Frankenstein: The Monster This Time

I don’t know when people began calling Victor Frankenstein’s creation “Frankenstein.”  Those attempting to be literarily proper usually say, “Frankenstein’s monster.”  Fair enough, though it’s a little awkward and some more casual sorts might accuse the purists of being pedantic—if they use words like pedantic. 

Most expectant parents usually have at least one or two names in mind before a baby is born. Prior to ultrasounds they usually picked out a name for a boy and a name for a girl.  Victor Frankenstein apparently never thought that far ahead. Perhaps that’s why the doctor so often called his creature, “the daemon;” and once addressed him as “Abhorred monster! Fiend…[w]retched devil,” names not likely to build the lad’s self-esteem.  Instead, might Frankenstein have suggested “Vic, Jr.” and called him “Sparky?”  Had Frankenstein been American instead of Swiss he might have nicknamed his eight-foot creation, “Shorty.”  But I digress. 

Keeping Frankenstein’s vision in mind, I’ll call his creature, “Manlike.” 

Manlike, we shouldn’t forget, was capable of acts of kindness and heroic courage.  He once, secretly, helped a poor family gather their firewood, thus saving the beleaguered householder hours of backbreaking work.  On another occasion, he saved a little girl from drowning, risking his own life.  Yet, these acts became rare as Manlike surrendered to bitter self-pity.

Manlike could appreciate beauty. He spoke of wandering the woods at night reveling in the sounds and sights.  An incident in the life of his unwitting hosts further reveals how his “soul” could be touched by beauty.  It involved the old blind man, his daughter Agatha; and an exotic newcomer, a beautiful woman Manlike called “the Arabian.”  From his hiding place, he observes this scene:

               The next morning Felix went out to his work, and after

the usual occupations of Agatha were finished, the Arabian

sat at the feet of the old man, and taking his guitar, played

some airs so entrancingly beautiful that they at once drew

tears of sorrow and delight from my eyes. She sang, and her

voice flowed in a rich cadence, swelling or dying away like a

nightingale of the woods.

From culture to culture, around the world, men and women appreciate beauty whether visual or aural.  Long before William Congreve (1670-1729) put the idea into words, we have known “music has charms to soothe the savage breast.”  Manlike would even attempt to produce music himself as he “… tried to imitate the pleasant songs of the birds but was unable.”  Yet, in the end, his rage drowned out the soothing sound of music and made him destructive.   He burned down the house where he had heard the soothing music, perhaps even destroying the old man’s guitar.

Manlike vented his rage so indiscriminately even innocents were injured.  He mercilessly kills Frankenstein’s pre-adolescent, “angelic” brother William, whom he accidentally encountered, he kills Frankenstein’s friend Henry; and he kills Frankenstein’s bride Elizabeth on their wedding night—fulfilling a veiled threat made months before.  While Manlike’s anger at Victor Frankenstein may have been justified, these victims had done him no harm—in fact, they didn’t know he existed!  Of course, most of humanity’s wars have brought death and destruction to the innocent.  But the concept of innocence seems foreign to the creature.

Manlike readily blames others for his pain.  Certainly Victor Frankenstein did nothing to impede the growing anger and resentment in the heart of his creature but it seems too easy to let Manlike off the hook by pointing to his ignorance or to his lack of proper upbringing (none at all, actually).  Some have tried to exonerate the creature; they claim, for example, Manlike did not know William was a mere child since he had never been a child.  Yet, the novel presents Manlike as one capable of learning and using his keen powers of observation to understand life.   The creature Robert Walton meets on the night of Victor Frankenstein’s death was not mentally deficient.  He should have known, as most of us eventually know, you can get only so much mileage out of having had bad parents.

In many ways, Frankenstein’s creation shows the telltale signs of what the Bible and Christian theology calls sin.

Indeed, the monster may have been more manlike than we might wish to admit.

Abandoned: Thoughts About Frankenstein

I recently read Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.  Of course, I knew the story; but had never read the novel inspiring so many books, movies, plays, and TV programs. (The International Movie Database lists nearly 200 entries with “Frankenstein” in the title, including such curious entries as “Saint Frankenstein” and “Bikini Frankenstein.” Yes, some must conflate the monster with his creator.)  I won’t explain why I picked up this classic of the horror genera so late in life.  Instead, I’ll just offer some observations.

I’ll skip issuing any “spoiler alerts.” If you’ve grown up in the movie and television era and don’t know Shelley’s story, you’d probably be surprised to discover the blockbuster Titanic includes a shipwreck.

