Guns in America

By Harry T. Cook

1/17/13  

Yesterday, President Obama told the nation of his determination to end America's infatuation with guns. He signed several executive orders that, if carried out, will begin that process.  

With the subject of guns and gun control at the forefront of conversation throughout the U.S., we present six essays written by respected members of the clergy and well-known journalists-- each with a message calling for sanity in public policy concerning firearms. It will be noted that each of us is a white male. While women and people of color were invited to participate, none chose to do so.   

Here are the guest essayists:    

• Jack Lessenberry, senior political analyst, Michigan Public Radio

• Mort Crim, journalist and former news anchor at WDIV-TV, Detroit

• The Very Rev. Gary Hall, dean, the National Cathedral, Washington, D.C.

• Dr. John Bennison, pastor and lead teacher of Pathways, Walnut Creek, Calif.

• Dr. Robin R. Meyers, senior minister, Mayflower United Church of Christ, Oklahoma City

Bang, Bang -- You're Dead 

By Harry T. Cook 

1/17/13 

Harry T. Cook

That's what kids brandishing pretend guns -- fashioned from odd tree branches -- used to say to one another where and when I grew up. We were mimicking cowboys in the oaters we saw at the Saturday double features or policemen in the grade-B cops-and-robbers movies. Serious guns were the ones our fathers used when they took us with them to hunt partridge and other species of wildlife.

For my 15th birthday, I received a .22-caliber rifle that, I am now not ashamed to say, scared the hell out of me. It was a single-shot, bolt-action affair that was supposed to make a man of me. I had other ideas about that, and none of them had to do with a gun. I think I went out only twice, and that under peer pressure, with a couple of other guys to hunt rabbits. I wouldn't have shot one if it had stood in front of me, given me the finger and dared me to fire.

Many years later I served two inner-city Detroit parishes during times when things were beginning to get pretty tough in the Motor City -- nothing, though, compared to the killing fields that now exist there. I was advised to get a concealed weapon permit and to carry a handgun so as to defend myself on those late-night emergency calls that were part of my pastoral responsibility. I demurred.

Where the nation is on gun control is where it is on the economy, and the question is: What kind of country do we want to be? A country that deplores and will not abide regulation, that will continue to feed the maw of corporate greed at the expense of the middle class and poor, that will insist on arming itself not only against the wrongdoer but against its own government as if the redcoats were still coming?

Or will the United States become more like Scandinavian and European nations, with political economics that put the health and welfare of citizenry above the demands of those who believe that low-to-no taxes are the key to prosperity and that, as sure as night follows day, prosperity will trickle down into the begging bowls of those who keep their place and shut up about it?

It doesn't take a great deal of deep thinking to connect such a sentiment with the assertion that Americans have a right to keep and bear arms. Stories about Hurricane Sandy revealed that some of the wealthy in the Hamptons have invested in full-home generators so they wouldn't have to worry about the kind of extended power losses caused by hurricanes or paying heavy taxes to fund the updating of an aging grid. After all, one might need a rapid-fire assault weapon to mow down those who would steal such a generator.

The essays that follow are being published three days before the inauguration of a president whose election in 2008 and re-election in 2012 helped the stock of two major gun makers to go up by 500% and 200% respectively. If you're in the retail gun business today, you're in the money. If you want a gun, well, you could even send your mentally unbalanced uncle who raves by day and by night in your attic down to Guns 'R Us, and he'd come back with firepower sufficient to sustain a standoff with your perceived enemies for some time.

President Obama, as he said Wednesday, seems determined to bring some sanity to the matter of guns and gun ownership. Yet as the initial impact of the December 14 Newtown, Conn., shootings fades, the gun rights lobby and the National Rifle Association have doubled down on their insistence that regulation of firearms is un-American. Their allies in Congress, most of whom allow themselves to be intimidated by the NRA's supposed political clout, have vowed to resist further regulation of firearms.

