In a New York minute I would approve a ban on assault weapons, lifting of legal age for purchase, red flag laws, stronger screening for license, crackdown on illegal sales...and a litany of similar measures. I am pro gun-control. On this I am a blue state liberal.
I am a product of my culture. Our country has a gun culture and a no-gun culture. I am a member of the later. I have never shot or even held a gun. I never will. I do not like them. Guns are for police, soldiers, mobsters, terrorists and cowboys. I see them in the movies. Not part of my lived world.
But for me this is not a religiously-held, absolute moral dogma. It is merely a prudential policy calculation. We Catholics have more moral absolutes than anyone: abortion, torture, contraception, targeting of civilians and so on. Guns is not one of them. Gun law is a pragmatic calculation of consequences: like tax rates, health policy, immigration law, or capital punishment. We can calmly disagree on this one. My faith does not rule on this one.
In our late-Protestant USA two opposing groups are doctrinaire, fanatical, religious on guns. Progressives are absolutist on the messianic role of the State in controlling guns and violence. They see the gun lobby as pure evil. On the other side, of course, are the 2nd Amendment fanatics for whom the right to bear arms is absolutely sacred, the very foundation of personal autonomy and identity. Much like the abortion issue, both sides have maybe 20% of our population with the remainder at some level of ambivalence. Their exaggerated passions mutually inflame each other so there is no place for negotiation or compromise: it is like Eastern Ukraine right now...a standoff with neither winning and neither capitulating. As a Catholic I will not choose to die on this hill...for either side.
Good control measures will save lives, but will not solve the problem. Perhaps they would eliminate 20% of gun deaths. They are a significant part of the solution, but not full salvation. There are deeper problems: an overall violent culture, un-fathered and therefore unhinged young men, social media, breakdown of families and communities, political extremism, and Yes...a falling away from faith, Church and God.
Many of the proposals, from the left and the right both, would help: control measures, as well as efforts to harden our schools against assault. In red communities it might help to allow a handful of the school staff to carry pistols if they have grown up with guns; that makes less sense in Newark or Jersey City. But we make little progress even in common sense measures because the two opposed "gun religions" so inflame each other. I blame the progressives as much as the NRA: when our President comes out attacking and demonizing the gun lobby he makes matters worse.
In the face of pure evil, unbearable suffering and tragedy like the recent Texas suffering, what do we all do? We turn to our deepest religious convictions. This is multiplied when the tragedy involves the little ones, the innocents. Our fierce paternal and maternal instincts are set afire. When one group clings to guns for security/identity and the other insists that the state legislate to protect us, we have a calamity.
The blame game is the worst thing. How futile it is to blame Texas gun laws, the police reaction, the failure to detect the psychotic killer, the faulty school security system. The power of evil...pervasive, perpetual, inexorable...will endure until our Lord returns in glory.
Just as bad is to respond with a political crusade. We know that important decisions should never be made in a state of high emotion: anger, grief, anxiety, sorrow. It is best to wait. To be still. To patiently gather information. To resist the impulse to control, to engineer, to save through our weak efforts.
As mentioned above, I myself am blue on this issue, but not in a religious way. I am sober and cerebral about it. I am passionate, and fire-engine red, on the issues that engage me: the innocent and powerless unborn, our religious freedoms, and the nature of sex-marriage-family. Who are my allies in this fight? The gun-toting, Nascar-watching, pick-up-driving, Jesus-preaching rednecks! I am not certifiably a "deplorable" (cannot vote for the Donald), but I am their best friend on what matters. I become a split personality: in my intellect blue, in my heart flaming red.
Before the slaughter of the Texas innocents, I am disinclined to rally for or against guns. Immune to the activist compulsion, the urge "to do something", I become calm and collapse into my Catholic faith.
- With everyone, I grieve for the families in their inconceivable pain.
- I ponder that human life is so fragile, so uncontrollable, so destined for death
- I surrender the little ones and their families to the Providence of God.
- I ponder the Mystery of the Holy Innocents, those tiny babes in Bethlehem whose absurd death at the hands of Herod was part of the Father's plan for our redemption by his Son. I ponder all the Innocents throughout history who were slaughtered by violent hands. This includes the unborn. I recall that they have passed the test that is this life and live eternally in the Trinity.
- I am quiet and I remember: "Be still and know that I am God."
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