My first thought after reading the book was, “Would this get published today?”  Long passages are punctuated by long passages.  There are too many unanswered questions, too many coincidences.  The monster’s moment of animation is told in a brief, detail-free paragraph—no antennae rising into the sky to capture lightning in this story.  Perhaps we are to simply say, “Of course, it’s alive; it’s science, after all.”

More important than the trifling details of its creation is the creature’s rage at a world that sees him as a monster.  The focus of that rage is Victor Frankenstein who, repulsed by his creation, rejects the creature on the very day of his “birth.”

… I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs.

How can I describe my emotions at this catastrophe, or how delineate the wretch whom with such infinite pains and care I had endeavoured to form? His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful! Great God! His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same colour as the dun-white sockets in which they were set, his shrivelled complexion and straight black lips. ….  I had worked hard for nearly two years, for the sole purpose of infusing life into an inanimate body.   …. but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart.  Unable to endure the aspect of the being I had created, I rushed out of the room….

Shelley was the daughter of pioneer feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, who believed it unjust to judge the worth of a woman by her physical beauty (a view she shared with evangelical Hannah More, incidentally). Frankenstein is guilty of immediately judging his own creation by its failure to exhibit the beauty he expected.  Frankenstein might have learned from humanity’s Creator, of whom it was said, “People look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” (I Samuel 16:7) How different the story would have been if the doctor had looked beyond the creature’s appearance to see a being capable of learning, thinking; and, early on, acts of kindness and courage. 

Frankenstein retreats to his bedroom where he spends hours pacing; wondering how so much could have gone wrong.  Finally, he sleeps.  But he awakens to find the creature standing over him.

I started from my sleep with horror; a cold dew covered my

forehead, my teeth chattered, and every limb became convulsed;

when, by the dim and yellow light of the moon, as

it forced its way through the window shutters, I beheld the

wretch— the miserable monster whom I had created. He

held up the curtain of the bed; and his eyes, if eyes they may

be called, were fixed on me. His jaws opened, and he muttered

some inarticulate sounds, while a grin wrinkled his

cheeks. He might have spoken, but I did not hear; one hand

was stretched out, seemingly to detain me, but I escaped

and rushed downstairs.

Rather than respond to the creature’s pathetic attempt to communicate, the scientist flees. Frankenstein spends the rest of the night huddled in the garden.  At daybreak, he leaves his refuge and wanders the streets.  He ultimately discovers the creature has gone.  And he doesn’t care where.

In fact, the creature has started down a path to further rejection, rejection answered with acts violence and murder, inspired by rage and revenge—ultimately directed at its creator, Victor Frankenstein.

Along the way the creature will learn to speak and to understand something to the larger world. 

Before the story ends, we discover Shelley’s monster—unlike most unleashed by Hollywood—can discuss philosophy (and theology?).  But he always comes back to Frankenstein’s failure.  Again and again, the creature reprimands the doctor for rejecting his creation.  At one point he cries out to Frankenstein, “Unfeeling, heartless creator! You had endowed me with perceptions and passions and then cast me abroad an object for the scorn and horror of mankind.”

And Frankenstein, like his creation, is consumed with rage and revenge; he seeks only to destroy the creature.  But he fails.

The Arctic explorer Robert Walton rescued the sick and weary Frankenstein, who has pursued the monster beyond the Artic circle.  It is Walton who tells Frankenstein’s story in letters to his sister.

The novel ends with Frankenstein dead (not, by the way, at the hands of the creature).  That night the monster creeps onboard the ship to view the body (to say he wishes to pay his respects seems inappropriate).  Here Walton encounters the monster for the first time and, like so many others, is initially repulsed. But he finds himself in a discussion with monster. As the beast attempts to explain his actions, Walton moves from rage, to pity, to distrust, to rage again, and finally to a kind of wonderment.

As Frankenstein’s still-unnamed creation looks on the body of his creator, he begins to speak of his own future.  His creator dead, the creature as no will to live.

     

   I shall collect my funeral pile and consume to ashes this miserable frame, that its remains may afford no light to any curious and unhallowed wretch who would create such another as I have been. I shall die. I shall no longer feel the agonies which now consume me or be the prey of feelings unsatisfied, yet unquenched. He is dead who called me into being; and when I shall be no more, the very remembrance of us both will speedily vanish. (Emphasis mine.)

The creature’s final words hold the hope of a better future, oblivion.