Ban All the Guns, Now

By Jack Lessenberry                    

1/17/13

Nobody needs to have a handgun in America. Nobody needs to have guns in their home, period. That should be the starting point for any discussion about gun control in our insanely murderous society. Any other position is equivalent to arguing, as "moderates" did in the 1850s, that we ought to slowly phase out slavery, that even though everybody "knew" Negroes were clearly inferior to whites, slavery no longer made sense.

Slavery was never right. Nor is putting weapons of mass destruction where any person can effortlessly get them. Some day, if these United States ever happen to approach something close to civilization, we will look back on those now defending the right to carry concealed weapons much as we today regard Nazi "theoreticians" like Joseph Goebbels.

Nobody, apart from the police officer, needs to walk around with a gun. What about guns for target shooters and hunters? Fine. Long as they keep them locked away at the club or lodge. Nobody needs guns in their homes. When the entire story surrounding the Connecticut elementary school massacre is sorted out, many will blame the mother of the shooter.

She knew her son was emotionally disturbed, and yet apparently kept a collection of deadly high-powered weapons in her house. A little more than a month ago, her younger son went off like a rabid pit bull. First he killed her, and then went to the local elementary school, where he was once a first-grader. Then he shot six adults and pumped as many as eleven shots each into the heads of 20 six and seven-year-olds. Then, he killed himself.

None of this would have been possible if he hadn't had access to those guns. At most, he might have killed his mother, or some other person, with a butcher knife.  

Incidentally, I am not mentioning the killer's name. People who do these things seem to want to be famous, want to be remembered. They don't deserve to be.

We have to stop this, now. We began 2011 with six people dying and a Congresswoman's career being ended by a very sick man with a gun. We ended 2012 with a pile of brutally torn apart babies all because of our guns. Stopping this will be hard. We have spent years being deluded and deluding ourselves that guns make us "safe." Wrong. Guns make us dead. Yes, I am sure there are a handful of people who have saved themselves because they had guns at home. But far more have shot a family member by mistake.

Five years ago, according to government records, gun violence killed 3,067 American children and teens. Japan, which has more than a third of our population, had 47. Forty-seven gun deaths of all ages, that is.

Year after year, we've listened to the paranoid fantasies from the gun nuts. They need their guns to defend themselves, they hint darkly, against some political conspiracy. Far too many Americans still cling neurotically to the instruments of death. They were still scrubbing the blood off the walls of Sandy Hook school when I got a message from a lunatic named Scot Beaton. Beaton, a former Rochester Hills, Mich. councilman, knows what the problem was: The teachers were really to blame because they weren't armed to the teeth themselves! His solution: Give 'em training and give 'em guns "and allow those educators with concealed pistol licenses to bring their gun to school." That's really brilliant.

This would-be suburban Sun Tzu also quoted another homicide enabler, one Steve Dulan, the lawyer for something laughingly called the "Michigan Coalition of Responsible Gun Owners" who said, "If you have pistol-free zones they are actually mass murder empowerment zones." Funny, I never thought of a maternity ward that way.  

Incidentally, I know the current Supreme Court, has for the first time in history, ruled that the Second Amendment means there is a constitutional right to bear arms. The ruling did not, however, say gun control was unconstitutional. Frankly, any sane person ought to know that what was called "arms" in 1787 bears about as much relationship to a Bushmaster semiautomatic as a mouse does to a mountain lion.

We can choose to fight for culture and life or we can permanently embrace a world of killing and death. Seems to me that may be not only a fight worth making, but perhaps the most important fight of all.

Jack Lessenberry is senior political analyst for Michigan Public Radio.

Seventeen years ago, Scott London wrote a sobering assessment of American society called "The Death of Common Sense." It is a loss we continue to mourn.

The dearly departed common sense would have dictated immediate and decisive action to stop the easy availability of combat-style weapons.

Common sense would have told us that hunters, sportsmen and protectors of homes don't need guns that fire a hundred bullets a minute.

Common sense would have mandated background checks to assure mental and moral competency for anyone wishing to buy a gun.

Common sense would have acknowledged the obvious link between America's murder rate--four times higher than Britain's, six times higher than Germany's--and our obsession with guns.

