Gun Violence in America

The recent school shooting in Parkland, Florida, has reignited the debate on gun violence and gun control in the United States of America. This time teenagers, who have been increasingly victimized by the shootings, have been leading the debate, rejecting the usual excuses put forth by politicians, and making clear that thoughts and prayers are not enough.

Judging by the unwillingness in Congress to address gun violence, it seems it has become a fact of life in America. Fortunately, fresh thinking from teenagers may be offering hope that change will occur in the future. In this article, I will examine the gun issue both from a historical perspective and a Christian perspective.

In his 2014 book The Second Amendment: A Biography, Michael Waldman states that 30000 Americans die from guns every year, and 50000 more are wounded. Obviously only the high-profile cases are discussed. Such cases include the murders of President John Kennedy, his brother Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, and the attempted murder of President Ronald Reagan. Following the Reagan incident, James Brady, his press secretary, and his wife launched a campaign that led to a gun control bill signed by President Bill Clinton on November 30, 1993. The bill required a five-day waiting period for purchasing a handgun, to keep such guns out of the hands of the mentally ill and criminals.

In addition to the shooting of high-profile citizens, mass shootings have increased and have brought feelings of fear, horror and helplessness, as Americans come to the realization that they are not safe anywhere. Some of the mass shootings are listed here:

• On April 20, 1999, 13 students were killed and 24 wounded at Columbine High School.
• On April 16, 2007, 32 people were killed and 17 injured in a dorm and an academic building at Virginia Tech.
• On January 8, 2011, Arizona representative Gabrielle Gifford was shot in Tucson, Arizona. She survived, but 6 additional people were killed and 11 wounded.
• On July 20, 2012, 12 people were killed and 58 wounded in a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado.
• On December 14, 2012, a shooter killed his mother at their home before going to Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, where he killed 20 first graders and 6 adults.
• On December 2, 2015, 14 people were killed and 22 wounded at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, California.
• On June 12, 2016, 49 people were killed and 58 wounded in a nightclub in Orlando, Florida.
• On October 1, 2017, 59 people were killed and more than 500 wounded at a country music festival in Las Vegas.

The above list is far from complete and more cases are highlighted by the Washington Post here.  To the above list must be added the Parkland shooting.  Also, the rise in mass shootings comes with increased availability of more lethal weapons normally used by military forces, such as the AR-15 semi-automatic rifle.

Gun violence in America has had a particularly deplorable impact on children.  According to the Children’s Defense Fund,

“Every year in the U.S., thousands of children and teens have their lives cut tragically short by a bullet fired from a gun. During 2013-2015, 7,768 children and teens were killed with a gun, enough to fill 388 classrooms of 20 children.”

It turns out that one child or teen was killed with a gun every 3 hours and 8 minutes in 2015. The same year, 9.5 out of every 100,000 black children and teens were killed with a gun, compared to 2.5 per 100,000 for white children and teens.

The Children’s Defense Fund complains that “children are forced to witness tragic mass shootings that occur with regularity in public spaces including schools, churches, concert venues, community centers, nightclubs and movie theaters.“ It even seems that children’s lives are more endangered in those public spaces than soldiers’ lives are in war zones:

“Since 1963, the number of children and teens killed with guns on American soil was more than three times higher than the number of U.S. soldiers killed by hostiles in wars abroad. Nearly 180,000 children and teens died from guns in the U.S. between 1963 and 2015.”

The Children’s Defense Fund also finds a correlation between gun ownership and the risk of death: “A gun in the home increases the risk of death by homicide 200 percent, suicide 200-400 percent and accident 300 percent.” And of course, gun ownership is much higher in the United States than it is in other nations:

“Although the U.S. accounts for less than 5 percent of the global population, our civilians own 35-50 percent of civilian-owned guns in the world, most recently estimated as high as 310 million guns. In contrast, U.S. military and law enforcement combined only own approximately 4 million guns.”

