Beating Guns

by Shane Claiborne

  What all this shows is that some of our first battles over the Second Amendment were about keeping Natives and African Americans from having guns. The NRA believed in gun control when it meant preventing people of color from acquiring guns.

  When we think about the Second Amendment, it is important to remember the historic context. Slavery was legal. It was written before guns were able to shoot more than one bullet at a time. It was also written at the same time as the “Three-Fifths Clause” (in 1787), which declared black folks to be three-fifths human. Times change, and societies evolve and advance. Slavery is no longer legal. Hopefully all of us agree that black folks are 100 percent human, even though some of our social institutions may still be catching up. Maybe it is also time to rethink the Second Amendment. In 2018, in response to the hundreds of marches happening across the country related to gun violence, the ninety-seven-year-old retired Supreme Court justice John Paul Stevens made national news doing exactly that—calling for a repeal of the Second Amendment, a “relic of the 18th century.”6 He also says the court made a wrong decision back in the 2008 ruling that the right to bear arms was an individual rather than a collective right.

  It is helpful that the Supreme Court has ruled that the right to bear arms is not unlimited and does not prohibit all regulations of firearms. In light of the court’s ruling, there have been several suggestions to repeal the Second Amendment and replace it with a Twenty-Eighth Amendment. The new version might go something like this: “A well regulated State National Guard, being helpful to the safety and security of a State in times of need, along with the strictly regulated right of the people to keep and bear a limited number of nonautomatic arms for sport and hunting, with respect to the primary right of all people to be free from gun violence . . . this shall not be infringed.”7 It’s worth considering.

  When the Second Amendment was written, we had this in mind.

  Not this

  Freedom for All

  One person’s freedom can become another person’s bondage. For we also know that the Declaration of Independence declares the right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” We also have the right to live. We must also protect the right not to bear arms.

  There’s a beautiful passage in Paul’s letter to the Galatians, in the New Testament, where he says, “You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love. For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ If you bite and devour each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other” (Gal. 5:13–15).

  We cannot focus just on the legal and political battle. As important as it is to change laws, no law can change the human heart. You can’t legislate love and vote to abolish fear. There is some serious heart work that we need to do as well. So let’s think about the contrast between the Second Amendment and the Sermon on the Mount.

  Every Christian must concede that the Bible is a higher moral authority than the Constitution, and that the Golden Rule—do to others what you would have them do to you—is a greater commandment than the Second Amendment. In fact, Jesus’s command to “turn the other cheek” flies in the face of the NRA’s command to “stand your ground.”

  Here are a few stories that cast a vision for a world where the cross is mightier than the sword. They offer us an alternative to the “live by the sword, die by the sword” dead-end road of gun violence.

  When we heard that the man who killed Trayvon Martin was going to auction his gun, our imaginations began to turn. Do we make a bid so we can destroy it? How much money would we need for that (rumors say it sold for upward of $200,000)? Instead, we decided to ask for surrogates. Beyond the amount of money, there was something awry with funding a person who killed another. So, what if we put out a call for 9mm handguns like the one used to kill Trayvon Martin? With the help of Benjamin Corey (whose story is shared in chapter 8), we asked for folks to give up their guns. We called this campaign “Sow Your Ground” and ended up with half a dozen 9mm handguns, as well as a few others.

  Memorial to the Lost

  FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH, SUTHERLAND SPRINGS, TEXAS (NOVEMBER 5, 2017)

  During the Sunday service on November 5, 2017, a man opened fire on the congregation at the First Baptist Church using an AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle. Twenty-six people died in the shooting including an unborn child. Here are the names of those killed that day:

  Keith Allen Braden, 62 Marc Daniel Holcombe, 36

  Robert Michael Corrigan, 51 Noah Holcombe, 1

  Shani Louise Corrigan, 51 Haley Krueger, 16

  Emily Garcia, 7 Karen Sue Marshall, 56

  Dennis Neil Johnson Sr., 77 Robert Scott Marshall, 56

  Sara Johns Johnson, 68 Tara E. McNulty, 33

  Emily Rose Hill, 11 Annabelle Renae Pomeroy, 14

  Gregory Lynn Hill, 13 Ricardo Cardona Rodriguez, 64

  Megan Gail Hill, 9 Therese Sagan Rodriguez, 66

  Carlin Brite “Billy Bob” Holcombe, unborn child of Crystal Marie Holcombe Brooke Bryanne Ward, 5

  Crystal Marie Holcombe, 36 Joann Lookingbill Ward, 30

  John Bryan Holcombe, 60 Peggy Lynn Warden, 56

  Karla Plain Holcombe, 58 Lula Woicinski White, 71

  One was from a youth pastor in the Midwest who had just successfully convinced his church leadership not to have armed guards at their church, despite some recent threats. He put on the table a Bible opened up to the New Testament and asked them to show him where armed guards fit in with the message of Christ.