   ‘But soon,’ he cried with sad and solemn enthusiasm, ‘I shall die, and what I now feel be no longer felt. Soon these burning miseries will be extinct. I shall ascend my funeral pile triumphantly and exult in the agony of the torturing flames. The light of that conflagration will fade away; my ashes will be swept into the sea by the winds. My spirit will sleep in peace, or if it thinks, it will not surely think thus. Farewell.’

   He sprang from the cabin window as he said this, upon the ice raft which lay close to the vessel. He was soon borne away by the waves and lost in darkness and distance.

We are left to believe the monster died in the barren wilderness of the Arctic; though Shelley doesn’t actually say the monster died, she probably didn’t have a sequel in mind. Why did the monster plan a “funeral pile” so his ashes might “be swept into the sea by the winds?”  Apparently so his remains might not inspire some “curious and unhallowed wretch” of a scientist to imitate Frankenstein.  Curiously, in the Middle Ages, the bodies of witches were burned to prevent their resurrection.  Frankenstein’s monster wanted no resurrection; he wanted his painful life to end.

Though the creature seemingly prefers oblivion to the life he has known, with its consuming agonies, “feelings unsatisfied,” and bitter guilt, his final words hint at a yearning for some consciousness beyond death. 

*****

Why did Shelley tell this strange story?  I’m not equipped to fully answer that question. The simplest answer was to win an impromptu story-telling contest conducted to pass the time during an 1818 visit to Switzerland with her husband Percy Shelley and their friend Lord Byron.  More thoughtful answers suggest:

--She wrote to challenge the “celebration of science and technology” that marked the Enlightenment. (Anne K. Mellor, The Making of a Monster: An Introduction to Frankenstein, http://www4.ncsu.edu/~leila/documents/Mellor-MakingaMonster.pdf.)

--She wrote from a feminist perspective to suggest would happen should a man attempt to create life without a woman (curious how scientists now hope to help women create life without men). 

--She wrote from a quasi-theological perspective to address God’s abandoning his creation, humankind.

Let’s think about that last suggestion.

Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein (1818) during a time of intellectual tumult and change.  While the evangelical movement was inspiring many to “serious,” experiential faith, others were questioning the very foundations of culture.  The heyday of deism was past but its impact remained and some writers had boldly taken the next step in declaring their atheism.  Thus, long before Shelley wrote, thinkers were, in one way or another, denying the existence of a God involved in the affairs of the world. 

Across the Atlantic, in the still new United States, college students were embracing skepticism.  Not even the fires to the Second Great Awakening would eradicate the appeal of unbelief.

On 1 November 1755, an earthquake estimated to have been about 8.5 to 9.0 magnitude shook Lisbon; the estimated death toll in Portugal, Morocco, and Spain was between 40,000 and 50,000. Some have suggested a death toll approaching 100,000.  Because it was All Saints’ Day many worshippers were killed when churches collapsed on them.  Voltaire, Hume, and others used the Lisbon earthquake to debunk the notion of a benevolent God who cares for the world.

Erasmus Darwin (1701-1802), whose rumored experiments Shelley mentions in the opening paragraph of her novel, had already proposed a theory of evolution his grandson would later refine.  Charles’s grandfather had little use for religion.  “Man has but five gates of knowledge,” Erasmus wrote, “the five senses; he can know nothing but through them; all else is a vain fancy, and as for the being of a God, the existence of a soul, or a world to come, who can know anything about them? Depend upon it … these are only the bugbears by which men of sense govern fools.”

If Mary Shelley wrote to deny God’s existence or to besmirch God’s character, she was walking already-trodden ground. 

As it happens, Shelley’s book didn’t create much of a stir among religious types. Some may not have read it—indeed, some believed reading novels was frivolous (if not sinful, at least a poor use of God-given time).  Some who did read it might have simply thought it a scary book no one would take seriously.

Whatever Shelley’s intention, the novel allows us to contrast Victor Frankenstein as creator and God as Creator.

-Frankenstein the creator produced an imperfect creation—though he “had selected his features as beautiful” Frankenstein was repulsed by the living thing before him.  God the Creator produced a perfect creation—when the newly made human stood before Him, God used the words “very good” to describe his handiwork, meaning “He validated it completely.”

-Frankenstein created to feed his ego, to prove what he could do. God created to produce an entity upon whom He might bestow His love, giving humankind His greatest gift, Himself.

