The Rittenhouse trial in Wisconsin and the Arbery trials in Georgia are the sad test for a growing trend in our blessed country—the use of guns to solve problems.
Kyle Rittenhouse was 17 years old when he strapped on an automatic rifle and walked into a tense racial justice protest in Wisconsin. His intent, he says, was to protect property and keep the peace.
Travis McMichael, Gregory McMichael, and Roddie Bryan armed themselves with a loaded pistol and a loaded shotgun, jumped in their pick-up trucks, and tracked down a Sunday afternoon jogger. Their intent, they say, was to confront a suspected burglar and, perhaps, make a citizen’s arrest.
The question in both cases is this: why did any of them need a gun?
Why did they need to interject loaded weapons into their purported peace-keeping, crime-solving efforts?
Then there is the couple in St. Louis. Mark and Patricia McCloskey pulled out their guns in response to a stream of street marchers participating in a public social justice rally.
Here again: why did they need to brandish a weapon? Why didn’t they set up a table and serve cookies and drinks to the hundreds of people demanding justice, fairness, and peace?
Each these episodes ended in arrests; two involved high-profile trials; three people are dead. Countless lives have been seriously disrupted, to put it mildly, and all because people turned to guns to solve their perceived problems.
There are countless examples of this tragic scenario. More than any other place in the world, guns are used to solve problems in the United States.
In fact, there is a gun culture in America that is troubling … and legal, apparently. The Supreme Court has interpreted the Second Amendment to mean almost anybody can carry almost any weapon almost anywhere. This is one of the puzzling triumphs of the political movement to pack the federal courts with “conservatives.”
Gun ownership and gun use are values right at the center of what it means to be “conservative” in America. And further: gun ownership and gun use are practices also precious to many of these “conservatives” who are also practicing Christians (by which I mean, they attend public worship and tell researchers they are religious).
I can think of no other issue that so disqualifies me from being a “conservative” or a “conservative Christian” or even an “evangelical Christian.” I do not own guns; I do not use guns; I don’t like to be around guns; I don’t stay in stores or events when I see people carrying guns.
More deeply, I cannot in my wildest imagination picture Jesus with a gun.
In the once episode in his life, as recounted by the gospel writer Matthew, he told one follower to put away his weapon. “Those who live by weapons,” he said, “also die by weapons” (Matthew 26:52).
Violence breeds violence.
Blessed are the peacemakers, Jesus said.
None of the gun-slinging people I described in the three episodes referenced above were peacemakers. They were, in the truest sense, disturbers of the peace.
Yes, guns are necessary in some situations: the military, of course, and most security officers, including those in houses of worship, may need to be armed. Unless you have a pastor like Ezekiel Ndikumana, who jumped a gun-wielding man during a worship service of the Nashville Light Mission Pentecostal Church. More than 50 people were sitting in the pews, and now more than 50 charges have been filed against the stranger.
But hiring a security guard treats the symptom and not the disease.
There are too many guns in the United States. There are too many gun-slingers in the United States: from urban gangs fighting for territory in drugs wars to suburban moms arming themselves for fear of bodily harm to highly structured organizations of vigilantes anticipating the need to overthrow the government of the United States. There is scant evidence, if any at all, that our beloved country is better off because millions of people own, use, and carry guns; and there is abundant evidence that we are, in fact, much the worse for it.
It is an ugly and ungodly trend in these United States, one that makes the January 6 Insurrection at the U S Capital in Washington not so much a shock but a sure and certain prophecy of that which is to come.
This much is true about Kenosha and Brunswick, St. Louis and Washington: had people left their guns at home, people would be alive today and others would not be on trial. Johnny Cash used to sing a song about this, one that featured this line sung ten times in that three-minute ballad: “Don’t take your guns to town.”
Amen, brother. In fact, don’t even bring them home!
Read other columns on guns:
“Let it go. Give it up. Throw in down”
“A Completely Crazy Position”
(November 2021)