But, alas, as we all know, common sense is dead. So who killed common sense? Some would say ideology. Dogma. Extremism.  

I submit that the prime perpetrator of the crime is money. Our entire gun dilemma smells with the stench of greed.

Gun and ammunition makers sell their products faster than a speeding bullet. The National Rifle Association signs up 100,000 new members in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook massacre, adding a cool two and a half million dollars to NRA coffers.

If fear and anger fuel this gun buying frenzy and this insane stampede to join the NRA, right-wing media millionaires feed the fear and anger. Pundits such as Limbaugh, Hannity, O'Reilly and Coulter earn fortunes whipping up the survivalist mentality: Your government is the enemy. Blackhawk helicopters may swoop down at any moment to take your guns and your wives and to steal your chickens. Your only hope against the foreign-born Obama's dictatorship is to buy guns while you still can. The end is near. 1776 is just around the corner.

These profiting prophets will insist they're motivated by a zeal for truth, not financial gain.   A lawyer friend once told me, "Whenever a client says 'It's not about the money,' you can be sure it's about the money." Then there's Congress, that spineless collection of moral eunuchs, many of them in the gun lobby's pockets and terrified of Rush ... but, hey, don't get me started.

Mort Crim is a journalist and former news anchor at WDIV-TV in Detroit.

By Gary Hall, Ph.D.

1/17/13 

(From his sermon at the National Cathedral on December 16, 2012)

As followers of Jesus, we have the moral obligation to stand for and with the victims of gun violence and to work to end it. We have tolerated school shootings, mall shootings, theater shootings, sniper shootings, workplace shootings, temple and church shootings, urban neighborhood shootings, for far too long. The massacre of these 28 people in Connecticut is, for me at least, the last straw. And I believe it is for you. Enough is enough. The Christian community-indeed the entire American faith community-can no longer tolerate this persistent and escalating gun violence directed against our people. Enough is enough.

For a variety of reasons our political culture has been unwilling and unable to address the question of gun control, but now it is time that you and I, as followers of Jesus, help them to do that. In his emotional statement on the day of the Newtown shootings, President Obama called for "meaningful action" in response to the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, and I pledge my and Washington National Cathedral's help in crafting and taking that action. Our political leaders need to know that there is a group of people in America who will serve as a counterweight to the gun lobby, who will stand together with our leaders and support them as they act to take assault weapons off the streets. As followers of Jesus, we are led by one who died at the hand of human violence on the cross. We know something about innocent suffering. And we know our job is to heal it and stop it wherever we can.

In my statement on the day of the shootings, I said in part, "Washington National Cathedral pledges to pray for the victims, their families, the assailant, and the survivors. And we pledge to work with our national leaders to enact more effective gun control measures." To my way of thinking, the best way for us to mourn the Sandy Hook shooting is to mobilize the faith community for gun control.

In her statement of Friday, Dec. 14, Bishop of Washington Mariann Edgar Budde announced that she is  

calling on our national leaders to enact more effective gun control measures. We know from experience that such calls go unheeded. But what if this time, you and I took up this issue and wouldn't put it down until something was done? . . . Today we grieve, but soon we act.

As people of faith we can no longer tolerate the epidemic of gun violence in America.   

The Very Rev. Gary Hall is dean of the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.

By John W. Bennison, Rel.D

1/17/13 

When I was a child, I spoke like a child. I thought like a child, and acted like a child. I played cowboys and Indians, and cops and robbers. I had a cap pistol, a Fanner Fifty with real leather holster, and a lever-action, single shot Daisy BB gun. My father never hunted, nor took me hunting; and we had no firearms in our household. That was my experience growing up.

Admittedly, it was a very different than that of others I've known, respected, and for whom I have genuine affection. My friend Bob grew up in inner city Detroit, where personal safety was an understandable concern, if not necessity. Jeff grew up in the rough and tumble rural West of Montana, where his most prized family heirlooms are the guns he inherited from his father. While I can understand and appreciate those very different experiences, the pressing issue of gun violence that grips our common life remains a shared responsibility for the common good.

