We can save lives. We should be embarrassed to lead the industrialized world in gun deaths. We cannot prevent all deaths, but we can certainly prevent some.
Under a Fig Tree
Laurie Works, a survivor of the New Life Church shooting in 2007 (see chap. 9), helps those who have been through the trauma of gun violence, and she teaches what it looks like to “sit under a vine and fig tree in fear of no other” (see Mic. 4:4). It doesn’t mean that we are never afraid, but it means that we heed the call of the angels to “fear not.” It means that we acknowledge when we are in a state of fear and confront the fear. It’s an active stance of participating in life as it happens. It’s the practice of giving and not taking. Whether it’s under a fig tree or on our porch, when we see a stranger or a neighbor approaching, we don’t retreat and lock our door until they pass. We say hello and offer them a beer or lemonade. We ask how they are doing. Would they like a snack for the rest of their trip? Do they need a cup of sugar? Laurie asks us to be present with each other.
Laurie is a yoga instructor. Not just any yoga, but resilience yoga. If we are in an age of cyborgs, Laurie teaches us how to be less of a cyborg. She teaches us to focus on the triggers inside of us instead of the triggers that can be an extension of us. Sitting under a vine and fig tree is a way for us to be more human.
It sounds weird, but cyborg anthropology is a real thing. It’s the study of how humans interact with technology. A cyborg is an organism to which components have been added for the purpose of adapting to new environments. Cyborg anthropologist Amber Case gave a TED talk about what this means. In traditional anthropology, “somebody goes to another country [and] says, ‘How fascinating these people are, how interesting their tools are, how curious their culture is.’” Case goes on to say that “tool use, in the beginning, for thousands and thousands of years, . . . has been a physical modification of self. It has helped us to extend our physical selves, go faster, hit things harder, and there has been a limit on that.” This limit is continually stretched with each progress of invention. Case talks about how now, with the advent of smartphones and computers, “what we’re looking at is not an extension of the physical self, but an extension of the mental self.”3
When we think about tools as an extension of the self, and see ourselves as a society of cyborgs, we begin to realize the truth in what philosopher Bruno Latour has said. Evan Selinger explains:
French philosopher Bruno Latour goes [so] far as to depict the experience of possessing a gun as one that produces a different subject [i.e., a cyborg]: “You are different with a gun in your hand; the gun is different with you holding it. You are another subject because you hold the gun; the gun is another object because it has entered into a relationship with you.” While the idea that a gun-human combination can produce a new subject may seem extreme, it is actually an experience that people (with appropriate background assumptions) typically attest to, when responding to strong architectural configurations. When walking around such prestigious colleges as Harvard and the University of Chicago, it is easy to feel that one has suddenly become smarter. Likewise, museums and sites of religious worship can induce more than a momentary inclination towards reflection; they can allow one to view artistic and spiritual matters as a contemplative being.4
Depending on what we connect our body to or surround ourselves with, we are then capable of different outcomes. Case extends this into anthropology and how our tools also shape our culture and society. It’s why foreign cultures are baffled at the amount of firearms that are present in America. Guns are now part and parcel of American culture. They are part of the genetic makeup of our society. Technology changes us. Think about how different human interactions are now that we have cell phones and airplanes. Owning a gun can also change the way humans interact, even how they process their rage or pain. Technology can determine what we think is possible, and it sets the limits of our imaginations for better or worse.
Despite all this, despite all our inherited sins, God became incarnate. God put skin on and came to us in Jesus. God did not come as a robot, or even as a powerful king. God came as a vulnerable child, as a refugee fleeing persecution. God came as one of us.
We ourselves can’t be afraid of being incarnate, of being present, in another’s life. We can’t be afraid of our neighbors or of what they may require of us. We can’t be afraid of being the shoulder to cry on. We can’t shy away from hearing someone vent about their day. We can’t be afraid to be confronted about our own behavior, either. We need to be able to confront one another without the expectation of violence.
This is how we change the dynamic of the gun debate. We sit and listen to each other. We hear the stories and the background about why we are gun owners and why we are not. We talk about how the handgun moved from unloaded in a safe to loaded and under the pillow. We listen to the circles of mothers who sit across from us and ask, “Then what do I do if you say I shouldn’t own a gun? How do I defend my family as a single mom?”
We need to ask these mothers what we can do to help them. Sometimes we’ll need to put our body in harm’s way for their sake. It means we need to talk to peers. We need to be accountable for our influence in a community. The “least of these” are asking for help to protect their family, and currently our society points them to a gun—even though it’s more likely that someone in their house will be harmed by that gun than any intruder will be.
In the fall of 2018 RAWtools partnered with the Pikes Peak Restorative Justice Committee and invited Kay Pranis to teach a three-day workshop on circle training. It’s a process in which people gather to listen to each other. It can be linked to conflict mediation and restorative-justice practices where harm is repaired, but it’s also a listening tool to prevent harm from happening, because it provides a space for people to hear each other out.
