Gun control and NIU

By Jason Byassee

“So what I’m saying is you should have a .38 special.”

The waitress nodded to the man at the next table. She’d neglected us when we came in, forgotten our order and spilled a drink, but agreed she should be packing heat.

In the wake of the massacre at Northern Illinois University it was best to be silent. Gun control arguments—long since tired—felt blasphemous in the face of such horror. It was too easy to politicize carnage that should simply be mourned. But it’s been a few weeks now (doesn’t it feel like longer with our news cycle?), and the arguments had to come back up.

The pro-gun side has a point. Lives could have been saved if someone in that auditorium had been carrying, as they were at New Life Church in Colorado Springs some months before. Could have been, if she or he had known what they were doing, acted confidently, shot the right person, and countless other variables. But it’s no good pretending that a weapon might not have stopped the awful proceedings—they could have.

But that admission misses a larger point about what the violence says about American culture. We think violence can be solved with more violence, that more guns will solve the problem of guns—the crazed shooter not less than the man at the next table and our waitress. Those in favor of gun proliferation have a ready answer to any gun tragedy: more people packing means more who can defend themselves. The more armed to the teeth we all are, the better.

The claim strikes me as a metaphysical one—one about the ultimate nature of reality. The more armaments the better, only violence stops violence, if you can’t wield it you best stay home. That’s a meaty, theological claim about the nature of the universe.

Those bound to the peace of Christ’s cross must think differently. It has to be mistaken that violence, or its threat, is the best solution to violence. But simply passing more gun laws won’t make people behave. What will?

Comments

[Scott]

Amen, Jason - and it seems to me something about the sins of the parents applies here as well. Violent crime causes a lot of ripples in the pond.

[Sarah S. Howell]

The question of whether lives could have been saved often boils down not to that, but to WHICH lives could have been saved.

I recall after the Virginia Tech shootings seeing a Facebook group created advocating that semiautomatic weapons be allowed on college campuses for instances like this.

I have trouble understanding the logic in such a line of thought, but aside from the rationality (or lack thereof) of such an approach, one cannot pretend that Christian nonviolence/pacifism has nothing to say about such issues. For one thing, perhaps (as you said, Jason) violence is the only thing that stops violence--in the short term. But Martin Luther King, Jr. said, "violence multiplies violence," and no student of world history could deny that.

Of course, the pacifist's response is not a pleasant one to hear--I've heard Stanley Hauerwas say that being a pacifist means you have to be willing to let the innocent suffer for your beliefs.

I can't quite stomach that, but the phrase from Colossians 1 isn't terribly appetizing either, when God is described as "making peace through the blood of the cross" (verse 20). The faith we learn from Christ is not safe. Dietrich Bonhoeffer even said that "peace is the opposite of security." Where we go from there, I don't know--but I think we do have to keep in mind that the cross, and not even our own safety, is the starting point.

[Bill Hennessy]

This is an issue that I struggle with all the time. The idea that violence is the answer to violence is a controlling myth in much of our culture, as Walter Wink points out in his book "Engaging the Powers." I remember when Mel Gibson came out with the Passion of Christ. In an interview he compared many of the characters he played in the movies to Christ -- a good person being persecuted unjustly. The difference, it seemed to me, was that Jesus didn't leap off the cross and mow down his persecutors with a semiautomatic weapon the Mel's characters always seemed to do. That strikes me as a rather significant difference. It seems to me scripture has always maintained that security cannot be bought through violence but only through trust in the living God. Yet I hear the advocacy of gun proliferation often coming from Christian quarters...how do I (we) counter that? Sorry, all I have are thoughts and no helpful solutions.

