Month: December 2012

This is my last post about gun control. I promise. However, I read an interesting piece on economist.com. Read it here.

The post got me re-thinking the vigor of my earlier posts arguing in favor of what many Americans would consider draconian regulation of gun ownership:

• “A concrete proposal for limiting gun ownership”
• “Is gun ownership detrimental to civil society?
• “Some thoughts on gun control”

Let me play devil’s advocate for a moment and point out three reasons why I could be wrong about wanting more stringent gun control laws.

• The United States Constitution appears to guarantee the right to own a firearm.
• Most Americans do not want great regulation of firearms.
• Gun control works for the world we wished we lived in rather than the real world.

Let me unpack these for a moment.

The Constitutional argument. I’m no expert in Constitutional law, but it in 2008 and 2010 the Supreme Court of the United States issued two landmark decisions regarding gun ownership. In District of Columbia v. Heller 554 US 570 (2008) the court ruled that the guarantee of the right to bear arms is not connected with the establishment of a militia. In McDonald v. Chicago 561 US 5031 (2010) the Court ruled that state and local governments are affected the same way by the Second Amendment is Federal government (i.e., local governments must not infringe on the right to bear arms). Together these decisions mean that the law of the land is that each American does have the right to bear arms and that right is not connected with forming or serving in a militia and cannot be infringed on my non-Federal authorities.

The democratic argument. Most Americans do not wish there to be more regulation of firearms. This has to be given more authority that I previously gave it credit for. They may be wrong, but in a democracy the majority governs and the majority clearly wishes to at least have the option to own firearms.

The real world argument. Is it practical to make owning a firearm illegal when there are already hundreds of thousands of guns already owned by private individuals? In a world with guns, many will think it safer or more prudent to themselves have a firearm to protect them.

One thing that I can say with certainty is that there is no “Christian” position on gun ownership. Some Christians will not wish to own them for theological reasons and others, for equally theological reasons, will wish to own them. In the end, our positions probably have more to say about how we read and understand the Constitution and the darkness of the human soul.

What do you think?

The Gissing household is buzzing with the joy (and stress) of late Advent anticipation. Tomorrow is the big day–Christmas Day–which will usher in twelve days of celebration and present opening. The plan is to open one to two presents per day through the twelve days of Christmas. We’d like to do our small part to rescue Christmas from its cultural bondage and return it to what it is supposed to be: a feast of the Christian church.

Since we our eldest was born four years ago, Anna and I have started to think more intentionally about how we celebrate Advent and Christmastide. Our hope is to move further along the path to making Advent what it’s supposed to be: a period of waiting for the birth of the Christ child. Then Christmastide–all twelve days of it–will be time to party.

My father recalls the Christmases of his youth in Second World War and Post-war England. As a child, he would go to bed on Christmas Eve, no Christmas tree to be seen. On waking, he would emerge from his room (shared with the other four children) to see a decorated tree with presents around it. Christmas started on Christmas Day, not November 1.

Today, Christmas has become not a celebration of the Nativity of our Lord, but an opportunity to be manipulated by merchants wishing to enlarge their profits. Now, I’m no puritan. I have no wish to cancel or outlaw Christmas. I do, however, have the desire to make it a peaceful and grace-filled Christian celebration, something it has long since ceased to be for many.

So, in looking to 2013 we have made some plans about how we will change our celebration:

• We will not decorate our tree until Gaudete at the earliest or Christmas Eve at the latest.
• We will not take our tree down until the twelfth night, the eve of Epiphany.
• We will place 1-2 presents per day under the tree for our children to open during Christmastide.
• We will do our best to attend church on December 25.
• We will place a greater emphasis on our Advent calendar and wreath during, well, Advent.

We need a simpler celebration and it seems that in order to do this we have to break the unwritten rules that hold a beautiful Christian holiday captive to our culture. I think this will better both for our own souls and those of our children.

Alan Jacobs at The American Conservative has a thoughtful piece on his opposition to the idea of teachers being armed in case of the next Sandy Hook incident. It’s worth reading.

He writes:

But what troubles me most about this suggestion — and the general More Guns approach to social ills — is the absolute abandonment of civil society it represents. It gives up on the rule of law in favor of a Hobbesian “war of every man against every man” in which we no longer have genuine neighbors, only potential enemies. You may trust your neighbor for now — but you have high-powered recourse if he ever acts wrongly.

