A Radically Moderate Stance on Guns

As I left church on Sunday morning, I was asked a question that I am still unable to fully answer.  I was asked, “If you had been in that movie theatre [Aurora, CO] and you had a firearm [he mentioned a particular model that I do not recall], would you have hesitated to pull it and shoot that guy?”  When he asked the question, I gave him the only answer I could think of at the moment, “I don’t know.”

It is a tough question for a number of reasons.  Mostly, I just have trouble imagining what would be going through my mind at that moment.  My ego wants to think that I would heroically help people get out of the theatre and to safety all the while keeping an eye on the gunman and planning how to disarm him ala the movies.  I know I am not the only person who had that thought.  It is a difficult question to answer because it assumes a hypothetical that would never take place.  There is no circumstance that would convince me to carry a firearm into a crowded theatre so I would never be face with the decision in the first place.

After some reflection on the question, I think I have put my finger on at least part of why it is so tough to answer.  I do not accept the premise that what happened is somehow normal or expected.  That seems to be an undercurrent of many comments on this shooting.  People wonder why no one fired back as though midnight at the movies is the same thing as high noon in Tombstone.  Things that we anticipate happening in the world are easy to hypothesize about, but this is way outside those bounds.   The question I think we should be asking is not what I would do in this foregone reality, but what we as a society should be doing to prevent this sort of thing from happening.

Part of the reason we avoid that last question is that it takes us into some territory that is uncomfortable.  But if we are going to talk about what happened in Aurora, CO we have to talk about guns and if we talk about guns we have to talk about how we can curtail the problem of proliferation of guns to people who have no business having them.

This is the point that most of my pro-gun friends tune me out.   But please a bear with me.  This is not a question of pro-gun or anti-gun.  The extremes on both ends of the political spectrum have worked to turn this into a zero-sum conversation in order to stop any sort of compromise from happening.  They have hijacked an important political and religious issue.  And make no mistake about it, gun-control is a religious matter (more on that below). 

Now those on the “pro-gun”side argue that any limitations on gun ownership are unconstitutional and lead us down a slippery slope toward banning all fire arms.  Reasonable gun control is neither of these things.  The Supreme Court decision that interpreted the 2^nd Amendment to mean that individuals have the right to possess just about any weapon they choose required a Cirque du Soliel worthy contortions of language and logic.  It is highly doubtful that the Founders had in mind an individual owning a small arsenal of automatic and semi-automatic weapons designed for one purpose only, to kill another human being.  The slippery slope argument does not hold water either.  There are almost as many handguns in this country as there are people.  The FBI says there are over 200 million privately owned handguns in this country.  Count in the illegal and unregistered ones and there is one gun for nearly every man, woman and child.  The idea that any gun control is going to lead us down the slippery slope to banning all guns makes about as much sense as thinking that we could ban asphalt.  Nothing this deeply entrenched in our culture is going anywhere.

Those on the “anti-gun” side offer no better arguments.  They claim that guns must be banned in order to prevent crime and to bring the United States into line with other developed countries.  The crime prevention argument does not hold water.  Availability of guns is not the root cause of crime.  To fight crime we need to deal with education, health care, housing and poverty issues that are shown to be at the root of much crime.  From a theological perspective, crime is a manifestation of human sinfulness.  We were sinners with spears and swords just as we are with guns and assault weapons.  As for the cultural argument, it fails to realize that the US is a different society than European countries.  Guns and gun ownership are in our cultural DNA whether we like it or not.   When some European countries banned handguns, there was not much there to ban.  As noted above, in the US banning handguns, let alone all guns, would be a practical impossibility.

So what do we do?  How do we address this question from a practical and theological perspective?

Practically, we need to take a step back from the zero-sum battle lines that have been drawn on this issue and recognize that unfettered access to firearms is unwise and ridding them from the nation forever impractical.

The solution to this problem is found not in a purely policy focused conversation but one of public morality.  What sort of society are we hoping to create?  What values do we want to be reflected in our laws?  On the issue of guns, these questions are more important than usual because they offer us the chance to reclaim an important national debate and take it back from the lunatic fringe. 

So what values do we want to be reflected in our gun laws?

From a constitutional perspective, there is the issue of the right to “keep and bear arms.”  The 2^nd Amendment is not going anywhere so we need to take it seriously.

From a social perspective, we want a society in which individual can be (not merely feel but actually be) secure that their life and liberty will not be violated.

From a moral perspective, we need a society that puts a premium on human life over personal liberty. 

Surely we can find some common ground there?  A responsible person who wants to own a firearm should be able to do so.  But is liberty really threatened by a thorough background check?  Or a firearms safety course?  Or even a limit on how many firearms one person owns? 

Put another way, was making guns easy to buy with no questions asked worth the price that was paid last week in that movie theatre?  If steps could be taken to keep guns out of the hands of an unbalanced person, is there any legitimate reason for not doing that?

I believe that the personal liberty we enjoy as citizens is important.  It is important as a means of keeping tyranny at bay.  It is important as a means of showing political respect to the individual.  It is important for creating space in society for differing opinions and perspectives to flourish and thrive side by side.  So protecting liberty is a valid and important thing.  But it is not the only thing.  Protecting society as a whole is vitally important.  And when we balance those two, individual liberty and safety for society, we have to remember that firearms present a very different issue than speech or press or other matters of constitutional importance.  When someone hurls hateful words, they do not draw blood.  A person abusing his or her right to free speech does not usually leave a trail of bodies in their wake.  The right to keep and bear arms does.  Guns are not like speech.  The person taking advantage of free speech may make me mad, but the person abusing his right to bear arms may leave me dead. 

As a citizen, I believe that individual liberty must be preserved whenever possible but not at the expense of the safety of others.

As a Christian, I don’t give much of a damn about liberty.  It is not a theological issue.  Personally, I would like to see all guns gone from our culture.  There is no legitimate Christian value that is forwarded by the owning much less the using of a firearm.  Jesus taught peace and respect for life as the central principles of our life in the world and love of God as the central principle of our life in whole.  There is no legitimate theological argument to be made for the liberty to carry a weapon designed to kill another human being.  At the same time I cannot buy into the argument that the ownership of a firearm of any kind is in and of itself a non-Christian act. 

Please don’t get me wrong, I do not buy into the NRA myth that “guns don’t kill people, people do.”  Yes, that is true but it is also true that the gun makes it much easier for that person to kill.  So let’s not let the guns off the hook quite so easily.  Do I think the world would be better without guns?  Yes, I do.  But I also think it would be better without many things that are not going anywhere anytime soon.  And if we can’t get rid of them, we can at least curtail their misuse. 

Part of living into that Christian life is using the intelligence and creativity that God has given us to find ways to make this world a little bit better, a little bit safer and a little bit more attuned to his message of grace and love.  Surely we have an obligation to put those tools to work on such a major issue as this. 

The debate over guns is yet another place where our society has accepted the zero-sum either/or duality of the radical extremes on the left and right.   So it is up to we who inhabit the middle to put our heads together and find solutions to our common problems that are both practical and faithful to our calling as brothers and sisters in the world. 

I am convinced that there is a solution to this long standing issue and we have an obligation to work toward a system in which honest and law abiding people can exercise their rights while still allowing the system to protect the innocent. 

Would stricter gun laws have prevented this shooting?  I don’t know.  I am convinced, though, that there is a place between the extremes where efforts to prevent tragedies such as this and preserving the liberty of individuals who feel the need to own guns can co-exist.

Nonetheless, I am still not sure how to answer the question posed to me on Sunday.