Peace,
Bill

[Douglasah]

I think the phrase that brings the most clarity to this issue is the quote from Stanley Hauerwas: "Being a pacifist means you have to be willing to let the innocent suffer for your beliefs".
The discussion seems to flip-flop between the question: "Should WE carry guns?" and "Should we allow OTHERS to carry guns?". It may be fairly easy to say "No" to the first question - accepting that we would not be able to come to the defense of others - but that we would be faithful to the cross. The second question speaks more of our projecting a moral and theological perspective on people who, for any number of valid reasons, do not share our personal vision. It cannot ignore the fact that people DO have and carry guns now. It asks SHOULD we project our views upon others - knowing that we would be disarming only those people who care to obey the law?
This further asks us to re-evaluate how we interact with a society that, for the most part, does not share our vision. (In that they view the maintainence of the metabolic process above anything else.) One of Stanley Hauerwas' books RESIDENT ALIENS addresses this issue fairly well.
So, the next questions to be dealt with would be: "What would we say to someone who knows we might have lessened the violence of an attack on them - or that affects them" and "How do we determine who has the mental stability and responsibility to carry firearms? and what kind should they have?". It seems clear that we are not to feel waitresses should "Pack heat"...
A final question then is how can we most effectively witness for not just peace, or even non-violence, but for the SHALOM promised in the Bible? How can we share the love we've experienced in a way that would render force useless - and not merely disarm people but HEAL them?

[Suzy]

The opposite is also true: Being a gun-rights advocate means being willing to let the innocent suffer for one's beliefs. No man is an island, and all that.

I live in the wild, wild West where every pickup truck has a gunrack and every backyard might have a bear, a mountain lion, a rattlesnake, etc. I have never feared for my safety in a way that made me wish I were carrying a gun. I have feared for my safety because others were. I can understand others' fear. I just have never been able to reconcile my ministry with the ability to kill another person. That cannot be the "position of power" from which we start our dialogue.

[Jason Byassee]

Douglasah makes a good point. We do have the luxury (or burden, with Suzy) of having other people to handle guns to keep us safe, we need not sully our own hands to keep safe. Stan H tends to deal with this point by saying 'what would it mean to have a society in which police didn't have to carry guns'? In a way it sounds starry eyed. In another, European police operate with far slower trigger fingers. As a British cop told me, they learn on their first day of training their most important weapon is their tongue--you talk to defuse violence rather than firing. On the other hand a friend on the West Side of Chicago says he doesn't see police who aren't in body armor with heavy weaponry. America's policing style is increasingly indistinguishable from its military, and I'd be surprised if this didn't have substantial support from most Americans. But Christians have to prefer the approach that assumes less violence.

[melissa]

I'm not sure that one person's observation of a police officer in one place means that all police officers everywhere are body-armored, loaded down with heavy weaponry. I don't know that I'm willing to go with you when you seem to imply that our police in America are, as a matter of general disposition, trigger-happy or overzealously violent. There are indeed bad apples, and there are indeed those who may view their position in such a violent way, but please don't imply that this is true of ALL American police officers. Many many many of them are "merely" in the business of serving the public and trained to use violence as ONLY an extreme last resort.

[LynnJ]

It's not your neighborhood cop on the beat, melissa. The fact is that it is now the law of the United States that the President can militarize local police merely by declaring a state of emergency. Local control can then be ceded to the military hierarchy, and military, not civil, law governs the consequences of action or inaction on the parts of all parties. The President gets to decide who is to be protected, and who is an enemy of the state. The FBI has been developing business "partnerships" a part of which involves those in control of important resources arming themselves;they are told they won't be prosecuted if it is necessary to use deadly force when acting under FBI direction. (The part of the Patriot Act that ostensibly protects telecoms from prosecution for handing over our records without a court order is designed for more aggressive actions on behalf of the state as well.)

We've given away a lot of our rights to a centralized system based on the power of weaponry, and I don't think that has done anything to promote either peace or safety. We need to do everything we can to take back the power our political system intends for us if we are not to be ruled by tyrants. But I don't think that necessarily means arming ourselves to the teeth.

At the level of the individual, fear is an important emotion, because we live in a dangerous world. It can save your life, or someone else's. BUT, whether individual or nation, when fear leads us to PREPARE to harm others, it becomes unholy. We are called as persons of faith to trust God when we are afraid, not to trust in the power of a weapon, whether a handgun or a nuclear missile.

