A Christian approach to Gun Rights and the State

“The real problem is the human heart. Until we fix that, there is no point in passing gun laws” is, in fact, a profoundly anti-Christian statement. What the Church teaches and has always taught is that it is utterly delusional to believe that the human heart will be “fixed” in this life and that it is wildly imprudent to think that all, or even the majority, of human beings are likely to have progressed in holiness to sanctity in this life.

Accordingly, the state exists, not to fix the human heart, but to try to limit the means by which evil people can slaughter lots of people at once and to encourage those things by which virtue at least has a fighting chance. So it is absolutely the state’s job to limit access to the technology of mass slaughter since the state actually has the duty and power to do such things. That’s why the same “prolife” people who constantly lie that the state should do nothing about access to gun technology have spent 30 years saying the state must outlaw access to abortion technology.

The state is not good at all at fixing the human heart. But it is reasonably practiced at gathering up goods it does not want bought and sold and punishing manufacturers and sellers of such goods and making their purchase so impractical and expensive that they are difficult to obtain. All other civilized countries have done this with guns. We alone have not. That’s not because we are godless and mentally ill. There are godless and mentally ill people aplenty in Canada, the UK, Oz, and Europe. It’s because have chosen to elect politicians who are owned by the arms industry who will not create the laws these countries enjoy here. And we have done so because we continue to regurgitate the lies of the arms industry, which are typically fed to us by Christianist liars who trust their gun and not God to keep them safe and whose sole selfish reply to every single slaughter is “Your dead kids don’t trump my constitutional rights.”

Me.  My rights.  My gun.  My liberty.  Me. Me. Me.

St. Paul told the Corinthians who were struggling over the question of eating meat sacrificed to idols:

Food will not commend us to God. We are no worse off if we do not eat, and no better off if we do. Only take care lest this liberty of yours somehow become a stumbling block to the weak. For if any one sees you, a man of knowledge, at table in an idol’s temple, might he not be encouraged, if his conscience is weak, to eat food offered to idols? And so by your knowledge this weak man is destroyed, the brother for whom Christ died. Thus, sinning against your brethren and wounding their conscience when it is weak, you sin against Christ. Therefore, if food is a cause of my brother’s falling, I will never eat meat, lest I cause my brother to fall. (1 Co 8:8–13).

Paul understood that he had a perfect right to eat meat. But for the sake of his brother’s tender conscience, he willingly abandoned his rights.

If guns are the cause of your brother’s death, then the obvious Christian response to gun slaughter is not “I HAVE MY RIGHTS!” but, “Dear God, what can we do to stop this?” and if stopping this means abandoning your precious rights then a Christian will willingly do so. A Christianist’s only response is “Screw you! Don’t touch my gun!”

As long as that remains the sole response to the slaughter, the slaughter will never ever end.