A reader asks what I mean by the Gun Cult

…and wonders if all gun owners are part of it?

Certainly not. Many gun owners are mortal enemies of the Gun Cult. A “cultus” is a religious devotion to something: to place that thing as one’s highest priority before which all else must bow. The essence of the Gun Cult is not gun ownership or enjoyment of guns. I like shooting skeet myself and am a pretty good shot.

No, the difference between liking guns and worshipping them is this: When confronted with America’s huge gun death rate or the latest obscene slaughter, is your first response “Dear God! This has to stop! We put a man on the moon. We massively reduced our automobile death rates. We can and must work this problem and bring our gun death rate toward that of the rest of the civilized world who have solved this problem.” If so, gun owner or not, you are a sane person and not a member of the Gun Cult. You rightly order your enjoyment of guns to the Fifth Commandment and recognize that the gun is made for man, not man for the gun. Given a choice between human life and a thing, you opt for human life.

But if your first and only response to wanton human slaughter to the tune of 33K dead (plus a Sandy Hook and an Orlando) each year is to say, “Screw you! Don’t touch my gun!”, to think first, last, and only of your precious gun rights, to fantasize that Obama is coming to take your guns, or that the second amendment is just about to be repealed, or that Hitlery is coming to put you in a concentration camp, or to repeat brain-dead slogans like “This is a heart problem, not a gun problem,” or to defend refusal to so much as even study the issue, much less act to change the status quo of 33K dead each year and bring that number down to what other nations have shown can be achieved, you are a member of the Gun Cult. You love, worship, adore and insist on human sacrifice to your god and will brook absolutely no interference with the thousands of gallons of blood it demands from its victims every year. The precious gun always comes first. Obedience to the God who gave the fifth commandment comes second and must be adapted to the worship of the gun.

So the sole proposal from the Gun Cultist for protecting human life is “MOAR GUNS!” If that doesn’t save lives (and our absolutely predictable gun slaughter rate that dwarfs the rest of the civilized world proves it does not) then those people simply must be offered as human sacrifices, because nothing is more important than the gun. Nothing. Including the God who gave us the fifth commandment to protect human life made in his image and likeness.

Meanwhile, that real God, who is a jealous God, says, “I am the Lord your God, you shall have no other gods before me.”