[melissa]

LynnJ - Fair enough. I was speaking less about states of emergency and more responding to what Jason had said, especially about the Chicago police officer in question and his comment that "America's policing style is increasingly indistinguishable from it's military." By no means am I championing violence or military force being enacted by our neighborhood police, nor was I advocating for any particular governmental position. I was merely trying to point out that there are persistent and unfortunate generalizations and stereotypes perpetuated about the personality and character of police officers - stereotypes with which I disagree heartily - and that Jason's comment seemed to feed into these stereotypes rather than debunking them.

[Andy]

Seems to me that violence is caused by inequality of power. One way to equalize power is to take guns away from (potential) criminals, the other way to put guns into the hands of (potential) victims. Idealy, no one would have guns. But -- is that realistic?

[Suzy]

Count me as skeptical that putting guns into the hands of (potential) victims actually reduces violence.

[Andy]

I think that skepticism is good. I do not own a gun and do not plan to. I do not belong to the NRA. So imagine my surprise when I heard about Kennesaw, Georgia; a town that basically passed a law about 26 years ago requiring gun ownership and has seen its crime rate drop significantly since the law passed. Meanwhile, other cities that illegalized guns have seen their crime go up (in both cases these stats are relative to national trends). I'm sure there are lots of factors at work here, but . . . it does seem that something is going on here.

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=55288

[Jason Byassee]

Required gun ownership. That sounds . . . freeing.
There are all kinds of vignettes that show that less guns doesn't necessarily mean more violence--everyone in Switzerland is armed as part of their military service and they have very little gun crime, for example. It's part of what I'm trying to say here--gun control is no panacea. Gun proliferation is not either. Both sides, especially those who would arm everyone, imply metaphysical claims that out to raise questions for Christians. For example, the Kennesaw story suggests that the more armed people are the safer we'll be. That's not an innocent sociological observation, it's a theological claim about the nature of humanity and peace.

[Gordon]

America, and perhaps Western culture tends to take the material, engineering approach to solving problems. Any solution works only if we can prove mathematically that, within the error margins, it will work instantly every time. People do physical exercise for the "burn" and few for long-term goals; at least that is what gets them to the gym or jogging trail, I think. Also, every solution must be patentable as new and different.

[Carol J. Alexander]

I have said I am a pacifist since the first time I read the Church of the Brethren poem entitled ALL WAR IS SIN. This makes sense to me. If no one was armed, we would find other, peaceful ways to live. Others may think this is Pollyanna-ish; I think it makes sense, in the long run.

I just read THE WAR PRAYER, by Mark Twain, this week. I recommend THE WAR PRAYER and ALL WAR IS SIN as ideas to ponder. Both speak, in my opinion, to the New Testament thoughts about why pacifism is a way of life that makes good sense.

Violence begets violence, as history shows us.

[Ellie]

It would certainly be easy enought o track the relationship between guns and violence in this country. It hasn't even been very many years since we enacted the first gun control laws. In the 1950s kids in city gangs made their own guns. What I see as our biggest problem is not guns. It's the super weapons that are so readily available. And the carelessness of people who keep weapons in homes with children. The newspaper just printed an article about a 3-year-old who shot herself in the head.

[David Buehler, PhD]

Dear Jason,

I have been teaching a course on the Philosophy of Violence at Providence College since 1997. During that time, after all the many mass killings, I have concluded that security and gun control both need attention. But also believe that part of our national problem is that we acculturate and then desensitixe our kids (esp. boys) to violence a normal,
sometimes even cool thing.
We have met the Enemy and he is US.

dave bühler | providence college (RI)

[Andy]

To me, the metaphysical claim is that inquality of power (amongst citizens) leads to violence. The US is a very unequal country, and a very violent one. There is the violence of a profitable factory being closed because its not profitable enough for the owners, and there is the violence of the thug who overpowers his victim (or the group of girls who beat on a girl).

My view of human nature is that most people are mostly good most of the time. But mostly good isn't good enough.