Gundolatry

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back.  Below is an article I wrote recently and submitted to some magazines.  

         Here in Savannah, citizens are shooting each other, it seems, every day. In some cases, people are just shooting other people with no apparent motive except they can. We have a device the police uses that can discern the difference between firecracker sounds and gun shots. Between January 1 and September 14 of this year, ShotSpotter detected “4374 cases of gun fire.” (Savannah Morning News) 

Even worse, our local news anchor included a bit that explained to viewers what to do in case a shooter is “in the building.”  She delivered her instructions as if she were explaining how to change the batteries in a fire alarm every equinox.

Guns are not making anyone safer. There is no greater lie than the lie that guns make me safer. Guns are not making me safer. Guns are not making my wife, or my daughters, or my other loved ones safer. I am safer because there is no gun in our home. There was never a gun in my parent's home. Guns are not making my students safer either.

You hunters and law abiding gun owners are not making me safer, yet you are in greater danger of being shot than I am. This new turn in gun politics that many of you let happen and others of you fervently support is making us all less safe. An insanity has gripped minds, throats, balls, and morality, strangling everything. The insanity is saying that what we need is more guns, more people carrying guns, and more guns and also more guns and the passing of more laws allowing more citizens to carry more guns. A condition is festering in our society whereby all are being surrounded by gun violence and we all fear one another.

Killers and good people are stockpiling weapons because the lie is being used to scare people into believing that an arsenal is the answer to our security woes.  The problem is exacerbated when a few good men snap for whatever reason and their clips snap too.

You're afraid the government will take over and take away your guns? Well, this new gun politick is arming police with more dangerous weapons. Soon we'll see groups of murderers from the right of America and the right of Islam coordinate attacks on multiple targets. Soon we'll see people being shot on back roads, side roads, and interstates just because someone doesn't like their bumper sticker, or their pretty wife, or maybe they just don't like the way they look. How long will it take the government to post military personnel in the streets? Trump that possibility.

There are so many ironies here. The more guns, the more killing, the more we accept that powerful weapons for cops and soldiers are normal.  That is a huge irony.

Here's an economic irony: a lot of gun customers are being murdered. How many NRA members are being gunned down?  How much is the dollar cost per citizen ruined or killed by these weapons? “(See Mother Jones: June 2015)  I reckon we who are alive must purchase more guns to make up the lost revenue gone from those cold dead hands.

Guns are affecting my consciousness. I bet they are affecting yours too.  The other night I sat in my car on a side street in Savannah, waiting for my wife and my pastor's wife who had gone into a house to care for a pet. Their good deed took about five minutes.  A car turned down the street, driving slowly. My first thought was about people who had been shot sitting in their cars in Savannah, Atlanta, Chattanooga, and Nashville, and Chicago, Detroit, New York, Los Angeles. My next thought was how unsafe I was--being without a gun--and how unsafe I would be with one. It would not have mattered either way if someone had driven past and blown me away.

By the way, the American Sniper was armed.  Someone got the drop on him.  He wasn’t safe.  He is a well known example among thousands of armed people who are gunned down and get recorded as statistics.  I mean no disrespect to Chris Kyle or his loved ones.  I’m just pointing out the truth, but people sure get mad at me when I bring him up.  I wonder why.

Guns are affecting my consciousness in new ways now.  Once they existed on a shadowy wrack in my imagination.  Now, I see a stranger enter my church, or a late arrival enter a movie theater, and I look at their hands and pockets.  I look at what they are carrying.  I try not to be obvious, but I cannot help but wonder if they are going to go Aurora on me. Indeed, I know and respect a lot of people who put their faith in guns as if their belief is an Apache ghost dance that will keep them safe, but I would not want them packing in a theater when someone seems to be attacking or when someone is mowing innocent people down. I do not like my wife’s or anyone’s chances of surviving in a place where fools start firing at lunatics. 

Lies get their power from illusion. Gundolatry creates the illusion of security, which is what an idol does. At least an idol is safer in the sense that you aim a hundred dollar bill at me, or a statue of Zeus, they do not blow my brains out. Idolatry gives security without providence. True security is the result of something else...usually sheer luck, the company we keep, the places where we live, you know, providence.  And providence is the culmination of the luck, the company, and the safe places.

Those places are safer without murders of people carrying guns.

Blessings...