  Another was from a man who once self-identified as a “gun-toting liberal.” He had purchased his gun to protect LGBTQ friends who had felt threatened from recent legislation passed by his state’s lawmakers, not unlike politically left-leaning groups that arm themselves as a means of protecting the protestors. Even before our “call out of arms,” he had decided to simplify his life and rid himself of useless items. When he thought about his handguns, he realized they were more of a hindrance than a help. He also didn’t feel comfortable selling them, and so he was stuck, until he saw our request for gun donors.

  RAWtools also contacted pastors to see if they would help us disable guns from donors. This usually meant meeting with us and a gun donor in the church parking lot: we were asking pastors if it was okay to bring a gun onto their property. The pastors would often consult with their elders and discern a way forward—if they agreed, we would arrange this unorthodox “meet and greet.” Sometimes we’d share a meal. Donors bring the guns and we bring the chop saw. Have anvil, will travel.

  These donors exercised their Second Amendment right to own a gun. Eventually they decided that that right looked more American than it did Christian.

  They chose something else.

  They chose a different posture.

  Instead of “stand your ground” they chose “sow your ground.” We then sold a tool made from the guns and gave that money to the Trayvon Martin Foundation.

  It’s the good ole WWJD moment, isn’t it? How can you read the Sermon on the Mount and think it is congruent with open or concealed carry? Unless you believe Jesus was talking about a Colt .45 revolver when he said “Blessed are the peacemakers,” there is no other connection. The gun that “won the West” is not strapped to Peter standing guard at the pearly gates. He learned his lesson when Jesus put an ear back on a centurion. You know, the ear Peter was so eager to lop off.

  For many of Jesus’s followers who needed to feel emboldened, perhaps the next step in their journey was to take up weapons and go after their oppressors. Jesus knew that many of the people he was speaking to were walking a fine line between being oppressed and trying the role of oppressor for once. In fact, many of them were hoping Jesus would be the one to lead them in some sort of revolt.

  In Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount, just after the Beatitudes, we see Jesus creating a shift in creative imagination by moving beyond an eye for an eye and into loving e
nemies and turning the other cheek. Loving enemies can hardly happen with the threat of some sort of quick draw; it certainly would lack depth and have a sort of emptiness to it. Are we listening when Jesus tells us, “If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others?” (Matt. 5:46–47). If only our politicians would have ears to hear this.

  In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is asking us to do far more than just reach across the aisle. That is the first step, but beyond that it means carrying our enemy’s backpack for more than a mile, more than is asked and legally required of us. Many of us can caveat stories from our past with “when I didn’t know better,” implying that now we know better. We know better because we recognize the consequences and understand why a law or rule is in place. We no longer have any excuse for gun violence: we know better. How much gun violence will it take for us to change our rules? If a law or the lack of a law (or even a house rule) is not serving us well, shouldn’t we go another mile and alter it?

  What if we blended Jesus’s call to turn the other cheek with the stand-your-ground laws in our country? In turning the other cheek, we realize we are standing our ground. For Jesus’s audience, being hit on the right cheek meant that you had been backhanded, something administered to an inferior, not an equal.8 Giving them the other cheek was a way to say to the person who slapped you, “No, if you are going to hit me, hit me on this cheek with a fist like an equal, and not with a back hand on that cheek like I am inferior.” This was a creative way of exposing a rule, and it either made a person treat the other as equal or exposed the oppressor for who they were.

  Stand-your-ground laws in our country today make it legal to physically injure, and even kill, another person if you feel threatened. This is why Trayvon Martin’s killer was found “innocent,” or “just,” in the eyes of the law (he was a neighborhood watch volunteer).

  We propose enacting the sow-your-ground tactics. As farmers know their land, so should neighbors know their neighborhood. Farmers have taken time to prepare the land for harvest. We and our neighbors should plan and be in relationship in order to prepare for the needs of each season.

  It’s in sowing your ground that you are made aware of the needs and behavior of your community. You react to situations in ways that keep your community not just alive but also thriving. This is a central message of the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus repeatedly referenced laws in his “you’ve heard it said, but I say” directives. It’s as if Jesus saw a people paralyzed by a set of rules that kept them from imagining an alternative.

  These sets of rules kept them from seeing the effect those laws had on a community. Communities looked more like the empire of Rome than the kingdom of God. Jesus offered alternative ways to engage these laws that stretch our understanding of engaging with the world. Walter Brueggemann calls this the prophetic imagination.9 It’s the imagination that Micah and Isaiah were invoking when they spoke of turning swords into plows. It’s the kind of imagination we all are capable of using. It doesn’t come without risk, but neither does farming.

  The 2017 church shooting in Sutherland Springs, Texas, reignited this conversation. Should churches be gun-free zones? If they are, should it be announced? Most folks against gun-free zones claim that it’s advertising to bad people with guns that a building is full of “soft” targets—that is, the people in the building are easy to shoot.

