Today there ia an article in the Washington Post that announces that gun deaths are as common as car deaths for the first time ever. Every week there seems to be another mass shooting in America, and the reaction is the default ceremonial sentence, “Our thoughts and prayers are with …..”. This is all the gun lobby can come up with when innocent people are gunned down. As one Democrat Senator, Chris Murphy, said, “your prayers should be for forgiveness if you do nothing – again”. Instead, “thoughts and prayers” is a phrase to be trotted out. Real christians should be doing something to make gun ownership more safe, but instead they pray – and what good has that done? It stops not one atrocity and is no solice for the survivors. It is a cop- out, it sounds insincere and it reeks of hypocrisy.
Epicureans can support the the words in James 2:16, “If one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,’ but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it?” (quoted in the Washington Post, December 4th). Epicureans would go farther – they would actually do something to make guns safe. It is about peace of mind, safety and civilisation.
Extraordinary letters appear in the media to the effect that carrying a gun allows the carrier to “defend” himself, and that this reduces gun violence. This is nonsense. If attacked the likelihood of anyone calmly taking out a gun, taking off the safety catch, aiming, firing and actually hitting the attacker is too remote to contemplate. He/she would be too nervous to aim straight, rooted to the spot. When it happened to me I froze in shock and terror. Maybe the exponents of shoot- outs are bloodless heros, totally without imagination, but I doubt it.
Why have you put the last paragraph of the post also in the comments section?
Because it was 6 a.m and I hadn’t slept all night ! It’s surprising it doesn’t happen more often. Apologies.
Excellent post. “Thought’s and prayers,” also used as a mantra for sending young people into wars based on utter lies then years later, with their lives and limbs maimed, we settle for: “Let us thank our troops.” The mantra should be: “Let us not lie to young soldiers,”
Many Republicans say that the specific gun control measures Democrats are proposing wouldn’t stop mass shootings. And maybe that’s partly true: individual pieces of legislation are often not that effective. But the overall attempt to reduce the number of guns in society will definitely reduce the number of mass shootings. I’ve said this before, but I think its really important that the 2nd amendment is repealed. There is no such right to have a gun, in same way as there is to freedom of speech or religion.
It’s also disguisting when Republicans accuse Democrats of ‘politicising tragedy.’ This is ridiculous thing to say. When Bush passed the Patriot Act in response to 9/11, was that politicising tragedy? Of course not, it was responding to tragedy so that it wouldn’t happen again. In exactly the same way, gun control legislation following a mass shooting is not politicising tragedy, it is taking preventative measures.