As a boy, my fascination with guns did not follow me into adulthood. As a teen growing up and registering for the military draft in 1966, the American war in Southeast Asia was a stark reality. It was also the era when the devastating firepower of the M16 (AR-15) in the hands of an Army grunt left an indelible impression on many combatants, returning vets and those of us who opposed the war. I never carried a gun, or served in the military. Instead, I went to seminary. And, in many subsequent years of ministry I have only dealt with peripheral and potential gun violence.

I began my adult profession as a young cleric serving on the staff of a large, posh parish in an extremely safe and affluent suburban community; where it was the custom immediately following the blessing of the money offering at the altar to have an armed security guard then accompany the ushers mid-service from the sanctuary to the church office across a quiet residential dead-end street. The ushers were excused from the remainder of the worship hour so they could tally the take.

Upon my arrival I voiced my surprise and objection with the church leadership, posing the possible scenario of an aged, pistol-wielding private security guard blasting away a would-be thief on the steps of the church. They reluctantly agreed it might reflect poorly on a house of prayer. But when the request was made of the wanna-be cop to serve without his sidearm he quit in protest. We do love our guns.

I went on to lead another parish for two-dozen years, where some local notoriety had preceded me. Years before my arrival the local police had confronted a transient on the church premises early one Sunday morning; and, when allegedly threatened, shot him dead. For decades afterward the larger community knew us as that church where someone was killed.

Then there was the parishioner who gave his wife a warning shot one night with a bullet hole in their bedroom wall when accused of infidelity.

Soon after another female parishioner came to me who was frightened by her spouse's violent temper, and mentioned he kept a pistol in their bedside table. I ordered her to retrieve it and bring it to me, which she did. I locked it up in my desk drawer of the church office, until the husband came and demanded its return.

The wife later left him, taking the children with her. My last dealing with him was officiating over his funeral a few years later when, in his despondency, he committed suicide.

I would occasionally rail about the proliferation of all the guns in our society with which we collectively seemed so enthralled; but I knew I was a minority voice among my flock. I considered it a minor triumph when one of the pillars of the parish decided he no longer wanted the handgun he owned in his house. He brought it to me, and together we destroyed it.

The lack of reasonable restrictions we have when it comes to guns is rooted in their obvious appeal; leading to their preponderance in staggering numbers in a culture that allows utter unreasonableness to pose under the guise of "protection of freedom" and individual rights. Whatever interpretation one brings to the inherent vagueness of those twenty-seven words in the Second Amendment with regards to one's right to bear arms, it is helpful to remember they are not carved in stone. That's why it is called an amendment.

And like it or not, it may also be helpful to acknowledge the fact the avid sportsman, the inner-city gangbanger, the illegal trafficker on the black market, the law-abiding gun owner, and the lucrative gun and ammo industry share one thing in common. They love their guns. That's why we will not simply legislate our way out of this one through reasonable debate, a half-baked compromise, or a better argument.

The comic Eddie Izzard has the sober one-liner: "Guns don't kill people. But I think they help, don't you?"

Blaming the lack of stronger mental health policies where funding has been systematically slashed, or obscenely violent video games, or Hollywood blockbusters that pander to the gratuitous allure of blood and gore is -- in the end -- all a smokescreen that attempts to obscure the obvious. We love our guns, and what they represent.

We love the cheap, readily available and disproportionate amount of personal power guns offer in the hands of everyone and anyone who wants it, for whatever reason. If one doubts that, just consider: The anticipated uphill battle to ban assault-style weapons and high-capacity magazines that might simply pose a reloading inconvenience to the next mass shooter and merely reduce -- not eliminate -- the casualty count is ludicrous in and of itself.

To the usual rebuttal stricter gun controls will not stop the crazed among us from obtaining their Bushmaster, their bullet-proof vests and ammunition stockpiles, I say it is a hollow, fallacious argument. But furthermore, I don't care. We have erred so long on the side of doing nothing, might it not be time to err instead on the side of doing something; regardless of its possible ineffectiveness?

