Originally posted on Facebook on Friday, March 31, 2023.
Gun owning Christian, here.
I've seen this statement floating around about the rock in the hands that killed Abel versus what killed Goliath and it not being about the rock.
I have thoughts to share on that.
As a Christian, I love you and I encourage my fellow believers to stop mixing Christianity with politics. It misrepresents God.
As a fellow citizen, I fully support your constitutional right to have "a rock". But, what I don't think we want as a society is people walking around with claymores -weapons able to simulate the firing of hundreds of rocks and causing mass casualty.
I personally don't think that we should be even able to own weapons with rapid-fire ability to cause mass casualty, that could potentially fall in the hands of a bad actor.
Because that's the argument, right? It's not the thing but a bad actor misusing the thing?
The accompanying argument I frequently hear is that even if we had restrictions on certain classes of weapons, bad actors are bad actors because they don't play by the rules and will get restricted weapons by some other means.
Fair point. But, I don't see how that means we do nothing.
People break into houses but are we resigned that break-ins are just part of the world we live in and just leave your doors open to make things easy for criminals? Or, do we invest in security: cameras, locks, gates, safes? Do we work with local law enforcement to establish patrols, etc.? Don't we do all we can to make it harder for criminals to commit crime?
Likewise, shouldn't we make it harder for bad actors to get access to weapons with the rapid-fire ability to cause mass casualty?
The question is how do we do that?
According to CDC data and a report from the New England Journal of Medicine, firearm related deaths has overtaken motor vehicle crashes as the number one cause of death for children 1-19 years old.
Laws, campaigns, and advances in technology dramatically decreased motor vehicle fatalities.
How can we make it harder for bad actors to get access to weapons with the rapid-fire ability to cause mass casualty? What can be done to protect our neighbors and children from firearm fatalities?
The answer is not "nothing".