American Views on Guns and Gun Ownership

Pew Research Center has provided statistics on Americans’ views on guns. The available information indicates that 30% of Americans own guns. But white men are more likely to own guns (48%) than white women (24%), non-white men (24%) and non-white women (16%).  Also, adults who live in rural areas are more likely to own guns (46%) than adults who live in the suburbs (28%) or in urban areas (19%). Party affiliation is a factor, as 44% of Republicans and independents who lean to the Republican Party say they have guns, compared to 20% of Democrats and Democratic leaners.

Figure 1 below summarizes the reasons given for gun ownership. Most American gun owners (67%) say they primarily own guns for protection.  Hunting and sport shooting (especially for men in rural areas) are also important reasons given for owning a gun. Only 8% of gun owners need a gun for their jobs. In addition, 66% say they own more than one firearm, while 29% say they own 5 or more firearms.

Among gun owners, 74% associate ownership to a personal sense of freedom. To them, owning a gun is an essential right guaranteed by the constitution.  Among gun owners, Republicans and Republican-leaning independents are more than twice as likely as Democrats and Democratic leaners to claim gun ownership as a right (91% vs. 43%).
Figure 2 below shows the percentage of adult Americans who support or somewhat support a variety of policy measures under consideration.  It is interesting that while

Figure 1: Reasons for Gun Ownership

Figure 2: Level of Support of Gun Policy Measures

support is high for both preventing the mentally ill from purchasing guns and performing background checks for private sales and at gun shows, resistance to such measures has been high in Congress. In the general population, the chart shows sharp divisions between gun owners and non-gun owners regarding creating a federal database to track gun sales, banning assault-style weapons, and banning high-capacity magazines.

The public is divided over the influence of the National Rifle Association on US gun legislation, with 44% saying that the NRA has too much influence, 40% saying it has the right amount of influence and 15% saying it has too little influence. Democrats are more likely to say that the NRA has too much influence.

Half of Americans consider gun violence as a very big problem, but while 59% of non-gun owners have that sense of urgency, only a third of gun owners do. Furthermore, a good majority of Americans (87%) believe that the ease with which people can illegally obtain guns contributes a great deal or a fair amount to gun violence. But even though 60% of Americans believe that the ease with which people can legally obtain guns is a major contributor to gun violence, 67% of non-gun owners hold that view, while only 44% of gun owners do.

Brief History of the Second Amendment

As previously stated, many gun owners strongly believe that owning a gun is an individual right. They point to the Second Amendment as the source of that right. In fact, even proponents of gun controls today tend to start every statement they make by asserting that they are strong believers in the Second Amendment. Historically however, US courts did not treat the Second Amendment as an individual right until the 2008 decision of a conservative Supreme Court. Michael Waldman’s book The Second Amendment: A Biography provides a good review of the history of the Second Amendment. The summary given here is based on that review.

According to Waldman, “The Second Amendment is after all a product of a particular time and place: a world with clear, plain distinctions between militias (“well regulated” and otherwise) and armies. It comes to us from a moment when ordinary citizens were expected to bear arms for the community.” The American Revolutionary war was a conflict between an English army and colonial militias. While England had a trained and dedicated army, the American colonies relied on militias.  Waldman defines militias as follows:

“Militias were military forces drawn from the citizenry—largely the yeoman farmers who owned their own property and worked their own land. In England, and then even more so in the colonies, militia service was a universal expectation. Men from sixteen to sixty were required to join a company, and train intermittently. They were expected to own and bring their own gun. They were not allowed to have a musket; they were required to. More than a right, being armed was a duty.”

In the American colonies, it is easy to see how the requirement to own land led to all-white militias. Even though nonwhites were initially allowed to participate, Southern colonies decided to limit membership to whites as the slave population grew: the idea of keeping armed slaves seemed risky. In addition, wealthy whites could avoid service in militia by simply paying others to do their time.

Militias were initially a source of great pride as the farmers who joined them were seen as highly courageous and committed patriots who were able to score victories against a better prepared English army. However, they were also primarily local militias which had to be brought together for an all-out conflict. For example, Waldman describes George Washington’s efforts to integrate various local militias into an effective army. Later, after the Constitution was adopted, it was found that the use of militias to support the goals of Congress could become problematic: several incidents showed that local militias could easily side with local causes against the new national government. Eventually it became clear that a standing army would be needed as a replacement.

