Yep. It should have been over long ago, when the Wild West was done! And so, the fact that people in the U.S. never left their gun-savvy way of life back in the mists of history when the Wild West was done, was over with, was banished to the dust of a bygone era means that today, there’s this huge social problem around lax gun use and ownership within civil society at large and the problems we have seen emerge over the past two months in the U.S. with regards to another terrible spate of gun-crazed violence is testament to this lingering draconian habituation around gun-prevalence in civil society.

Like narcotics and other dangerous drugs, guns provide a deceptive measure of personal and social security. The fact that civilian ownership of guns in the United States is very liberal and has never been reined-in by official legislation is one of the main reasons why there is a disproportionate amount of civil disturbance and criminal behaviour exercising a lethal stranglehold over the social fabric of everyday life there, and this has worn down, over time, little by little, the peacible cohesion that ought to be the binding substance of a society built on the motto In God We Trust.

I have also learnt that even many well-meaning people who claim a God-fearing allegiance to the Gospel in the U.S., a great many of whom are evangelical Protestants, also believe stridently in the ‘efficacy’ of civilian gun ownership. I find this not only very disturbing but a crass irony considering these same people claim their faith in God is the very foundation and substance of their spiritual, and indeed temporal life. Because, at the end of the day, if your sure anchor & refuge is the Lord, the Almighty, then why pin your reliance on a lethal weapon as more ‘fundamentally important’ to be ‘enshrined’ in law than your reliance upon the superlative Providence of God? This latter too, I might add is saliently just, in conjunction with a healthy, good-willed defensive anchorage in the rule of a rudimentary moral code of conduct based on a spirit of common human decency, an innate respect for human dignity, and the inalienable sacred value of life itself, which ought to inform the bedrock of interrelational dynamics – why then put your trust in anything less? Really, who could, in their right mind and heart, ask for anything less than this? And why would you want anything other than this anyhow?? For a spiritually-charged life, one festooned with contemplative action and prayerful determination is far preferrable to that which revels in tangos with the world and its ways which, while on the surface appear to offer quick fixes, actually on a deeper level only end up causing more problems than what they set out to initially try to solve – yes folks! – try to solve. When looked at from one angle, “trying” is truly admirable, especially when it is done with purity of intent for some greater good, be that on a personal or a bigger-picture level. But if it is done in such a manner as to procure a 2nd-rate remedy for something which can be and ought to be dealt with much more virtuously, then the trying is in vain, and all is vanity and egotism in the trying. Hence we have the fascile paradox of the recent campus crusader¹ shooting incident. The campus crusader by the name of Charlie Kirk, who was fatally shot in Utah recently was sadly, apparently pro-gun, albeit in the name of ‘self-defence’ which is the most popular rationale that the pro-gun lobby abides by. While I can kind of appreciate this tangent of the pro-gun argument such as in the example I will cite in a few moments, ultimately there are better ways to avoid what is sometimes referred to as the ‘necessary evil’ of civilian gun-ownership, and ways at that, that are much more virtue-focused. And so, like many evangelical Protestants in the United States, Charlie Kirk was rather fundamentalist in his doctrinal leanings. I have also heard of late too that he was softening in some areas, which I must say, was a real positive for him and his ministry.² Paradoxically, the man who shot him was also gun-crazy but he pinned down his limpid justification for gun-use to his so-called frustration with American social ills stemming from an aggro-collective mindset. But in having shot this preacher his rationale was hardly what you could legally call “legitimate” for morally speaking, gun violence cannot repudiate gun violence, and besides, there was no grounds of a direct, life-threatening personal encounter of provocation from this preacher towards the man who shot him  – hence the shooter’s logic was not one of self-defence (unlike that of a man shooting a burgular in the leg who is lunging with a knife at his wife) – and therefore because of the absence of reasonable grounds of self-defence, the rationale constitutes a complete and utter farse as well! For the shooter claimed that this campus crusader was too ‘trigger-happy’, and so then he himself decides to use the force of violence to silence this preacher, through the barrel of a gun, get it – the barrel of a gun?! Talk about utterly ludicrous this whole thing, and so much for the shooter’s – I’ll give it that – thoroughly inane logic. The shooter’s father was apparently a pastor, forgive me if I am mistaken! The shooter was given a gun by his parents as a ‘present’ for either Christmas or a birthday or something! Just tell me, how absolutely stark raving mad is that!!? And these people claim to be God-honouring?? No, truly, what is our world coming to when the citizens of a country whose motto is In God We Trust cannot even live up to that motto in regards to the ways they go about negotiation of ideological or doctrinal differences and personal variances?

That said, it’s not all gloom and doom over in the States either regarding the issue of gun safety. There are now, praise the Lord, many positive initiatives popping up in different parts of the country, that tackle this growing problem from a local civil-action perspective. Ever since the Sandy Hook school shooting back in 2012, there has been a dedicated endeavour emerging to stem the tide of gun violence. One such group is called the Sandy Hook Promise. Their aim is to raise public awareness about the plight of crime victims, their families, friends, and others of good-will in the United States who are suffering in one way or another because of the senselessness of gun violence. It is also a sobering reminder as well as it is alarming, that guns actually remain the “number one cause of death for children” in the U.S. Hence the need for more civil society task-force initiatives like Sandy Hook Promise to raise public awareness about the urgent need for legislative change around gun ownership. Peacefully rallying and pressing for change in this area is an honourable task inasmuch as it is urgent and necessary. People descending into the quagmire of complacency over this issue is only going to give more room, power, and incentive to the voices of the pro-gun lobby hence why it is an absolute necessity that more and more people of good-will take a decisive stand against the liberal proliferation of civilian gun ownership in America today.