At the same time, RAWtools also launched a RAWpower workshop that trains groups in active bystander intervention, nonviolent confrontation skills, and other practical means of de-escalation. How transformative would it be for churches and community organizations to be known for resolving conflict in their neighborhoods? Christians have a long way to go to fix their reputation of being a major gun-owning group and of being judgmental toward other people. Some of these circle processes may need to start with lament and repentance. It’s also important to recognize that the roots of mediation run deep in the Native American tradition. We have a lot to learn from the people who came before us, especially people we actively removed from their homes and land.
Many people have stopped imagining what it might look like to keep a community safe without guns. Guns corrupt the idea from the beginning. As long as they are a possible means of safety, we cannot fully imagine the alternative. With or without guns, we will encounter trauma. There is no way to avoid it. There are no walls high enough or guns fast and powerful and smart enough to keep it from happening. When trauma happens, we turn to the tools at our disposal to heal from it. But we can also grow from it.
Memorial to the Lost
WISCONSIN SIKH TEMPLE (AUGUST 5, 2012)
On August 5, 2012, a mass shooting took place at the gurdwara (Sikh temple) in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, where the shooter fatally shot six people and wounded four others. The shooter took his own life. The shooter was an American white supremacist and Army veteran. All of the dead were members of the Sikh faith. These are the names of the victims lost that day:
Paramjit Kaur, 41 Sita Singh, 41
Satwant Singh Kaleka, 65 Ranjit Singh, 49
Prakash Singh, 39 Suveg Singh, 84
We simply aren’t using our imaginations! We must go back to the forge. We must offer our self, our families, and our communities to be transformed by the idea of not letting fear dictate our life. Oh, and bring your guns to be transformed too. You’ll discover how far the ripple effects of gun violence go. You’ll become a storyteller instead of a debater.
Listen to the stories of what each of you is afraid of. We’ve found tha
t the root of all our fears is exploitation—powerlessness. We’re afraid that someone else will take advantage of our situation. More than that, we see it happen every day, mostly in forms that don’t involve gun violence. We see it happen in domestic violence. We see it happen in race relations. We see it happen in corporate greed. We see it happen in power vacuums. We see it happen in the marginalization of the LGBTQ community.
The complicated part of gun violence is that it intersects with so many other issues. You can’t talk about gun violence without talking about the issues behind each occurrence. Maybe that’s what is so hard. We don’t want to talk about those things. We don’t want to talk about how people in marginalized communities are committing suicide. We don’t want to talk about why gangs are formed. And we don’t want to do the work of healthy community development. We don’t need fancy homeowners associations; we need a radical commitment to love of neighbor and enemy.
Politics of Love
Policies affect people, and so one part of loving our neighbor is thinking about and advocating for policies that help them flourish.
To be fully transparent, I (Shane) have a lot of distaste for partisan politics and have some major reservations about putting too much power or hope in politicians. I don’t naturally think of looking to the government to solve our problems—the government seems to be perpetuating many of them.
We need to think through what an authentic political imagination looks like for Christians, who are citizens of heaven (Phil. 3:20) and who are in the world but not of the world. We can’t legislate love. Laws, as important as they are, cannot change the evil of a human heart.
The Catholic activist Ammon Hennacy once said, “The good people don’t need [laws], and the bad people don’t obey them.”5 So in the end, I don’t look to the government as my messianic hope. I already have a Savior. But I do think we can expect the government to limit harm. I often think of voting as damage control.
Politics has its root in the Greek word polis, which means “city.” This is why we have cities to this day that end in “polis,” like Indianapolis and Minneapolis. Metropolis means “mother city.” Cosmopolitan is “world city.” And the Greek term politēs means “citizen”—politics has to do with how people relate and live together in society. So when we think about politics, it’s helpful to think about people.
We need to take the word back from the folks who have hijacked it. No one has much love for “politics,” but we do care about people. And all of us, especially those of us trying to follow Jesus, are deeply concerned about the politēs. Loving our neighbors requires thinking about how we live together well, how we organize our shared life, how we protect our most vulnerable citizens, and how we protect life and the common good of all.
We have come to care about policies because they affect people, whom we love. Policies don’t solve everything. You can’t legislate love or force compassion. But policies can free people up or hold people down. They can lock people out or open doors of opportunity. Politics is not just about empty rhetoric, stale debates, and broken promises. It may be all those things too. But politics is also about real, concrete, real-time policies that affect our everyday lives.
Policies affect how we get food and water, how we care for the young and the old people in our midst. Policies shape how we live, where we live, how we educate our kids, and how we take care of the sick among us—making sure we don’t have lead in our water or all get Ebola and die.
So let’s think of politics with fresh imagination and a little more openness. Politics is about human survival and flourishing.
We have no doubt that all of you reading this are a diverse bunch—especially when it comes to politics. Some of you think health care is the government’s job, and others, not so much. Some of you probably think pot should be legal, and others might think tobacco shouldn’t be. You have lots of different parties and camps, labels and categories.