The Constitution that was adopted in 1787 was the result of hard work done by delegates from 13 states assembled in Philadelphia. These delegates did not initially consider a Bill of Rights as necessary. However, the Constitution had to be ratified by the states, and strong objections were raised by the states regarding their rights during the debates leading to ratification. In particular, the states were afraid of giving up control of their militias to the national government. At the same time, the idea of a regular “standing army” was repulsive to many who saw it as a potential step towards tyranny.

The Constitution was ratified by the states without a Bill of Rights, but during the debates, the delegates proposed a variety of amendments. For example, there was a proposed seventeenth amendment resulting from objections raised by Virginia, which is reproduced here:

“That the people have a right to keep and bear arms; that a well regulated Militia composed of the body of the people trained to arms is the proper, natural and safe defence of a free State. That standing armies in time of peace are dangerous to liberty, and therefore ought to be avoided, as far as the circumstances and protection of the Community will admit; and that in all cases the military should be under strict subordination to and governed by the Civil power.”

This proposed amendment illustrates the fact that the “right to keep and bear arms” was primarily discussed within the context of military service for the defense of a state (such as the state of Virginia). It also shows that militias were favored over a standing army at the time the constitution was being adopted. Regarding the right to bear arms as an individual right, Waldman writes:

“It was a momentous debate, a rare and consequential moment of government making. Thousands of speeches, dozens of pamphlets, hundreds of articles, thousands of words, debated the new document and its risks and advantages. Rarely mentioned was the idea that the new national government would threaten private gun ownership for personal protection.”

When the Bill of Rights was adopted, the Second Amendment in it similarly reflected the debate about state militias, and its final form is

“A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”

Waldman notes the strange use of commas in the sentence. One scholar suggests that the statement could be read “A well regulated militia … shall not be infringed.” Furthermore, there is evidence that the expression “bear arms,” as used in those days, referred to carrying a weapon for military purposes such as being in the service of a country. It is interesting that the National Rifle Association, which was initially an organization that spoke for hunters and sporting concerns, but eventually became an institution that almost religiously opposes any government involvement in gun regulation, has on a wall at its headquarters an edited version of the Second Amendment:

“. . the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

The inscription misleadingly edits out the first part of the amendment to remove any allusion to militias.

In general, there was probably a tacit belief throughout the country that individuals have a right to carry a gun for self-defense purposes. But the intent of the Second Amendment was not to affirm that right. In addition, court decisions related to the Second Amendment, in the centuries that followed, do not reflect the idea of the amendment as an individual right. Neither do they imply in any way that gun control measures infringe on that right. In the early days of the nation, Congress established a nationwide registry of privately owned guns for militia use, requiring that officers catalogue military-grade guns and send a report to the national government. In the days of Andrew Jackson, at a time gun violence was rising, states passed gun control laws banning concealed weapons such as guns and knives. Except for the state of Kentucky, where courts passed, in 1820, a law that overturned a ban on concealed weapons, the standard interpretation of the Second Amendment was that it protected militia rather than individual gun rights.

In 1857 the Supreme Court issued the Dred Scott decision which declared that freed slaves could never become citizens even if they moved to free states. The reasoning was that the Founders intended to keep blacks from becoming citizens. If black people were granted citizenship, they would enjoy all rights and privileges enjoyed by whites, would be able to move into slave states with such rights and privileges, including carrying a gun, which was problematic since Southern states had disarmed blacks, even the freed ones. The situation was aggravated by the fact that abolitionists were also beginning to call for an armed insurrection, which gave white leaders even more motivation to disarm black people.

After the Civil War, the Southern states attempted to maintain slavery-like conditions and issued Black Codes which, among other things, kept black people from carrying arms. The national government intervened to eliminate the Black Codes, and declared that “The constitutional rights of all loyal and well-disposed inhabitants to bear arms will not be infringed; nevertheless this shall not be construed to sanction the unlawful practice of carrying concealed weapons, nor to authorize any person to enter with arms on the premises of another against his consent.”