For the Wild West was DONE many moons ago now. Why remain shackled to the dim light of a past that was, in many respects, anything but glorious? Isn’t it time to move on, up, and out of the vigilante feudalism of a time when people were perhaps not so holy or truly noble in their aspirations? While I get it that there are many arguments for why contemporary American citizens still need to cling to this ultra-romanticized version of Wild Western life, the fact remains that it is a collective delusion of grandeur, in reality a fallacy. Not that all the pioneering endeavours were futile. For the first wave of Pilgrims in the latter 16th & early 17th century were amongst the most saintly people to have settled in the New World from European shores. They were the ones who decided that peace-making and reconciliation with the Asiatic locals was most important and truly reflective of living out a God-fearing life repleate with Gospel values. They, unlike the second and third waves of European settlers after them, were NOT trigger-happy. Actually, they were people whose lives were simple and were anchored in living by God’s law instead of by the law of lethal weaponry. The history of Thanksgiving is truly remarkable because of this. I was positively astounded to learn about how this marvelous celebration began as one of joint accord between the European settlers and the locals who had already lived there for many centuries prior, after trudging their way to that New World across the ice-bridge of the Bering Sea.

And so like both Black Elk and St Faustina, because of the Gospel there are “Two Roads”. One is the narrow road to life while the other is the broad road to perdition. It’s clear that the first wave of Pilgrims took seriously to travelling on this narrow road – the one that leads to life. I’m saddened that the second and third waves of immigrants who followed after them decided to opt for that other road. It is worth mentioning at this point that this “Two Roads” parable is just as applicable to the choices we make in our earthly life in a bigger-picture sense inasmuch as it applies too to how we individually prioritize the moulding and governing of our personal will in view of eternity. By “will” here I’m referring to that interior disposition that directs our vision for how we desire to travel through life in the here and now as well as in the “here after”. Tragically, too many people are, as Jesus pointed out when He walked the earth, “like sheep without a shepherd”. They oftentimes are conditioned by the spirit of the age in which they live combined with the secular morès of the society into which they are born, to believe they know what they are doing, where they are going, and that it’s all well and good OR that it’s all fine and nothing could possibly happen to the contrary (in the midst of their personal experience) to shake their immovable trust in their own self-sufficiency. That though is a false sense of security and many people are lulled into this by the very fact they live and breathe this false sense of security every single day on autopilot. This just means that they pretty much dive into the newness of every day without ever thinking or reflecting much about what they have done, how they did it, what and how they said/did this or that. Even thoughts are not reflected upon, tempered much or reined-in. And because people in this vein develop a habit of non-reflection, they become steeply entrenched in this habit of non-reflection to the point that almost everything that is done is done as though it’s a “knee-jerk reaction”, where “2nd thoughts” are rarely, if ever, a part of it. And so, they are miràged. That is akin to an aimless wander, a drift without purpose or definitive, deliberate, and conscientious awareness of the “deeper whys and wherefores” of the everyday choices that are made and the goals that are set.

Hence my constant plea interspersed throughout this entire blog-roll, for the development of interior, personally acquired virtue to be prioritized – and in the specific context examined here in this post, this means prioritized over and above a collective waste of resources on the liberal dissemination of lethal weapons in and amongst the everyday life of civil society. And yes, God in His omnipotent mercy understands though. He understands the reasons for the lack of understanding that often persists and prevails beyond our efforts to try and come into a deeper understanding. For too many times, we are unknowlingly blindsighted, circumstsntially blinkered in our vision to the multitudinous implications, ramifications, consequences of our actions both small and big. These are often too myriadly complex and varied for us to instantaneously recognise or come to grips with, in the precise moment we are faced with a task. And in part too, this has to do with the deficit of our fallen state. Develpoing a more conscientiously-driven state of awareness in this area is key to overcoming the failure to decisively and immersively reflect upon our thought-forms, flows, intentions, choices, and actions. This will help dredge ourselves out of the mirey muck of spiritual apathy and false consciousness we have become (often unbeknowingly) addicted to and paralyzed by. And this is key to enabling us to ebb our days, little by little, into the flow of life that is no longer ensnared by the delusion of autopilot. The more people do this, the freer they will become.

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Endnotes:

¹ Here, the term “campus crusader” is used generically to refer to someone who (whether lay or ordained) conducts an itinerant cross-campus preaching ministry and as such the term as used here does not refer to the official international evangelical outreach ministry known as Campus Crusade for Christ (CCC).

² Was There a Conspiracy to Kill Charlie Kirk? in Crisis Magazine on YouTube, https://youtu.be/Mcm7_WypnCI?si=LAMVAyq26zZsc0Zk