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.
