{"id":783,"date":"2019-03-17T03:57:13","date_gmt":"2019-03-17T03:57:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/maybegoosefeathers.com\/wp\/?p=783"},"modified":"2019-03-17T03:57:13","modified_gmt":"2019-03-17T03:57:13","slug":"what-if-we-could-stop-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/maybegoosefeathers.com\/wp\/?p=783","title":{"rendered":"WHAT IF WE COULD STOP IT?"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

About a month ago, we marked the first anniversary of the mass shooting at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.\u00a0 In a little less than two months, it will be the anniversary of the shooting at Santa Fe High School near Houston, Texas.\u00a0 Next month, it will be twenty years since fifteen students were killed at Columbine High School in Columbine, Colorado \u2013 the one that started it this tragic trend.\u00a0 \"\"<\/a>Last December marked six years since the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.\u00a0 The children murdered there would be entering their teens \u2026 if they\u2019d been allowed to live and grow.\u00a0 The victims at Columbine would be in their mid-thirties, building their families \u2026 developing their careers \u2026 had they not been killed by their schoolmates.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

The day after the anniversary of events in Parkland, a mass shooting at a workplace in Aurora, Illinois demonstrated these things don\u2019t just happen in schools.\u00a0 Mass shootings happen in workplaces, too.\u00a0 Aurora is also the name of the city in Colorado where a mass shooting took place back in 2012 at a movie theater.\u00a0 Entertainment venues became risky places, too, as the shooting at the outdoor concert 18 months ago amply demonstrated.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\"\"<\/a>Even places of worship aren\u2019t safe from this violence.\u00a0 There was the shooting at the Sikh Temple at Oak Creek, Wisconsin in 2012 \u2026 Mother Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina in 2015 \u2026 First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas in 2017 \u2026 Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania less than six months ago.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Now our plague of gun violence has spread abroad with the shooting at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand<\/a>.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

When will it ever stop? Can it be stopped?<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

I\u2019m tired of hearing it can\u2019t be stopped; there\u2019s nothing we can do.\u00a0 Like many others, I really thought Sandy Hook would have been the turning point, the one that would finally push us, as a people, to do something about the scourge of gun violence that plagues our country.\u00a0 I still remember that I was driving home from a quick shopping errand when I heard the news that December morning.\u00a0 \"\"<\/a>I almost came to a complete stop in my shock and horror at the account of little kids, not much past the toddler years \u2026 and their lives already ended \u2026 because someone had access to a weapon that was purposefully designed to kill lots of people in little time and the ammunition to do it.\u00a0 Surely this tragedy (the most recent at that time) would finally move the tide of public opinion and determination to do something \u2026that this time(!) something would be done.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

I wasn\u2019t alone.\u00a0 I remember hearing the emotional struggle in President Obama\u2019s voice when he had to address the nation, as presidents are called upon to do in such times.\u00a0 Years later, I heard the stories of his visits with the families of the children and teachers who were killed<\/a> \u2026 and how he kept a picture drawn by one the slain children in his personal office for the rest of his presidency.\u00a0 He was determined that something be done, that there be no more of these events, that he never have to make another address to the nation in the aftermath of a school shooting.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Advocacy groups recognized the energy and worked hard to harness it, to rally people to press their elected officials for legislation that would make a difference \u2026 to allow the Centers for Disease Control to actually study incidents of gun violence so we might learn more about patterns and factors that lead to these events \u2026 so we can design effective solutions.\u00a0 Clear distinctions were made between guns used for hunting and guns designed for killing people.\u00a0 Limits on high capacity magazines were proposed.\u00a0 Vice President Joe Biden clarified how this limit would not impact hunters at all: \u201cIf you can\u2019t hit the deer in nine shots or less, you\u2019re not a hunter \u2013 you\u2019re a disgrace.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\"\"<\/a>So much energy, so much determination, so much grief and horror, so much momentum \u2026 and yet, as we all know by now, nothing changed.\u00a0 After waiting a week or so, \u201cout of respect\u201d, the NRA\u2019s Wayne LaPierre convened a press conference and announced a doubling down on gun promotion rather than any sort of cooperation with sensible policy proposals to enhance gun safety.\u00a0 He argued that we should have more guns \u2026 make it easier for people to have their guns on them at all times \u2026 arm the teachers so they can really defend their students \u2026 \u201ca good guy with a gun stops a bad guy with a gun\u201d \u2013 \"\"<\/a>that\u2019s the surest way to keep everyone safe, he said. I remember screaming at him through my kitchen radio that morning, shortly before Christmas, as he ended his \u201crespectful period of silence\u201d to make a public statement.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

