The dark side of guns

First, let me say what regular readers, Twitter followers and Facebook friends already know: when it comes to Second Amendment rights for Americans, I'm well-nigh libertarian. I think not only is gun ownership a right, it's a darned good idea. I'm often heard to say "When seconds count, the police are minutes away." As a Christian, while I accept the urge to turn my cheek to the insulting blows of enemies, I also accept the Bible's pro-life ethic in affirming the use of whatever force necessary to protect life, including deadly force.

More, I find the gun-control lobby's arguments to be puerile, asinine, superficial, absurd, and often hypocritical. They're easily dismantled, and often have been. Rightly so.

What is more, "Guns don't kill people, people kill people" is absolutely correct, as stated. People were killing people long before guns were even dreamt of. Ask Abel's grieving parents.

Having said all that...

The one thing all of us Second-Amendment pro-gun types need to deal with is the fact that guns do pose their own unique risk. I have in mind something other than the specter of youngsters getting a hold of a handgun, and killing themselves and others. That nightmare is easily remedied by gun safes or other similar measures.

What I have in mind is the ability of a firearm to deal death (A) in an instant, (B) from a distance, and (C) with no recourse. If the weapon is a fist, a knife, a rock, a brick, it can still be deadly. But not as quickly, and not as irremediably. There are self-defense measures available to give folks a chance in a hand-to-hand encounter. There are no self-defense classes for being shot at, from close range. Only guys in movies can knock bullets aside with swords.

A man cannot stand across a room and strangle a woman. But a woman can stand across a room and murder a man with a single, well-aimed shot.

A gun can turn a momentary rage into murder. Fly into a rage, pick up a gun, pull a trigger, the person's dead, the rage subsides — the person's still dead.

For instance, take two stories I saw the day I wrote this. A man went to his estranged wife's house for a 16th birthday party; the couple argued; he shot her and himself dead. Bang, over.

Elsewhere, a fifteen-year-old boy apparently shot both of his parents and his three siblings dead. Pubescent rage? Maybe. Whatever it was, when it subsided, they were all dead. Any chance he could have beaten them all to death, or knifed them all to death? Not likely.

Now at this point a gun-grabber might be thinking, "You're so close! Give in to the dark side." Yeah, on that: not a chance.

The simple and decisive counter is that there IS no law, and there CAN BE no law, that would have prevented either incident — unless it be a law authorizing the confiscation of every last firearm in possession. And that idea is sheer idiocy. First, it couldn't be done. More, it shouldn't be done. It would leave yet more innocent, law-abiding citizens vulnerable to criminals...and to governmental stormtroopers. So that's a non-starter.

All this brings us back to this: once again, the problem is human nature. And that's a problem that no law can remedy.

What America needs is what Britain needs, which is what Israel needs, which is what Switzerland needs, which is what South Africa needs, which is what every tribe and nation and people needs. We need something that will transform our natures, that will take a violent woman or man who is bent on conquest and theft, and will transform him or her into one who loves and gives.

What we all need is to know God. What we need is the world-tilting good news of Jesus Christ. Only Jesus Christ can redeem a lawless man or woman, make him right with God, and transform his nature (Titus 2:11-15; 3:4-7).

So here's the irony. That is what we need; and that is what is opposed by most American gun-grabbers, and increasingly suppressed by most office-holding gun-grabbers.

Unbelief always is, in the final analysis, suicidal.

But then that's hardly breaking news. Read Genesis 3.