And in so writing, he captures the essence of my own objection to the owning and use of firearms: it is detrimental to a civilized society. It undermines any sense of neighbor by presupposing that at any moment what peace exists will be broken by an armed intruder intent on stealing your possessions or worse. He continues,

Whatever lack of open violence may be procured by this method is not peace or civil order, but rather a standoff, a Cold War maintained by the threat of mutually assured destruction. Moreover, the person who wishes to live this way, to maintain order at universal gunpoint, has an absolute trust in his own ability to use weapons wisely and well: he never for a moment asks whether he can be trusted with a gun. Of course he can! (But in literature we call this hubris.)

The understanding of many is framed by a romantic notion of an America where government is not needed because government by the people takes the form of an armed populace. In this sense of American, I am profoundly un-American and that part of me raised and formed in Great Britain takes over. I understand that I have given to the police the right to use lethal force to protect me. I wil, of course, l protect my family to the best of my ability. What I won’t do is arm myself for the minute chance that I will need to. Should I need to protect my family, I believe that there’s more to be said for deescalation, escape, and evasion than for the use of a firearm.

A report (link) from the BBC outlines how Australia made significant progress in curtailing the use and availability of guns after the Port Arthur massacre in 1996. Sweeping reform implemented (within thirteen days of the attack) both by the Australian federal and state governments included outlawing automatic and semi-automatic rifles, requiring registration of each firearm, and a comprehensive buy-back program.

The buy-back program, it is reported, was key to the success of Australia’s effort to reduce gun crime. Under the program, the government would pay market price for each firearm surrendered. Some 700,000 firearms were surrendered costing the government $300 million.

It certainly remains to be seen whether the issue of gun control will gain any traction in the United States. We’re a gun-loving people after all. It also remains to be seen whether a program like the Australian one would “scale up” for the American context–we own way more guns than Australians.

I think that the Australian approach has much to commend it. Here’s what I would like to see in terms of gun restrictions in the United States, at least in general terms:

• The requirement for a license to own, maintain, and use a firearm with endorsements required for each individual weapon owned renewable every five years.
• A registry of gun owners and weapons that could be shared across law enforcement agencies.
• The requirement that any rifle/assault rifle (or rifle at or above a certain calibre) be housed and used only in a registered gun club with the exception of a range of rifles reasonably used for sporting purposes (i.e., hunting).
• That any weapon kept in a private home be kept in a secured gun safe and that ammunition for the same be stored in a separate, secure location.
• An excise duty on the sale of weapons for the purpose of funding compliance with these provisions and supplementing public mental health spending.

I’m certainly not an expert on this issue, but it seems to me that there is a compelling public interest in significantly restricting the availability of firearms.

I’m working on a book with the working title Hope in the Ruins: Christian Spirituality for those who are Suffering, so I’ve been reading, thinking, and praying about evil and suffering a great deal of late.

I hesitate to refer to this as “the problem of suffering” as though suffering is something we contemplate in the abstract or from a position of absolutely objectivity. We don’t. We cannot. Instead, suffering is an experience that has to be interpreted and understood in light of the revelation of God in the Christ presented to us in the Bible.

This is not an easy task and, as Michael Horton has pointed out in his book A Place for Weakness, it is wise to invest in developing a deep spirituality and an equally-robust theology prior to periods of intense suffering (which means now since we can’t predict suffering).

So as we think about the great evil that has befallen at the hands of an evil man, where are we to turn for answers or for consolation?

In the moment (and even afterwards) our deepest and richest consolation is in the person of our Lord who according to the letter to the Hebrews suffered and was tempted even as we suffer and are tempted. As a result he can help us in our suffering and in our temptation (the two are often close related–I’m often tempted to disbelief when experiencing suffering). And its in the context of a covenantal relationship with this suffering, emptying God-man that we can both affirm and take comfort in God’s sovereignty.

Today (and earlier this week as well) many people’s lives have changed in ways they never imagined. They are experiencing a depth of sorrow previously inconceivable. At this moment, let’s pause and lament to great pain and evil that precipitates such an act of malice. Let’s also pray for those who are suffering, and strive to exhibit the peace of the Gospel to the world of which we’re a part.

At a time like this, I don’t want to hear from the President or the Governor of Connecticut. They will try to interpret this event in light of the story of America. Instead we need to place this in the context of the story of God. So…even now, I long to be in church.