Guns & Ammo

Source:  Dead Reckoning (Dr. Brian Mattson)

You may have noticed that I've not participated in politics much since the 2012 elections. Following all that fervor, my attitude has been, frankly, "meh." It's going to be way too long a next four years to get all worked up about every new "crisis." As somebody important once said, "Tomorrow has enough troubles of its own." We'll continue to have crises every week. As Peggy Noonan observed, our President loves them. Sort of like how Mr. Gibson in Wives & Daughters says in his beautiful Scottish brogue: "For whatever reason, [Cynthia] loves mysteries. I, on the other hand, despise them."

And that's how I feel. For whatever reason, our President loves crises. I, on the other hand, despise them.

With all that said, I have a couple of things to say about our most recent "crisis." I do have very strong convictions about guns and ammo. I like them a lot. But I've been loathe to turn this blog into a long-running debate about guns and their societal control. There are better places to go if you want the ins and outs of that debate.

But I'll observe a couple of things once and for all, and then hold my peace.

Almost nobody on the pro-gun control side of things is really interested in reality. Yes, a world without guns is a nice fairy tale, right up there with the Tooth Fairy. This entire brouhaha has been nothing more than an opportunity to posture, as exhibited by our President surrounding himself with the gaggle of kids yesterday.

That event convinced me more than anything that nothing is going to be done, and people worried about having to gun down the Feds at their doors for trying to confiscate their guns can just rest easy. Reality, you see, has a way of intruding into our lives. It always gets the last word. Like the reality that there are 300 million guns in this country. There used to be more, until Eric Holder had the brilliant idea to sell them to murderous Mexican drug cartels. No "database" is going to stop their being bought, sold, and traded. No increase in background checks and waiting lists is going to stop a determined murderer from acquiring one. It's as simple as one private citizen accepting cash from another private citizen. See: War on Drugs. Laws alone do not stop the flow of contraband, not even with gigantic law enforcement agencies dedicated to stopping the flow of contraband. Oh, background checks and waiting lists will tend to slow down people who might be able and willing to stop the murderers. But it won't stop the murderers.

So how about laws actually designed to address the real problem? That would be nice. But that isn't what we're likely to get. But, as it is, we're not likely to get anything. Not now. Not soon.

Why would I say that? Brian, don't you know they've always had designs to get rid of the 2nd Amendment? Of course I realize it. I'm not stupid. A disarmed citizenry is always the goal of rulers who have ill designs. In fact, it is usually the first sign of ill designs. In this case, it is the design of an Administration that views the American citizen as a subject, not a citizen. They call this, of course, "balancing" our rights. That means stomping on the other side of the scale. The American left wing hates and despises guns, and hates and despises anyone who likes them, much less carries them. I was in McDonalds recently waiting to order, standing behind a cool customer packing a .45 caliber 1911 on his hip. Didn't faze me in the slightest. I imagine the average New Yorker would have passed out at the sight.

But this Administration is entirely unserious about this. I know this because I actually read all 23 executive order proposals from the President. And I thought, "That's it?" After all this debate, after the nice gratuitous photo-op with the kids, this is it? The list is utterly and completely pathetic. Unserious. Phoned. In. Not a single thing in that list would have prevented the most recent massacre, nor any previous.

Yes, they'll banter on about a new "assault weapons" ban (aren't they all?), but nothing will be done legislatively. Too many Democrat Senators in rural states have no stomach for it. Too many Republicans (hmm, maybe I should be writing "just enough") in the House have no stomach for it.

That leaves executive action. And from the looks of the list the President unveiled yesterday... No.

It was a nice, gratuitous photo-op, Mr. President. I won't hold that against you. What I will hold against you is that I cannot find any guns or ammo for sale at reasonable prices.

That's what "crises" get you.

Christian, what did you expect? Guns, politics, and Christian eschatology.