It was a fallacy then \u2026 it still is.\u00a0 (Not that this stops such madness from being offered as \u201cthe solution\u201d yet again in the aftermath of these most recent tragedies.)\u00a0 I\u2019ve yet to see a school design where the principal\u2019s office affords clear sight of the school entrance or even the office entrance.\u00a0 The shooter is always going to draw first, guaranteeing the \u201cgood guy with the gun\u201d is going to be a few seconds behind \u2026 and likely to be killed in the act of getting the gun ready to shoot the shooter.\u00a0 After last year\u2019s two school shootings, the push to arm teachers that was suggested in the aftermath of Sandy Hook has markedly increased.\u00a0 But even if teachers were prepared and willing to use guns to defend their students (and most of them are not emotionally wired or mentally prepared to kill another human being), the teacher would have to get the classroom gun from its secured location.\u00a0 And yes, a gun in the classroom must be secured.\u00a0 A little over a year ago, a third grader somehow managed to get his fingers into the school resource officer\u2019s holster and pull the trigger on the gun inside.\u00a0 The gun fired \u2013 but, luckily in this case, no one was hurt.\u00a0 These nonsensical proposals for arming teachers, or at least strategic staff members, defy all logic and any common sense.\u00a0 Such nonsense will not work, and political energy spent refuting this stupidity would be put to better use in other directions.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Turning schools into fortresses is not an answer, either.\u00a0 That, too, is offered as an alternative in a sort of \u201cWell, if you can\u2019t have guns in the hands of the good people inside the school, then we have to find more ways to keep the bad guy with a gun from getting inside.\u201d\u00a0 Let\u2019s have more secure doors, less glass, more locks \u2026 perimeter fences and guards \u2026 metal detectors like at the airport \u2026 in other words, let\u2019s make our schools more like prisons.\u00a0 Do we really have to lock up our children to keep them safe because guns must be free from regulation and readily available to anyone who wants one?\u00a0 Is that the actual, baseline choice we are facing?\u00a0 And if it is, do we really want to choose guns over our beloved children?<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\"\"<\/a>That might not be the choice we would consciously, deliberatively make.\u00a0 However, the complete lack of any action that would make these tragic mass murders less likely demonstrates loudly and clearly that we do, in fact and in deed, choose guns over children every single time we have the opportunity.\u00a0 Now we are a year past the high school shooting in Parkland, almost a year past the one near Houston, twenty bloody years since Columbine.\u00a0 Much as we, as a nation, did after every single one that preceded these, we swore this time \u2013 this time! \u2013 things would be different.\u00a0 But what\u2019s changed?\u00a0 We could choose to do things differently \u2013 that is<\/em><\/strong> possible.\u00a0 But time and time again, we do not.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

This is who we are as Americans in the USA today. I am not at all okay with this.\u00a0 Are you?<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

It can be different.\u00a0 We can make different choices.\u00a0 We can reshape our cultural world.\u00a0 This can be done.\u00a0 I\u2019ve seen it happen\u2026<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

When I was growing up, we had several ashtrays around the house.\u00a0 Neither of my parents were smokers by the time I entered their lives.\u00a0 My dad did randomly smoke a pipe in the evening for a while \u2026 and then he\u2019d stop for months, years \u2026 and then take it up again \u2026 he did this a couple of times.\u00a0 But mostly the ashtrays were there for a friend or two and a couple of my uncles.\u00a0 These occasional guests smoked, and when they were in our home, the expectation was that their smoking would be accommodated.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