As a society that claims to be civilized -- but so distinctly different from our neighbors to the north, or the vast majority of so-called first-world nations, for instance -- we are not. They regard us as barbaric, and they are right. But instead of a self-reflective examination as to why that is undeniably so, there is such a run on gun shows by fear-driven consumers to stockpile weapons and ammo, local police departments are having trouble keeping their firearms loaded and ready.

I write these comments on the one-month anniversary of the Newtown massacre, and a few days after Vice-President Biden convened the presidential commission on gun violence; attempting to engage all the presumed "stakeholders" in the renewed debate over gun control. Whether we have reached a tipping point with regard to the American public's will to curtail our infatuation with guns remains to be seen.

The President has weighed in, even before his commission's findings are released, stating, "If there's a step we can take to save even one child we should take it." But the ever-popular polls suggest the obvious step that could be undertaken will not prove persuasive. Too many minds will remain unchanged. Too many of us love our guns that much.

In his opening remarks at the beginning of those commission's hearings recently, Joe Biden refused to let us forget the carnage that horrified a nation only a month ago; wrought by a fellow American with a legally owned and licensed assault weapon. Three times Biden repeated the word "riddled" to describe the stacked bodies of the Newtown first-graders; as if to indelibly stir the conscience of our nation's citizenry with a single image that should not only haunt us, but strengthen our resolve. For all of us who have heard the longstanding arguments and endless debate should know by now, one cannot change another's mind until there is first a change of heart. In this society, it appears we still love our unrestricted right to own and carry a gun more than life itself.

Bluntly put, we love our guns more than we love our children.

Dr. John Bennison is pastor and lead teacher of Pathways, Walnut Creek, Calif.

� 2013 by John William Bennison, Rel.D. All rights reserved.

This article may be used or reproduced only with proper credit.

By Dr. Robin R. Meyers

1/17/13

If guns are outlawed only outlaws will have guns. Governments love unarmed citizens. Guns don't kill people; people kill people.

If only it were this simple. But the truth is, people with guns kill people, and in America we kill more people with guns than anywhere else on earth. In America, where we permit citizens to legally buy assault rifles with high capacity ammunition clips, disturbed or despondent young white males commit mass murder in public places with a frequency that defies logic, and insults the meaning of the word "civilized." If this is "pro-life" I'd hate to see pro-death.

because we need a well-regulated militia (in Colonia America) the right of citizens to keep and bear arms (single shot barrel-loaded muskets) shall not be infringed. The NRA never quotes the first half, only the second. 

Republicans allowed the assault weapons ban to expire, and then Democrats were too afraid of the NRA to try to reinstate it. The truth is, the gun lobby is so powerful that even the president played along in the debates, saying only that he was a "defender of the Second Amendment." After the latest massacre of children in a sleepy Connecticut town, Obama shed a tear, thinking of his own daughters no doubt.

That's not enough. We have lost our minds in this gun-loving, gun saturated, gun-worshipping culture. How many kids have to die before the tired old arguments begin to sound shrill and stupid? We talk about better psychological screening, while we cut funds for mental health professional in our schools. We assume that every young man about to snap after losing a girlfriend or a job or even his last shred of self-respect can be detected before he acquires the weapons necessary to go on a killing spree.

And the last insanity is to argue that he would find a gun anyway, given how many of them there are out there. Well he might, but in a civilized society we would make that as difficult as possible. The last thing we would ever do is to sell a machine gun to anyone with a driver's license and no felonies. What kind of society allows the manufacture and sale of a weapon whose only purpose is human carnage?

Nobody needs an assault weapon to hunt with, or to protect one's home. No kid needs a video game for Christmas in which the POV is "the shooter" and the object is to waste everything in sight. No church should allow guns in a sanctuary as if God is a trigger happy Cosmic Vigilante. Jesus was not armed.

Dr. Robin R. Meyers is senior minister of Mayflower United Church of Christ, Oklahoma City, Okla.