The Civil Rights Act of 1866 attempted to establish non-discrimination and racial equality, and to guarantee the privileges and immunities of national citizenship, which had been suppressed by Dred Scott. Also, two new constitutional amendments were introduced. The Fifteenth Amendment guaranteed former slaves the right to vote. The Fourteenth Amendment declared that anyone born in the United States is a citizen, and that no state could “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” It also stated that “no state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.”

The above amendments did not resolve America’s racial problem. Even though the amendments attempted to give former slaves the right to defend themselves, the courts in many cases kept the national government ineffective in enforcing them. The courts tended to rule that the Second Amendment only limited the authority of Congress to infringe on the right to bear arms, whereas the states were authorized to rule as they saw fit on the matter. It was not until the 1960’s that the Federal Government was able to decisively implement civil rights.

But even the states did not shy away from introducing gun regulations when they were needed. For example, in 1911, the state of New York state legislature adopted a measure that required a license to own a handgun, which had to be approved by the sheriff or police, and made it a felony to carry a concealed gun outside the home. Similar laws were later adopted by West Virginia, New Jersey, Michigan, Indiana, Oregon, California, New Hampshire, North Dakota, and Connecticut.

Waldman describes the efforts of conservative presidents, legislators and lawyers who, in the 20th century, with support from the National Rifle Association, pushed for an originalist interpretation of the Second Amendment, seeking to emphasize what the amendment meant to the Founders, with less regard to finding solutions that fit the specific conditions of their own time. These efforts led to the Heller case in 2008 where the conservative Supreme Court, for the first time, ruled that the Second Amendment recognizes an individual right to own a gun that is not used for militia service. Waldman discusses the majority opinion written by Justice Scalia, pointing out flaws in its logic and in the fact that it even failed to present a credible originalist argument. He also contrasts it to dissenting opinions written by Justices Stevens and Breyer.

Nevertheless, the 2008 decision is now the law of the land, and all attempts to devise policy to curb gun violence must be careful not to violate it. Unfortunately, the debate is now dominated by what Waldman calls Second Amendment fundamentalism. With the influence of the NRA, conservative politicians equate support of the Second Amendment with rejection of any attempt to regulate the use of guns.

The Christian Perspective

Kate Shellnutt starts her February 26, 2018 article in Christianity Today with the following sentence:

“White evangelicals hold the same views as most Americans on many proposals to restrict access to guns, but are also among the biggest advocates for a more divisive idea that has come up following the Parkland, Florida, school shooting: arming classroom teachers.”

Shellnutt refers to a study by Pew Research Center which published the chart shown in Figure 3. The chart shows that white evangelicals, in general, tend to lag the general population in their support of gun control measures. That is an extremely surprising fact, considering that Jesus and his apostles never carried weapons to take their message to the world.  In fact, when Jesus sent out his apostles, he told them:

“As you go, proclaim this message: ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have received; freely give.  Do not get any gold or silver or copper to take with you in your belts— no bag for the journey or extra shirt or sandals or a staff, for the worker is worth his keep.  Whatever town or village you enter, search there for some worthy person and stay at their house until you leave.  As you enter the home, give it your greeting.  If the home is deserving, let your peace rest on it; if it is not, let your peace return to you.  If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, leave that home or town and shake the dust off your feet.” (Matthew 10:7-14)

In other words, he was urging them to rely on God’s providence, and nothing else. Recognizing that he was sending them into a dangerous world where their lives would be in danger, he also told them: “I am sending you out like sheep among wolves.” (Matthew 10:16).