It wasn\u2019t just in others\u2019 homes; it was everywhere.\u00a0 Smokers lit up in offices and workplaces, in stores and restaurants.\u00a0 If a smoker felt the need to smoke, then he or she would light up there and then.\u00a0 Working as a cashier in fast food and retail in the mid-1980s, I had customers smoke while I was assisting them, blow smoke toward my face \u2026 hold their lit cigarettes over my head.\u00a0 But I couldn\u2019t say anything.\u00a0 It was their right to smoke and good social etiquette expected me to say nothing.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\"\"<\/a>But things started to change.\u00a0 It was gradual at first.\u00a0 Public spaces started to create smoking areas separate (to some extent) from non-smoking areas.\u00a0 The tobacco companies launched a \u201cgood manners\u201d campaign, advising their customers to ask, \u201cDo you mind if I smoke?\u201d before lighting up around others and, if the answer was \u201cYes, I do mind,\u201d then the smoker should refrain.\u00a0 Similar advertising encouraged non-smokers to speak up and ask smokers not to smoke in their presence.\u00a0 Good manners flipped.\u00a0 Smokers started stepping out of the non-smoker\u2019s house when they needed to smoke.\u00a0 Gradually smoking was banned in most indoor places.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

The result is that my children have grown up in a different world.\u00a0 They have never seen an ashtray in our house because no one who lives here needs one.\u00a0 They probably can\u2019t remember me or their dad telling the host \u201cnon-smoking\u201d when asking for a table in a restaurant.\u00a0 They\u2019ve never seen anyone walking through a store with a cigarette or smoking in public places.\u00a0 In their world, smokers go outside to smoke \u2013 that\u2019s just how it is.\u00a0 They can\u2019t imagine the way things used to be \u2026 before I reached the age they are now.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

We could make a change like that again \u2013 if we choose to.\u00a0 It\u2019s not like we don\u2019t know what needs to be done\u2026<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

First, it IS the guns.\u00a0 The authors of our constitution lived in a time when the best rifle in the hands of an expert was capable of firing maybe two shots in a minute.\u00a0 They could not imagine our modern weapons capable of firing 45 rounds in a single minute. \"\"<\/a>There is no way to project what they might have thought of such a world as we now live in \u2026 how our realities might have re-shaped their thinking about the Second Amendment \u2026 if<\/em><\/strong> they had known.\u00a0 But they did not<\/em><\/strong> know, and we cannot treat their words as though they were written for our times and our current culture.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Our peer nations do not have this problem.\u00a0 There are things we can learn from them \u2026 mandatory training, testing, licensing, registration.\u00a0 We do all this with cars; we could do this with guns \u2013 if we chose to do so.\u00a0 Closing the loopholes that allow gun sales to bypass background checks is a start.\u00a0 But we should strengthen the background check \u2026 put it on the same level as what we require for people who will work with children or other vulnerable populations.\u00a0 Those aren\u2019t done in an instant; it takes a week or two.\u00a0 If we can make day-care providers do this, we can require the same of gun owners.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Yes, people can kill people with all kinds of things.\u00a0 But semi-automatic firearms with high capacity magazines make it much too easy.\u00a0 Let\u2019s make it harder, not easier.\u00a0 Restricting access to certain types of firearms and, especially, high capacity ammunition magazines makes a lot more sense than the current insanity that we\u2019ve been tolerating for far too long.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

I\u2019m not so na\u00efve as to believe stronger regulations and laws alone will fix everything.\u00a0 This problem has multiple facets and requires solutions from several angles.\u00a0 The stories we tell ourselves fuel the appetite for destruction and death.\u00a0 We have to change the stories we tell about retribution, violence, and what\u2019s right.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

For starters, we need to fully face the realities of the present situation.\u00a0 Sure, we can feel the sorrow and emotional pain when we see parents crying and screaming at the deaths of their children.\u00a0 We can laud the courage of those who risked everything to save others, the first responders who helped the wounded to survive.\u00a0 We can celebrate the resiliency of those recovering, the determination of the student-survivors as they not only returned to their violated schools but became national advocates for changes in gun policies.\u00a0 These are pieces of the story \u2013 and important ones at that.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

But there is an important piece missing in our tellings of the tragedies of these episodes: the carnage.\u00a0 Yes, it would be gruesome to the point of nausea \u2026 yes, it will be horrifying to the point of nightmares, but we must see our reality.\u00a0 We have to see the bodies, our young children, lying in pools of their own blood with the damage the bullets did as they ripped their paths through human flesh.\u00a0 Images like this are what it took to get us out of Vietnam.\u00a0 Images like these are what turned the tide of the Civil Rights struggle.<\/a>\u00a0 Nothing less than full reality is going to force us to get real about gun violence in our culture.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

