Gun worship is idolatry

“A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”  

This Second Amendment statement in our U.S. Constitution is what gun advocates appeal to in opposing almost all attempts to regulate gun-ownership by civilians. The result has been a fast and ever-growing crisis of homicide-by-firearms in our country.  

To value the unlimited right to own any and every kind of gun in the face of tragedies like the recent mass slaughtering of innocent citizens and children in Uvalde, Texas; Dayton, Ohio; and El Paso, Texas; and many other places almost seemingly daily, is a form of idolatry. It is making a personal right more important than the lives of innocent people, even children. It is wrong and way beyond the intention of the writers of the Constitution.  At the time the Second Amendment was written in 1791 the federal government was weak.  It needed something like we now have in our National Guard, citizen soldiers who could be called on short notice. It did not envision a one-man, unregulated militia with an arsenal of automatic weapons.  

The Second Amendment ought not to prohibit our government from requiring gun owners to have a license to own a gun and to demand a background check before that license is granted.  However, court rulings like that of the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals on March 7, 2007, have declared that a ban on owning a handgun without a license violated the Second Amendment. Yet, former President Trump did ban bump stocks by executive order.  That and other measures to tighten loopholes in existing laws concerning gun ownership should be legislated.  

Since 1994 the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has called for “reasonable measures to address the problem of gun violence.” These included universal background checks and limitations on high-capacity weapons and ammunition magazines.

The danger is that Congress will bow to the gun lobbies and once again do nothing.  Something has to be done, and done now.  Statistics kept by institutions like the Brady Campaign and Center to Prevent Gun Violence show evidence of rapidly increasing gun violence.  Deaths from guns in the U.S. during a five year period ending in 2018 averaged 35,141 per year or 96 human beings each day.  From 2000 to 2017 the FBI recorded 250 “active shooter incidents” (four or more people killed) in the U.S.  Today there are more guns than people in our country.  The idea proposed by gun lobbies that the way to stop a bad person with a gun is to arm a good person with a gun hasn’t worked.  More and more powerful guns is not the answer.  

Mass shootings are no longer a freak occurrence.  They keep happening.  Cardinal Blase Cupich in Chicago urged our law makers to take a strong stand for better gun control.  “We cannot tolerate,” he said, “a society in which parents have to wonder whether the child they dropped off in the morning will become another statistic or if their own lives will end that day in their place of work.  Mass shootings are not an inevitability.” 
 How can we be “pro-life” and do nothing practical to reform gun laws?

Faith responses of prayer have to be backed up with actions for change.  It is not a question of taking away anyone’s hunting rifles.  Handguns can be owned by responsible people who are proven to be so by background checks and who are licensed so that their guns can be recorded and followed if they sell or give them to another.  We do this with cars but not guns.  It makes no sense.  According to the American Journal of Medicine in a 2016 study, Americans are 10 times more likely to die by gun violence than people of other economically developed countries.

Susan Bigelow Reynolds, professor of Catholic Studies at Emery University, wrote, “Every successive mass shooting feels like another ritual sacrifice to the idol of the gun.”

Father Carville is a retired priest in the Diocese of Baton Rouge and writes on current topics for The Catholic Commentator. He can be reached at [email protected].