-Frankenstein abandoned his creation when it proved imperfect; God’s creation—humankind—abandoned Him, spurning the innocence of perfection He had bestowed upon the man and the woman.

-Frankenstein pursued his creation to destroy it, ultimately failing in his vengeful quest.  God pursued His creation to rescue it, ultimately taking on human nature in the Incarnation, and to reverse the effect of humankind’s self-chosen imperfection.

-Frankenstein’s failure to truly love his imperfect creation turned his work into a monster fueled by vengeance and committed to violence.  God’s relentless love for his imperfect creation has turned monsters into men and women of peace, benevolence, and goodness, saints.

*****

In recognition of the bicentennial of Frankenstein, Hollywood will release a biopic Mary Shelley starring Elle Fanning in the title role. Doubtless the film will deal with her controversial romance with and marriage to Percy Shelley, who drowned two years after the novel was written, and with the inner and familial dynamics shaping her personality and imagination.  She will be portrayed as a woman who defied convention (though there were certainly others doing so at the time, including Hannah More).  In her brief marriage, Mary would face heartbreak due to Percy’s repeated infidelity and the loss of three children.  Shelley, who died in 1851, would write other novels but none would be as famous as the one she wrote when she was eighteen.

Looking back, I suppose there is little doubt who won the story-telling contest.

By the way, if you live near central Ohio you might check out the website for Actors’ Theatre of Columbus.  They will be staging Frankenstein this summer, using Richard B. Peake’s 1823 adaptation of Shelley’s novel.  Find out more at http://theactorstheatre.org/2018-season/frankenstein/. 

Gun Control: Old and New

Conversation about the relationship of church and state eventually turns to the Founders’ intentions in the First Amendment.  The same is true when we explore what those Founders envisioned when they framed the Second Amendment.  Samuel Adams (1722-1803) was one of the clearest voices on both issues.

Well before Adams signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776, he dreamed of Americans being free from Britain.  For that dream to become a reality, he knew the Americans would have to take charge of their destiny.  To do so they would have to be prepared.

Long before the revolution he urged Boston to pass laws requiring each citizen to own a firearm should an enemy threaten the community—though he left the enemy unnamed, Adams had the British in mind.  Then, as the US Constitution was being framed, Adams recommended the provision that became the Second Amendment. 

Of course, Adams never pictured the citizens grabbing their guns every time they might be unhappy with a government policy.  In a true republic, he thought, rebellion should be unnecessary since citizens have recourse to the ballot. This explains his harsh response to Shays’ Rebellion.  I wonder if Adams—an uncompromising advocate for a civilian-controlled military—would see any need for militia groups born out of paranoia directed at the federal government.  Consider his familiar statement on the right to own guns: “The Constitution shall never be construed... to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms.”  He defends the right to “own arms;” but that right pertains to “peaceable citizens.”  We might ask if he would describe militia groups as “peaceable.”

His words anticipate occasions when the right to keep arms might be revoked.  A felon, for instance, has failed to be a peaceable citizen, thus forfeiting the right to keep arms. The mentally-ill have the potential to act as other than peaceable and, for their sake and the community’s, may have their right to keep arms denied.  And, since the competence to live as a peaceable citizen requires a fundamental maturity, especially marked by a state of mind disinclined to act impulsively, Adams would likely suggest the right to keep arms be withheld until a certain age.

So, what would Adams think of today’s discussion about gun control?  Although he was not addressing the issue, we should recall his observation that we are usually “governed more by [our] feelings than by reason.”  Feelings are certainly on display whenever groups begin to discuss guns. 

While feelings may jump-start a movement, fear and outrage are usually not sufficient to yield long-term change, for individuals or for nations.  Intensity of emotion neither validates nor invalidates an argument.  Students at Florida’s Parkland High School are rightly passionate about changing gun laws after losing so many friends during the Valentine’s Day shooting.  Laura Ingraham’s snide comment’s about Parkland student David Hogg’s being rejected by four colleges no more invalidates his arguments than his having been accepted by Harvard, Yale, and Columbia on the same day would have validated them.  Hogg’s calling gun-rights advocates “sick f---kers” might be expected from an angry high school student though the language does not prove his case nor does it mean his case is meritless; just as Ingraham’s insensitivity, though she should have known better, does not disprove her “liberal” interpretation of the Second Amendment. 

