In Guns We Trust
The Unholy Trinity of White Evangelicals, Politics, and Firearms
One of my starkest memories from my years in Scotland is visiting the town of Dunblane, an idyllic community with a stunning cathedral near a serene river. Robert Louis Stevenson spent time at nearby Ben Gunn’s Cave (the inspiration for Treasure Island), and the surrounding fields with grazing sheep give the impression of a town deeply connected to its roots. Yet everywhere there are monuments to the 1996 event that disrupted peaceful life there: the massacre of 16 five- and six-year-old children and a teacher by a man who entered a school with four legally acquired guns. Almost immediately, Britain implemented tighter gun restrictions, and there have been few mass shootings since.
Other countries have responded to such tragedies with gun restrictions, too. Yet the United States has tended to loosen gun laws after mass shootings. Veteran journalist William Kole sets out to understand this paradox in his new book, In Guns We Trust. He argues that the source of America’s gun violence is a lack of meaningful laws regulating guns, owing overwhelmingly to the way White evangelicals have turned the Second Amendment into an article of faith.
Kole contrasts this attitude with the views of evangelicals in other countries, many of whom reject the very concept of owning weapons created to take the life of another. He also examines how progressive American Christians approach the Second Amendment, gun violence, and gun laws. Kole makes a compelling case that gun-loving White evangelicals are consistent outliers—among American Christians, among Americans generally, and among global evangelicals.