  The Beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount were about soft targets—blessed are the meek, the merciful, the peacemakers, the hungry, and those who thirst for righteousness. These are the soft targets. When metal is introduced to the forge, it softens. The Beatitudes talk about people who haven’t really chosen to be soft targets, though nevertheless they are. Jesus is telling us their lives are what we are to strive for. Jesus tells us they will inherit the kingdom because they are living as if they are in it. The kingdom is a gun-free zone, full of soft targets, and Jesus calls it blessed.

  One could argue that Jesus entered the world as a soft target. But no one is going to argue that Jesus is a softie. He’s courage with skin on. He modeled for us what the “greatest love” looks like, and there is no greater love than laying down our life for others. But in Jesus, God entered the world in the most vulnerable way—as a child, a refugee. Jesus was born with a target on his back in Herod’s violent world, as children were being killed. And, of course, he died on a cross with love on his lips. He shows us that there is something more courageous than violence: love.

  The soft targets are the people who rejected the notions of power and might and militarism. Pacifism does not mean passivity; nonviolence is simply a refusal to use violence to get rid of violence. It insists that we would rather die than kill. That’s the love that we see in Jesus and that we are called to emulate. We would rather be soft targets than have hardened hearts. We would rather die with a cross in our hands than a gun.

  Remember what we said about heat and the forge and Pharaoh? Hard, cool metal cracks under pressure and is not able to adapt to change. Soft, heated metal can be shaped into life-giving tools. If we rely on guns as the tool that brings safety, freedom, and happiness, it’s harder to imagine alternative tools that also offer those human rights.

  Some of us don’t get to choose to be softened in the forge. Life is heated as it is. Those of us who haven’t experienced the heat of life may be fortunate but can also be oblivious to the struggles of others. But the forge is calling us. The heat of life is not something to avoid. We must be present with others in the midst of the heat. The heat is where God is working. If Jesus is “God with us,” we must also be God to others, including our enemies and neighbors. How can this happen when our neighbors are at the other end of the gun barrel?

  Perhaps this speaks to ministry-outreach models, but the church in America cannot miss the opportunity to show how the vulnerability that Christ showed on the cross is also the vulnerability that can form neighborhoods that value plows over swords.

  Imagine if every Christian in America took their commitment to Jesus as seriously as gun owners take their commitment to the Second Amendment. We wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in. Can we really carry a cross and a gun? When Jesus said to love your enemies, isn’t it safe to assume he meant that we shouldn’t kill them?

  Allowing thirty-eight thousand lives to be lost each year falls short of what love requires of us. Love protects, as 1 Corinthians 13 says. And love sacrifices. Love is patient and kind. It isn’t self-centered or easily angered. It delights in truth and doesn’t return evil for evil. It doesn’t boast, and it isn’t proud. In short, love looks like Jesus. It is willing to die but not to kill.

  We remember that Jesus laid down his “rights”—he became the victim of violence to heal us from our “right” to kill. He loved his enemies so much that he died for them.

  Consider

  This

  LAYING IT ALL OUT THERE

  I (SHANE) WAS AT A FRIEND’S HOUSE hanging out with their kids, and we grabbed the Guinness Book of World Records off the bookshelf. Flipping through the pages, we laughed at all the amazing feats, gawked at the most bizarre tattoos and piercings, and joked about what record we’d like to try to break. Then I flipped to another page. Most guns. It listed the countries with the most civilian-owned firearms. And, of course, number one was the United States with 270 million guns, or about ninety guns per one hundred people. At the time, the number two country for most guns was India with 46 million, or about four guns per one hundred people. I wasn’t expecting that fact amid all the wild and wonderful things that filled those pages. And this was an old copy of the Guinness Book of World Records.1

  It’s not a record we should be proud of. Nor should we be proud to lead the developed world in number of homicides. We hold that record too. Per capita, America has six times as many firearm homicides as Canada, and nearly sixteen times as many as Germany. The US has 29.7 homicides per million people. Switze
rland is second with 7.7. Germany has 1.9. Australia 1.4. Gun murder rates in the US per one thousand people are 17 times higher than Australia, 35 times higher than Germany, 37 times higher than Spain, and 355 times higher than Japan. We are an anomaly, and we’d be wise to take some tips from around the world.2

  America has 4.4 percent of the world’s population but almost half of the world’s civilian-owned guns. There are 644 million guns in the world: we have around 42 percent of those in the US.3

  After the Sandy Hook massacre in 2012, many Americans and politicians said, “Never again.” But it keeps happening. Again. And again. In the intervening five years since Sandy Hook, there have been over 1,600 mass shootings.4 On average, there is one mass shooting every day in America.5

  Almost half of Americans (44 percent) say they personally know someone who has been shot, either accidentally or intentionally.6

  More guns equals more violence. States with more guns have more gun deaths. It’s true not only in the United States but around the world. Developed countries with more guns have more gun deaths.

  States with tighter gun control laws have fewer gun-related deaths. Economist Richard Florida took a look at gun deaths and other social indicators—like population density, stress, diversity, immigrant populations, and other factors—none of which correlated with more gun deaths. But he did find one correlation. States with tighter gun control laws have fewer gun-related deaths.7