My response to school shootings involves mixed emotions.  And, of course, the public debate is fraught with anger and fear, on both sides.  When feelings overrule reason we are tempted to push for quick, simple solutions.  Deal with shootings by banning guns.  Sounds great.  End the violence, simply and plainly.  But would we.  The UK has a stringent gun policy; yet in these early months of 2018 the murder count in London threatens to rival that of New York City.  While some of the deaths have involved guns, several have involved stabbing.  Knives capable of inflicting mortal wounds can be found in every kitchen in the UK and the US. 

I am writing while on a visit to Austin, Texas.  Citizens of Austin were terrorized recently by a serial bomber who built his bombs with materials from a DIY store.  While I wouldn’t know where to look, would-be bombers can find instructions on the Internet. 

So-called “vehicle ramming attacks” have occurred in many nations, including the US.  Drivers using cars and trucks have deliberately driven into crowds hoping to kill and maim as many as possible.  In October 2017 eight people died and several were injured when the driver of a rental truck jumped the curb in New York City and drove down a bicycle path.  In July 2016, the driver of a 20-ton truck plowed into a Bastille Day crowd in Nice, France, killing 84 and injuring more than 200.  In November of that year, an angry student drove his car into a crowd on the Ohio State University campus in Columbus; he jumped out to the car and began attacking people with a knife.  He wounded eight before he was shot by a campus police officer. 

No, you don’t need a gun if you set out to harm others.  Still, guns do the most harm.  They seem to be the go-to instruments for mayhem.  They are the most effective way to inflict damage—there is considerable wisdom in taking a gun to a knife fight.  And I doubt any robber has ever walked into a store, dangled his keys, and said, “Gimme your money, I’ve got a car.” (Apologies to George Strait.)

Perhaps even Sam Adams would see the need for reasonable gun control.  While Adams may have had no qualms about a neighbor—a “Squire Potter,” let’s say—owning a musket or two, we simply don’t know how he would feel about Squire Potter’s great-grandson owning a Gatling Gun or a late twentieth-century descendent owning an AK-47.   Though the pre-revolution Adams encouraged communities to own cannons and to maintain arsenals, would he have seen a need for his beloved Boston, or Worthington, Ohio; or Lafayette, Colorado, owning surface-to-air missiles after a civilian-controlled military assumed the task of defending the nation?

When we allow feeling to overrule reason in our defense of gun-rights, we may dig in our heels and refuse to see how much the world has changed, how criminal it would be to remain indifferent to the peril many of our neighbors face.  Shortly after moving to Ohio I heard a pastor say something I had never heard a pastor say in Texas. He urged his fellow pastors to support strict gun-control legislation.  A Southern Baptist and an African-American who served a church in a large urban area, he had conducted funerals for too many young victims of gun violence to support the policies many Baptist pastors would unthinkingly endorse.  His position reflected experiences I’d never had and likely would never have. I knew pastors in Texas who would have thought he had embraced a heresy comparable to Arianism.

Donations to the NRA’s “Political Victory Fund” were three times more in February than in January, about $779,000 to almost $250,000 (The Week, 13 April 2018, p. 16).  Was this burst of generosity merely coincidental or a panicked anticipation of calls for new firearm restrictions following the Parkland shooting?  One might assume the latter without being guilty of cynicism. 

Now, let’s be clear: The Bible does not address the issue of gun control.  We cannot point to any verse to tell us whether those who would have all guns banned or those who would insist we all own guns are right.

Still, in addressing gun control it’s likely Adams would keep one thought uppermost.  Adams, a staunch Christian of the Calvinist variety, took seriously the notion of depravity.  Whoever we may be, our behavior and our thinking may be off-center, at its best; corrupt, at its worst.  His belief in total depravity meant Adams would see the primary problem to be, not the guns people own but the people owning those guns.

Remember the painting by George Henry Boughton (1837-1905) depicting the Puritans walking to church on a snowy morning?  Boughton, sometimes called “the painter of New England Puritanism,” shows several families walking through a snowy wood to a little meetinghouse.  Men, women, and children are on their way to church; doubtless, looking forward to unimaginative singing, lengthy prayers, and a two-hour sermon. (Still, reality crept into the painting.)  Each man, except the minister, carries a musket; the men are armed to protect the band from marauding Indians. Though painted in 1867, the work nonetheless reminds us how the Puritans saw no contradiction between their faith and taking up arms to defend themselves. This was Adams’s heritage.  His spiritual and natural ancestry reached back to those men and women who founded New England.

