Catholic and Enjoying It!
People are baffled at what I meant by “Gun Cult”.
I do not mean “People who like guns or shooting”. Fire away. I don’t care. I’m not a bad shot myself and have no objection to guns, hunting, target shooting, etc.
What I do mean is really quite simple. If your first response to something like Sandy Hook or Vegas or the fact that we slaughter 36,000 people by guns each year is “Dear God! What can we do to reduce that number?” you are not part of the Gun Cult. You may have different approaches to curing the problem, but you do not place your gun above human life and obedience to the fifth commandment. You are not an idolator and fetishist whose summum bonum is an inanimate object you *say* is “morally neutral” but which is, in fact, more important to you than God or man.
If your first, last, and only response to the annual carnage (punctuated by a occasional mass slaughter) is “Screw you! Don’t touch my gun!” and a torrent of “maintain the status quo” lies without a second’s thought for the dead and wounded and how to prevent more dead and wounded, you are a member of the Gun Cult, say what you will.
And that Cult eats, breathes, and excrete lies constantly. One of their biggest and most reckless lies is “Any attempt to limit access to firepower is pointless since bad guys will always find guns”. The obvious corollary to this lie is, “Then it is equally true that women will always find ways to have abortions and any attempt to limit access to them is likewise pointless.”
Confronted with the inexorable outcome of this illogic, the Gun Cultist has lately glommed on to a new bit of pseudo-logic in reply: “Are guns inherently morally wrong?”
This question is totally irrelevant. If bad people will do bad things no matter what the law says, and there is therefore is no point to law at all, then it does not matter in the slightest whether the act is inherently morally wrong or not. You have just said all law is futile if it cannot prevent all lawbreaking. It’s a ridiculous thing to say, but it is you saying, not me. And your rejoinder is a red herring deflection from that fact.
The truth is, that stupid argument is a lie constructed to defend the status quo on guns and guarantee the death of 36,000 people each year since arms industry profits matter more than human life. And the deeper truth is that while it is a lie in defense of murder for arms profit, it also is also a defense of another form of murder for profit called abortion. Because it is a lie constructed to say that human lives matter less than profits. It is one of many filthy lies told by a Gun Cult that cares nothing for human life as it lines the pockets of the Arms Industry and, along the way, the Abortion Industry too.
This is why the Consistent Life Ethic matters. Because all life issues are connected. Lies told to rationalize murder for arms profits are lies told to rationalize murder for abortion industry profits. They are interchangeable.
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