strategy involves investing in neighborhoods that our economy and politicians have abandoned--both rural and urban. There are so many communities in America where young men think they have nothing to live for because there are no jobs, the schools don't lead anywhere, and the only route to manhood and identity is through gang affiliation, white supremacism, or some other militant ideology. A "gun violence strategy" looks like a mentoring strategy, a gang intervention strategy, a wholistic public education strategy, a disruption of white nationalism strategy, a human investment in the people in rural and urban communities who have been abandoned by corporate disinvestment strategy.
Another gun violence strategy cares for our mentally ill neighbors in increasingly humane ways. Most mentally ill people in our country go undiagnosed and untreated, and mental healthcare is only for the affluent. Why do we not yet see that a healthcare model that finds and treats those who suffer is also a gun violence prevention strategy? A gun violence strategy looks like an eliminate the stigma of mental illness strategy, a cognitive behavioral therapy for anyone who wants it strategy, and a healthcare for all Americans strategy.
Yes, there are too many guns. Yes, they are too easy to get. And fewer guns and more restrictions will eliminate some gun violence, but not all of it. If we want a world with no gun violence, it will require more love than we have yet imagined is possible in American life. Gun violence is a new expression of the very old problem of human violence. Can you solve violence? Many people throw up their hands and say "no." I think people of faith have to say "yes." Faith--and the love, cooperation, and bonding that faith promotes--is a remedy for violence.
You may think love is impractical as a remedy for gun violence, but Jesus would say otherwise. Jesus comes unarmed into the world. When soldiers come to arrest him as a threat to state power, one of his friends picks up a sword to protect him--just like we pick up guns to protect ourselves. Jesus scolds him and says: "The one who picks up the [gun] dies by the [gun].” On the cross, Jesus looks into the eyes of those about to kill him and says, "Forgive them." Jesus' pacifism and his forgiving love are a kind of "foolishness" that both ends revenge and exposes the falsehood of redemptive violence.
So yes, the "solution" to gun violence is, in the end, love.
That all seems dreamy. But the next time a man with a gun walks into a theater… or a workplace… or a school... don’t we want someone with a gun there to meet them?
I want someone like Antoinette Tuff. A few years back, she was working at the desk at McNair Discovery Academy here in Decatur, where 800 kids go to school, when a 20-year-old walked in armed with an assault rifle, 500 rounds of ammunition and said to her, "I have nothing to live for." His plan was to kill kids and teachers. Tuff, unarmed, said she was terrified. "I sat there and started praying.... My pastor, he just started this teaching on anchoring, and how you anchor yourself in the Lord," said Tuff. And so she started talking to the man, urging him to avoid any violence and seek medical help. The 911 calls that captured their conversation are incredible—at first, Tuff refers to the man as “sir,” but as the call goes on, she starts calling him "sweetie" and "baby." In between updates with the dispatcher, she shares her own hardships with him, telling him about her divorce and her disabled son, even her own suicide attempt, all the while reassuring him that he will be OK if he chooses peace. Eventually, while keeping police at a distance, she persuaded him to give up his weapons, lie on the floor and give himself up. "We're not going to hate you," she said to the young man, "I love you. I'm proud of you. We all go through something in life. You're gonna be OK, sweetheart.” No children were harmed that day, and no shots were fired.
The gun violence problem is a problem of too many guns, but if we think it's that alone, we have missed the forest for the trees. It is a problem about people who are lost and hurt and angry and haven't been loved thoroughly enough to disown violence. We human beings are mysterious creatures, made in the image of God, wandering far from home, lost, sometimes desperately so, longing to find safety, wholeness, and a home with others. In the midst of our confusion, we can be tempted to do unspeakable things. But there is a solution to gun violence--to all violence. It sounds something like this:
Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them… Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all… Beloved, never avenge yourselves… No, “if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink… Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
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