We have to see the reality because we\u2019ve been fed too much of the fantasy.\u00a0 It\u2019s not just the first-person shooter video games.\u00a0 It\u2019s all the stories we tell about the necessity of violence.\u00a0 Wrong-doers must be made to pay for what they\u2019ve done \u2013 in pain and blood, and even death.\u00a0 If the authorities invested with this responsibility can\u2019t \u2013 or won\u2019t \u2013 enforce the punishment, then the wronged one has the unassailable right to vengeance.\u00a0 How often does this pattern play out in the stories we tell (and sell) \u2026 on screens big and small \u2026 how we shape the narratives in reporting current events \u2026 how we fashion the stories of our own lives.\u00a0 Someone does you wrong?\u00a0 Don\u2019t just get mad; get even \u2013 or better.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\"\"<\/a>We, who are people of Christian faith, have to rethink how we our most sacred story.\u00a0 For too long now, theologians and preachers have taught a hyped-up version of Anselm\u2019s satisfaction theory of the atonement<\/a> to the people \u2026 and the people have concluded that this is the only true and correct understanding of what Jesus\u2019 death and resurrection was all about.\u00a0 The satisfaction theory is summed up in the slogan \u201cJesus paid a debt he didn\u2019t owe because we owed a debt we couldn\u2019t pay.\u201d\u00a0 In itself, that is an accurate summation of the satisfaction theory, very much rooted in Anselm\u2019s experience in the feudalistic society of his time.\u00a0 But this theory has been amped up, melded with the penal substitution theory, and made to be about satisfying God\u2019s righteous anger at the horrors of human sin.\u00a0 God\u2019s anger is amplified to such proportions that it must be vented somehow \u2026 which leads to emphasis of the physical horror of the crucifixion to show how Jesus absorbed the violence of God\u2019s wrath on human flesh.\u00a0 The story is about God getting even and taking vengeance \u2013 just as we think we should do when wronged.\u00a0 This is making God into our image.\u00a0 It\u2019s wrong and we have to stop it \u2026 we have to stop it for the sake of our children \u2026 we have to stop it to be faithful to the gospel<\/a>.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\"\"<\/a>It’s Lent \u2026 we\u2019re headed toward Holy Week and the annual remembrance of Jesus\u2019 death.\u00a0 We can tell our most sacred story differently.\u00a0 We can talk about the tragedy of sin \u2026 and that this is what sin does: it kills things \u2026 kills people \u2026 killed Jesus.\u00a0 We can talk about the love that took it all in, to transform us, so that we might love in the same self-giving way, changing the world by love.\u00a0 We can talk about the language of covenants \u2026 how God made a covenant with Abram by passing between the carcasses of slaughtered animals to vow \u201cmay this be done to me if I break my covenant with you\u201d \u2026 and so Jesus, in his dying, \u00a0paid the price to break that covenant and break it open \u2013 not just a few people, but for all people.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

If we want the culture to change its narrative, we have to change ours.\u00a0 If we want the violence to stop, we have to stop telling stories that praise the violent retribution and start telling stories of reconciliation and mutuality. If we want a better world in which our children can live and thrive, we have to call it into being with both words and actions.\u00a0 \"\"<\/a>Good thoughts and prayers for safety will not do it.\u00a0 We have to act out our thoughts; we have to live out our prayers.\u00a0 That means we have to change our language, change our policies.\u00a0 The lives of our children \u2013 and maybe our lives, too \u2013 depend on it.<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

About a month ago, we marked the first anniversary of the mass shooting at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.\u00a0 In a little less than two months, it will be the anniversary of the shooting at Santa Fe High School near Houston, Texas.\u00a0 Next month, it will be …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,4,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-783","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-church-life","category-events-topics","category-musings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/maybegoosefeathers.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/783","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/maybegoosefeathers.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/maybegoosefeathers.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/maybegoosefeathers.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/maybegoosefeathers.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=783"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/maybegoosefeathers.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/783\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":794,"href":"http:\/\/maybegoosefeathers.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/783\/revisions\/794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/maybegoosefeathers.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=783"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/maybegoosefeathers.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=783"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/maybegoosefeathers.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=783"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}