Source:  The Reformed Mind (Prof. Troy Gibson)

If a Christian thinks that a ban on shoulder fired missiles is permissible, he has already acknowledged that the right to bear arms is limited to some extent. It very well could be that high capacity magazines and “assault” weapons are also reasonably restricted. That would probably depend upon whether those restrictions would really reduce violent crime, I suppose. Stepping back a bit, we have to remember what Jesus said, not what we wish he said or what we wish he was like and so on. So often, WWJD really just means to many What Would Rush Limbaugh Do (for the right) or What Would Santa Claus Do (for the left). In Christian theology, the world in which we live is fallen, broken, and corrupt. It must remain so until Christ comes back and perfects it, with total peace and total reconciliation of all things to their original good creational purposes. So we are living “between the times” which produces tensions in our public theology. Given this reality, Christ was a realist as well as an idealist. He wanted us to care for the poor, but warned that the poor will always be with us. He wanted us to practice peace, but warned that we must protect ourselves from those who would do violence to us. He wanted us to love our neighbor, but warned that we must operate as sheep among wolves, shrewd as serpents but harmless as doves. This is simply the posture of a Christian living between the ages of Eden and Heaven on Earth. It’s not a matter of simply looking in the Bible for your favorite kind of attitude (Santa or Rush). It’s a matter of carefully considered the whole counsel of God from Genesis to Revelation, doing biblical and systematic theology to uncover what God has really said, in full. Anyone can go on a fishing expedition in the Bible and simply throwback what they don’t want to catch. But that’s not doing theology, something all Christians are required to do (but few churches care for these days, opting instead for entertainment). Christians, then, as citizens in the City of Man, must not simplistically push for laws that are a better fit for the age to come (pure idealism). They must operate in this realm, in this age, according to the realities that they face in the here and now, where sin remains man’s biggest problem (idealism constrained by realism). In many ways, the question about whether Christians can or should rightfully morally own guns is similar to why in Christian theology there is a need for human government. In Eden, there was no human government. In the New Heavens and New Earth brought about by Christ in the age to come, there will be no human government. But in the intervening age, this age, there is, precisely because human nature is corrupt. So Christians agree with James Madison for why there is government, because men are not angels. It’s not a crazy logical leap to see why, then, Christians might feel theologically justified in arming themselves. We need government for our protection (Rom. 13) precisely because men are not angels, they are born in sin. We are permitted to own guns because men are not angels (protection against criminals). Moreover, we are permitted to own guns because government isn’t composed of angels (protection against governments). So Christians may feel justified in owning guns because they are skeptical that even our president can truly bring about a fundamental change in the human heart. Only Christ can do that.

This will ruffle feathers, but so be it. Having a biblical view of eschatology (the “end times”) will guard against the tendency to expect too much (or too little, though that’s less of a problem for Christian Right evangelicals and liberal protestants). Ultimately, Christians are citizens of another country, pilgrims in this land, subjects of another King, obedient to a higher law. Yet, many of us are too comfortable in the here and now and have what Christian theologians call an “over-realized eschatology” (a view of the church/Christian living now which unbiblically and unrealistically expects this world to look more like the next than it can or will in biblical time). In essence, we expect what should be seen as our hotel, to be our home. And so, we have become more patriotic than we probably should be, less critical of our favorite political parties than we probably should be, less critical of our favorite political ideologies and ideologues than we probably should be, we expect too much change and conformity to Christian moral norms in the culture, than we probably should, we are more obsessed with, demoralized or elated by presidential elections than we probably should be, and so on. Why? Because we act and feel more at home in a fallen world than in the perfect world to come. We let things in this world compete with our higher allegiances. It doesn’t help that our churches do not hearken us to another time and place, but present a version of Christianity to us that looks almost entirely like the world at present (but without all that cussing). Of course, we are to be salt and light in the world, and strive to impact the world for the Kingdom of Christ. But a Christian who is thinking biblically will ask with all seriousness, what did you expect? Did you expect a society that is peaceful or non-violent? Did you expect a society with no divorce? Did you expect a society where there is no poverty? Did you expect a society where there is no sexual immorality? Did you expect a society featuring God’s Own Party? Did you expect a society that is God’s Own Country? Did you expect a society with no war, disease, or famine? Did you expect a society where everyone is a Christian or even respects Christian belief or ethics? Personally, do you find that you do not struggle with sin, host as you are to the Holy Spirit? No? Then why do you expect any more in the world? If you expect these things, perhaps you are living prematurely in the age to come. Talking about being set up for failure…