Guns are the Golden Calf

We are allowing our children to be sacrificed on the altar of our firearm worship.

No, it’s not “mental health,” although certainly, mass shooters have mental health issues. A large-scale survey in The Lancet across 29 nations found that half of the world’s population will experience a mental health disorder at some point in their lifetime. Half.

50% of people experiencing a mental health disorder at some juncture just doesn’t translate into mass shootings in other countries. What’s different about America? It’s our obsession with guns. Turns out, it’s quite hard to carry out a mass shooting when one doesn’t have access to a firearm.

I was raised by a gun-owning former Marine who was injured during his multiple combat tours in Vietnam. My dad watched his best friend step on a landmine. He got dysentery and lost 40 pounds in the jungles of Vietnam. 

Back in the states, if you visited his garage, you were greeted by the heat of a wood burning stove, the smell of gas station coffee, and a scarlet and gold Semper Fi sticker emblazoned on the cabinet that held car parts. My dad’s guns were stored, disassembled and in a case, in one part of the house, while the ammunition was in a locked cabinet elsewhere.  

And that is because my dad, a blue collar worker who later died of his war-related injuries, did not worship his weapons. There is not one child my dad would have pointed to and said, “My gun is worth more than their life.” My dad would have laid down his weapons – gladly and without hesitation – for the chance to save even one person.

And he would be deeply grieved at how our politicians – and the people who vote for them – love to run their mouths but not their hands and feet. How they speak in their houses of worship about their good deeds, but, my dad would say, “whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.”

And who among us is the least of these? It is our children. And we should feel grieved that we are failing them. To borrow a verse from Exodus, “Your people have become corrupt… they have made themselves an idol cast in the shape of a calf. They have bowed down to it and sacrificed to it.” 

Except now replace the word calf with the word gun.

Listen, I am a realist. I know the United States has more guns than people. No one is saying, “go door to door and round up everyone’s weapons.” But we cannot let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Just because we can’t create a society entirely free from gun violence doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do all the good we can.

The fact that we can’t perfectly end gun violence doesn’t mean we should take no action on safe storage laws, on universal background checks, on mandatory waiting periods, on red flag laws, and on enacting harsher penalties for people who give dangerous weapons to minors, domestic abusers and violent felons.

Just because we can’t keep guns out of the hands of everyone with nefarious intent doesn’t mean we shouldn’t keep guns out of the hands of one person who wants to leave Algebra class and get the gun out of his locker.

This is no time to sit idly by while our children act as pawns in our petty, partisan games. If your worship of your weapons is more important to you than our country’s children, just say that. At least we’ll know what we’re working with. 

May today be the last day parents receive a text that says “School shooter, I am scared. I love you, mom.” May today be the last day that parents hear their son or daughter took a weapon and opened fire on their classmates and teachers.

May today be the day we melt down our golden calf. Because if anyone knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is nothing less than a sin.