guns

In Texas, even pastors are carrying.

It’s damnable that any reflection on American gun violence is quickly out of date. I was in Texas when the October 1 shooting occurred in Roseburg, Oregon, leaving 10 dead including the gunman. I was revising an article provoked by that shooting when 14 were shot dead December 2 in San Bernardino, California. Now there are two statistics I can’t get out of my mind: first, mass shootings (resulting in four or more deaths) occur at a rate of more than one a day in the United States. Second, more American gun deaths have occurred since 1970 than American war deaths since 1775.

This is insane. What’s wrong?

I, like many people of faith, am reeling from Jerry Falwell Jr.’s proclamations to his student body. Falwell encouraged the students of Liberty University (there are more than 100,000 of them) to arm themselves against Muslim terrorists. 

His rhetoric reminded me of a bumper sticker I see here in Tennessee: “Only a good guy with a gun can stop a bad guy with a gun.”

Michael Waldman traces the Second Amendment's life, from militias to the NRA to the newfound right to have handguns at home.

In the wake of the shootings in Las Vegas—in which bystander Joseph Robert Wilcox tried to take a shooter out and instead was himself shot and killed—Adam Weinstein offers a very thoughtful take on the notion of being a "good guy with a gun." A veteran and a gun owner, Weinstein describes himself as "one of those wannabe heroes"—but also details his growing doubts.

In April 1993, the FBI siege on the Branch Davidian compound ended in disaster. The event still casts a long shadow on our divided nation.

Three people died in the attack on the Boston Marathon. That same day, 11 Americans were murdered by guns.

Would you want your son or daughter to go to a college where it is legal to possess a loaded gun in a dorm room? If not, you may want to think twice about sending your child to school in Texas.

A bill under consideration in the state Senate, S. B. 182, would require all public colleges and universities to allow holders of a concealed handgun license to carry loaded weapons on campus.

Historians have argued for decades that the Second Amendment has nothing to do with the right to own a handgun nor  even with the right to use a gun in self-defense. Nevertheless, a counternarrative—bolstered by the National Rifle Association—has triumphed in the popular mind and been codified to some extent in the Supreme Court’s ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), which said that the Second Amendment “protects an individual right to possess a firearm.”

Rush Limbaugh:

If a lot of African-Americans back in the '60s had guns and the legal right to use them for self-defense, you think they would have needed Selma? . . . If John Lewis had had a gun, would he have been beat upside the head on the bridge?

Rep. John Lewis:

African Americans in the 60s could have chosen to arm themselves, but we made a conscious decision not to.

Here's some good news: despite our short collective attention span, despite the fiscal-cliff debacle dominating the headlines shortly after the Newtown shooting, the U.S. scourge of gun violence is still part of the national conversation.

Now, every time I hear a public official mention Newtown and Aurora but not Chicago—which experienced a startling spike in gun homicides in 2012, mostly in poor, black neighborhoods—I'm ashamed at the implication that some killings deserve more shock and outrage than others. Still, whatever it takes to motivate people to take on the pro-gun lobby, I'm grateful to see it happening.

President Obama’s speech in Newtown on December 17 included this pivotal question: “Are we prepared to say that such violence visited on our children year after year after year is somehow the price of our freedom?” The president is bristling here at the way our political discourse reflexively leaps to claims about individual rights and freedoms.

In the wake of the Newtown shooting, political will is growing to do something about guns. People are moved to act—and we must act.

This New York Times story would make for a good spot quiz in a Lutheran confirmation class. Identify the theological problem in the following report.

The Peaceable Kingdom pricks my conscience every time I see it because of the enormous gap between its vision and the world's reality.

America's problem with guns is multigenerational and multilayered. It has to do with our origin myths, myths grounded in redemptive violence.

In the face of yet another gun massacre, Americans seem to think that there is only one answer: more guns.