Adams would know we Christians are obliged to be “in the world but not of the world.” We must live within our culture without being molded by our culture (Roman 12:1-2).  Culturally attuned Christians will have sturdy locks and, perhaps, subscribe to a security service.  Those same Christians will eschew the pervasive suspicion and fear that sees every person hued differently than themselves as a threat.  This doesn’t mean a Christian shouldn’t own a gun but I hear a subtle and disturbing distinction between “I own a gun in case I need to protect my family” and “I own a gun in case I need to kill someone.”  (I’ve heard Christians say both.)

Years ago—long before the gun-rights debates began in earnest—I was eating lunch with a group of fellow seminary students.  George said someone had stolen a lawn chair off his porch; he saw the man take it and run down the street before he could get outside and yell for him to stop.  Frank spoke up to say he would have grabbed his gun and stopped him.  Jerry said taking a life to protect a cheap lawn chair seemed a little extreme.  Frank said it was his property and he had the right to protect it.  Christians will know the difference between honoring property rights and materialism; they also know the value of human life.  Protecting personal property will, for these Christians, stop short of encouraging a property-owner to declare theft a capital crime. 

I’ve heard praise for those cultures where a thief has a hand lopped off for punishment.  A good way to stop theft, it’s claimed. A better way to make sure the thief is less able to do honest work, it seems to me.  The Biblical response to theft isn’t maiming or execution; it’s restitution. 

Adams likely would remind us we live in a broken world, corrupted by sin. He believed slavery was wrong; he believed women should be educated (to an extent); but he also “...stridently campaigned against ‘theatrical entertainments,’ inveighing against the supposedly deleterious effects of horse racing, theater-going, dancing, card playing and salty language. The curbing of such ‘idle amusements’ was necessary, he believed, to restore virtue and to preserve revolutionary gains.” (From Michael Moynihan’s review of “Samuel Adams: A Life” by Ira Stoll at https://nypost.com/2008/11/23/samuel-adams-a-life/) We can only imagine Adams’s response to the Red Sox making the brew bearing his name the team’s official beer.

As governor of Massachusetts, Adams crafted an educational system that required each student to study the Westminster Catechism or some catechism favored by the student’s parents; all would be taught and challenged to adopt a distinctly Christian moral framework. 

As a Baptist, though I might agree with much of the worldview embodied in those catechisms and believe our culture would benefit from embracing basic Christian morality, I cannot endorse a program making public schools a part of the church’s indoctrination program. Coercion, no matter how mild, is not effective evangelism. Many Christians of all denominations would object to schools attempting to fill this role.

Yet, many of those who would never accept Adams’s educational philosophy or his perspective on amusements like plays, dances, and card playing will defend his view of gun-rights as if it were sacrosanct. 

If we can recognize his attitude about horse racing might be outdated, perhaps we should more seriously examine his notions about guns.  Of course, the man who wanted reason rather than feeling to direct our actions might have some surprising things to add to the conversation about gun control. 

I would not put words into his mouth or try to guess what his pen would write.  Instead, I’ll just raise some questions to start us talking.

·                Shouldn’t reasonable gun control include a more widespread use of “red-flag” laws designed to keep guns out of potential suicides (60% of gun deaths in 2016 were suicides)?

·                Shouldn’t reasonable gun control give local authorities greater latitude to commit those showing signs of mental instability? Such laws might have prevented the Parkland shooting.

·                Shouldn’t reasonable gun control laws increase the legal age to purchase a gun?  Perhaps no one under the age of twenty-one who is not an active member of the military should be able to purchase handgun.

·                Shouldn’t reasonable gun control require gun owners who have children under the age of twelve to keep their guns locked up?  Such owners might be allowed to keep one weapon available but out of a child’s reach.

We need to talk about guns rationally.  The NRA won’t.  Those who believe every gun should be melted down won’t.  Most of us are somewhere in between. 

During 2016 and 2017, mass shootings accounted for fewer than 500 gun deaths.   During 2016 some 38,658 people died from gunshots.  Though, almost 99% of the gun deaths that year were not related to mass shootings, these tragic events—such as Las Vegas and Parkland—get us talking.  They should.  There will be no simple answer.

I don’t know what Samuel Adams would say.  Yet, I suspect he would encourage us to ask some pointed questions: Why are our children so angry? Who gives shooters the right to take their anger out on the innocent? Why are women so rarely the perpetrators of these mass shootings? Were our churches occupied with other, less-important matters when some of our children lost their way?

Whatever Sam Adams might say on the matter of gun control, we must look at the circumstances we face and seek to shape a thoughtful, caring, and effective response.