NBC News now reports thirteen dead, including the gunman, in shooting at Washington, D.C. Navy Yard; still more wounded. (4:20 pm CT, 09-16-13)
By the time you read this the fog of battle, as soldiers call it, will likely have cleared and you will know more about who did this and what motivated the violence. That information perhaps will lead to new ways to prevent events like this going forward. But probably not.Something has to change, or we will continue killing people with guns. The United States shares the infamy of being seventh on the list of top gun homicide nations on Earth, behind only Guatemala, Colombia, Mexico, Paraguay, Zimbabwe, and Costa Rica. Our closet ally and historic mother country, Great Britain, has some of the most restrictive gun laws in the world; the UK ranks 35th in firearm deaths. Even wild-living, hard-drinking Australia is way behind us at 31st on the killboard. There are two ways to deal with the problem.
One solution is to arm everybody. No, really. For a specific example, Kennesaw, Georgia, achieved worldwide notoriety in 1982 by passing a law--still on the books--requiring gun ownership by all heads of household. The town council of Nelson, GA., passed a similar ordinance this year (2013). The laws make exception for people with mental problems or religious objections to gun ownership. To be fair, the Kennesaw law paralleled a slight decrease in burglary in that city. However, by 2011 three times as many burglaries occurred as there had been 1999. Kennesaw remains a statistically low crime area, so one could legitimately ask: If the same law were in effect in higher crime areas, such as metro Atlanta, which direction would the rate of gun violence go--up or down?
The other alternative is to arm no one. I used to be a pro-gun advocate, believing in the right of the people to keep and bear any arms they felt they needed. Not any more. Events in my beloved homeland have pushed me to the dark side of the road, where I found too many bodies in the ditch. But, like last week's Theo-Blog on violence among nations, the underlying problem goes back to the Good Samaritan parable again. This time, it isn't just about clearing the road to Jericho of robbers. We have to take weapons out of the hands of the next crop of robbers, religio-political fanatics, and straight-up murdering criminals who take to the hills for their shot at new victims. We must take the guns out of the hands of law-abiding citizens, because weapons of war and semi-automatic handguns are unsafe at any speed.
I think the time has come to amened the US Constitution to restrict the production, sales, and ownership of lethal weapons. There is nothing particularly sacred about the Second Amendment, especially since it is continually invoked to permit weapons of mass murder. The Second Amendment was written for a world in which single-shot, smooth bore muskets required thirty seconds to a minute to reload. I can hear the Founding Fathers shout, "No, no, no!" at the re-interpretation of their vision to include super-clip magazines, able to fire a hundred rounds without a break. Jesus continually told the strict constructionists of his day that God put people above ordinances: "The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath." (Mark 2:27)
Given the American cultural climate, it is unlikely either of these scenarios will prevail. Prayer may be the only option. With the 50th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I have a dream" speech fresh in our collective memory, perhaps the dream of a gun-free world will inspire new generations of protesters to overturn the Second Amendment madness and set us free from this sea of guns in which we live, move and have our being. That won't happen soon. My new motto in this quest is, "We shall over come, but first we'll have to undergo."
Let there be peace on Earth. Lose the gun fantasies, America. You aren't making anyone safe; you're killing our children.
