WHAT IS GOING ON?
As the crow flies, I live about a mile from the Aurora theater shooter's apartment. I take my kids to Red Robin and Joe's Crab Shack (where two people who were shot worked) and my friend's daughter was sitting in the front right section of the theater when the shooter entered Friday morning. So, even though the shootings did not directly impact my life, I feel I have been personally touched. Because of this, I have been thinking a lot about the shooting--and I have been watching the public discussion surrounding gun control.
There seem to be two main groups of people--those who like guns and those who do not. These two groups are talking right past each other. Those who do not like guns argue that access to semi-automatic rifles must be limited and those who do like guns argue that access must be unrestricted. As for myself, I am strongly in the group that believes society has no need for semi-automatic rifles, but I have been closely watching what the other side is saying.
Facebook is one reason I have been watching the discussion so closely. One of my Facebook friends who is a frequent poster has been writing quite a lot about his love for semi-automatic rifles. From this person’s previous posts on Facebook I know that he gets "a hard-on" when he holds a cocked gun at someone's head. Aside from being a frequent poster on Facebook, this person is also a cop and if he is getting sexually stimulated by guns then I am willing to bet others are too. That this is an unexamined part of gun ownership means that our society should begin to look at why people own these types of guns.
I am a chaplain. My own stereotype of chaplains is that they are not a gun-toting bunch. But at one of my previous jobs I found that wasn't true. Listening to lunch time discussions I found that many chaplains regularly carry guns and that they do so as a part of their religious beliefs. In fact, I found out that some churches celebrate the fact that nearly all of their members are concealed permit holders. What this really means is that some churches celebrate the fact that Sunday morning services are filled with guns.
I can understand that shooting someone can be sexually stimulating. What I don’t understand is how religion fits into all of this. What about Christianity is conducive to blowing someone away with a powerful rifle? When I look at Fundamental Christians, I see people who are concerned with end times and with preserving past power structures. Fundamentalist Christians have been concerned with the apocalypse for almost two thousand years and it cannot go without comment that many people on the Far Right are very concerned that we have a Black president. Is there something that links the apocalypse with people's need to buy semi-automatic rifles?
In the press coverage after the shootings we heard from ammunition companies who said that buying large amounts of semi-automatic ammunition is not uncommon. These companies said that people regularly buy large amounts of ammunition because it is necessary for use on the gun range. But I don't think gun ranges are really why people are buying box after box of ammunition. People’s fear of the apocalypse has more to do with it. So does the fact that we have a black president. In other words, people who like semi-automatic rifles are buying large amounts of assault ammunition to protect themselves during end times. They don't need normal guns to protect themselves because these are not normal times.
People who want to control access to semi-automatic rifles need to shift the focus of this conversation. We do not need to speak of 2nd Amendment rights anymore because controlling access to these weapons does nothing to diminish 2nd Amendment rights. Rather, we need to speak about why large segments of our society have such a tremendous need to kill people—and make no mistake about it—if you are stock-piling semi-automatic ammunition you have a tremendous need to kill people.
What is really going on here? We can see from the public discussion that access to semi-automatic weapons and semi-automatic ammunition is a big deal. But we are so busy arguing about our right to protect ourselves that we are missing the bigger issue. Mixing sexual gratification with religion means that we are trying to expand men’s right to sexual gratification while at the same time trying to limit women’s ability to control their sexuality. All we have to do is take one look at the Far Right’s struggle against access to birth control and abortion to know that. Once we know what is really happening we will have the ability to take action. Society must take action to limit the public’s access to semi-automatic weaponry. To do otherwise is to bring back the Middle Ages.