We want to invite you to find common ground—by starting from the same place.
Our fundamental starting point, with guns and everything else, is this: What policies help us live well together? What’s best for the most? What’s good for the common good? What policies are vital for humans to thrive? We are not just thinking individualistically but as a “polis,” as a people—less about “I” and “me” and more about “we” and “us.” There is something that unites us that is deeper and more profound than all the stuff that divides us. Something unites us across party lines and blows all the labels and categories out of the water: our shared humanity.
We can all probably think of areas where we wish there was more regulation, and other areas where we wish there was less. How far is too far when it comes to the control we give the government? We may believe in the freedom of speech, but should we have to allow Nazis to protest on our college campuses? When does one person’s freedom begin to encroach on another person’s freedom? Even if you believe pornography should be legal to view in the privacy of your home, that doesn’t necessarily mean you want to see a naked body on a billboard, and it doesn’t mean you should be able to sell naked photos of young kids, does it?
COMMONSENSE CHANGES
Consider these possible reforms that many gun owners and gun-violence victims agree would save lives.
Limit the amount of handguns one person can acquire to one per month. If someone is buying more than twelve handguns in a year, they may not be making the world safer.
Require licensing, registration, and waiting periods to allow comprehensive background checks and cooling-off periods. Before you can drive a car, you spend some time learning safety, preparing to drive, and practicing, and then you pass a test to get a license. Might this also be a good idea for owning a gun?
Close the gun-show loophole by not making exceptions for gun-show purchases. Gun shows, too, would have to require background checks for all buyers. Crazy idea?
Ban semiautomatic assault weapons, armor-piercing ammunition, and high-capacity cartridges. Basically, do not allow war weapons on the streets—any more than we allow grenades on the streets.
Since most gun deaths are occurring at the hands of eighteen- to twenty-year-olds, raise the legal handgun ownership age to twenty-one. Why do we trust our youth with handguns or military service before we trust them with alcohol or the ability to rent a car?
Advocate for new technologies and new resources that would allow government and nongovernment agencies to trace guns used in crimes and thereby protect lives.
Eliminate the Tiahrt Amendment that requires the Justice Department to destroy records of gun buyers.
Repeal laws that don’t allow law enforcement to destroy confiscated weapons when owners have lost their right to bear arms.
Add your own suggestion:
Too many rules can stifle human flourishing, and too few rules can stifle human flourishing. Where do we need more regulation, and where do we need less? What if Wall Street had no rules? What if oil companies could dump chemicals anywhere they want? Overregulation versus underregulation is a never-ending tension in society.
Tension is a good thing. It’s sort of like the trellis of a garden. If you don’t have some structure for your tomatoes, they flop over and rot on the ground. If you have too much structure, it stifles their growth; you won’t get many good tomatoes until you have a good structure for them to flourish on.
There are always tensions in the complex political ecosystem.
But is our current status quo working? Or could we be doing more to save even a portion of the thirty-eight thousand lives lost each year to guns? What could we do better? And what is stopping us?
We’re always making adaptations in other areas of society to try to save lives—guns are one of the extraordinary exceptions. After one guy tried to set off a bomb in his shoes, we all have to take off our shoes in the airport so they can be scanned. James Atwood points out the radical steps taken when there was a threat of E. coli. When five people were hospitalized in the Southwest w
ith E. coli found in spinach, the government immediately shut down the entire spinach industry, putting it under surveillance 24/7 and quarantining suspected farms.6
And yet when more than thirty-eight thousand Americans die by gunfire each year, Congress reacts to protect guns, along with their institutions, factories, distribution systems, and private sellers, which only guarantees that there will be more human sacrifices in the days to come. It’s like protecting the companies that gave us E. coli.
We appreciate the multifaceted approach to ending gun violence. We’ve kept vigil. We’ve prayed. We’ve taught classes on nonviolence and conflict mediation. We’ve marched in the streets, made phone calls, met with gun dealers—all that important stuff.
But there comes a time when we start to think that maybe there are some things the government can do as well. For instance, the one-handgun-a-month law, which would limit the amount of handguns that one person can buy to twelve a year. It makes a lot of sense to almost everyone we’ve talked to, even our NRA-card-carrying family members. No one is talking about taking away hunting rifles or the pistol under the bed. It would just put a sensible limit on the number of handguns a person can buy. If you are buying more than a dozen a year, you may not be making the world a safer place—not good for the common good. And yet bills like this one get blocked over and over by a small minority of gun advocates. Should we really have that Barrett .50-caliber gun that can shoot a plane out of the sky? Does anyone need to be able to shoot one hundred bullets in one minute? Should we have bullets that are designed to penetrate a bulletproof vest of a police officer? Why does a law-abiding citizen need a silencer on their gun? These are good questions. And we can’t let the few gun extremists convince us that, if we ask any of these good questions, our ultimate goal is to take away hunting rifles.
Beating Guns Page 22