Throughout history, Christians who wanted to be able to benefit from the salvation brought by Christ without giving up the material benefits of living in “the world” have found ways of misrepresenting Christian teaching for their own purposes. In this website, I have examined many of those lame arguments in several articles such as “Peace or a Sword?”, “World Terrorism and Christianity” and “One Thing C. S. Lewis Was Wrong About.“

Figure 3: White Evangelicals’ Support of Gun Control Measures

To be sure, there is a clear gap between white evangelical leaders – who are better versed in biblical teaching – and regular churchgoers. The leaders, even the more conservative ones, felt obligated to call for gun control measures after the Parkland events.
Shellnutt mentions in her article that 15 evangelical leaders signed a petition for gun safety that states the following:

“We call on our fellow Christian believers, church leaders, and pastors across the country to declare that we will decisively respond to this problem with both prayer and action.”

One of the signers is Rob Schenk, president of the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Institute, who worked with filmmaker Abigail Disney on a documentary on gun attitudes among evangelical Christians, in an effort to promote a conversation.  Asked in an interview why gun violence is a highly controversial issue among Christians, Disney answered:

“What we’re increasingly seeing is terrible fear among evangelical conservatives. I think evangelicals have always kind of seen themselves as outside the mainstream and as having less political power. There’s always been a sense among them that [someone was] coming to get them. And then you pour ISIS into that, and then you pour this kind of Fox news always amping up the fear, and then you have the NRA, which is also playing on that fear pretty unscrupulously. So you have people who are convinced that on any given night, someone’s going to break in and shoot them in their home, which is just statistically just as close to impossible as it gets. You’re much more likely to be hit by lightning.“

Schenk added:

“Fear is a very real human emotion, and Christians have lots of fears. But I don’t believe fear should be a controlling element in a Christian’s life. Our confidence is in God.
In my own firearm training, my instructor actually told me it’s better that you not carry if you are not ready to kill in a moment in time. So whenever a Christian takes on their body the capacity and the willingness in their heart to kill another human being, that, to me, is a serious moral and ethical crisis. It’s also a serious theological problem, because we have to ask, ‘Is it always the will of God that I survive a violent confrontation?’ For example, with the stoning of Stephen as recorded in the book of Acts, was it God’s will for Stephen to survive, and did he fail at that? Or was it God’s will that he die? I would argue it was God’s will. So these are serious theological problems that demand examination for the Christian.”

Schenk is correct in pointing out that the issue of bearing arms should be a moral and theological dilemma for a true Christian. His example related to the stoning of Stephen, the first Christian martyr, is also a good illustration of the fulfillment of Jesus’ warning about the inevitable persecution. But Christians should be taught that the New Testament makes no room for the use of violence by followers of Christ. This is only a debatable issue to pretenders.

Going back to the Second Amendment, it is important to emphasize that it should be irrelevant to true followers of Christ. Indeed Christ did not even endorse the idea of self-defense, which is the most benign right asserted by Second Amendment defenders. Jesus’ teaching reflects his radicalism in following the will of the Father no matter what the cost is going to be. The will of the Father is not to repay evil with evil, to love one’s enemy and pray for him, and to turn the other cheek. This brand of radicalism may be dangerous to Jesus and to his followers in a world of wolves. In fact, it cost many of them their lives. But this radicalism does not do harm to anybody who disagrees with the way of Christ. It represents the exemplary attitude of those who truly seek the kingdom of God and are willing to surrender their lives to God. True Christians cannot claim a right that violates the will of their Lord and Savior.

The history of the Second Amendment reveals that it underwent changes during the time it was examined by Congress after it was introduced to the House of Representatives by James Madison.  An early version of it is reproduced here:

“A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the People, being the best security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed, but no one religiously scrupulous of bearing arms, shall be compelled to render military service in person.”

In this version, there is a provision to accommodate conscientious objectors who, on religious grounds, would have opposed the compulsory call to bear arms expressed in the Second Amendment: as previously mentioned, all citizens of a certain age were required not only to bear arms for their country, but also to buy their own gun. Most likely the conscientious objectors targeted by this form of the amendment were primary the Pennsylvania Quakers who knew that following Christ implied rejecting violence. But people such as Madison must have understood that non-violence naturally flowed from a correct reading of the New Testament. When the amendment came out of the Senate, the reference that was meant to protect conscientious objectors had been removed, and the Second Amendment became a document with no religious content, and therefore irrelevant to followers of Christ.