I have been considering sharing my thoughts on the topic of gun control for some time now but decided to wait for a couple reasons. First, I’ve found that it’s really good to let thoughts and ideas marinate a while. It is much more helpful, or flavorful, to let things soak in with the hope that doing so provides a richer outcome. It’s easy to get in a hurry, throw your thoughts into the flood of online opinions, and miss an opportunity to say something that actually stands out a bit. Second, I wanted to avoid my blog being a place where I respond to whatever is current in the news and veer away from some of the guiding principles I have in doing this whole blog thing. It was difficult at first for me to connect a topic like gun control to something like growing in the grace and knowledge of Christ. Some time has elapsed and some things have come to light that I find pertinent to the here and now while the gun control issue is still being discussed.
I have never been that much of a statistics kind of guy and almost always have a bit of suspicion when stats are thrown all over the place. Agendas have a way of skewing reality and misleading people and there’s no better way than throwing out numbers without citing sources. Stay with me as I go through some of this and I promise I’ll connect it to something worthwhile in the end.
When it comes to murder rates, violent crime rates, or overall crime rates we have access to an excellent compilation of truly helpful data. Local, state and federal enforcement agencies record and track data and we have the ability to see information on a large scale such as a state or on a smaller scale like a neighborhood. Not only that, but we also have this information dating back over decades so we can see important trends. Here’s a nice trend for you: Over the past 20 years the murder and violent crime rate in the U.S. has been cut in half. With all of the talk about how much is wrong right now, something has been going right for the past 20 years. I love it when people mention that Chicago has strict gun control but has a high crime rate. If you follow historical trends you can see that Chicago had a high and rising crime rate long before they passed strict gun legislation. They don’t have high crime because they have strict laws, they have strict laws because they had high crime. The pertinent question then is whether or not the gun control laws helped curb the rising trend and I don’t think there’s much support showing it helped, much less whether or not it has hurt. The argument that removing the restrictions would help lower crime also lacks evidence because they had high and rising crime before they implemented the restrictions. Why didn’t a less restrictive environment prior to the current gun control policy solve the crime issue back then? Ultimately I don’t think gun control laws have the ability to solve what needs to be solved.
A really important question that should be asked is, "Where are the highest proportion of murders and violent crimes occurring?" If these kinds of crimes are localized in any significant way then it would make sense that we should focus our attention there first. Here’s another interesting trend: Murder and violent crime rates are significantly higher, as much as double, in cities with populations of 250,000 or higher. If you go a step further you can actually see where impoverished areas within a city have an even higher rate versus the rest of the city. As I looked at crime rate city maps I was amazed how often low crime rate communities would be in particular groupings while high crime rate communities would be clustered just next door. When they talk about ‘the other side of the tracks’ that is a visible reality. A high proportion of crime happens in highly populated and highly impoverished areas irregardless of the level of gun control. We all know this to be true. We all know the part of town where it’s not the safest to be when it’s dark and where parks aren’t as inviting to play in.
That’s what makes the driving force behind the current gun control talks boggle my mind. The Sandy Hook shooting in Newtown Connecticut was an absolute tragedy but it hinders productive gun control policy. Following this tragedy people were asking how we can keep something like this from happening again. How can we keep a crime like this from happening in an affluent city of 27,000 people? This crime was not the norm in the least and we want a policy to prevent it? How about we come up with something that solves predictable crimes in the predictable portions of our states and cities that constitute a far greater proportion of overall crime than shooting sprees? And when I’m talking about ‘finding solutions’ I’m not referring to gun control policy. Cities and states need to find ways to address these issues but for the remainder of this article my concern is how can the Church address these issues!
There are two major stumbling blocks that I see when it comes to the church’s response to communities in need. The first is pretty obvious in light of what has been discussed. Isn’t it inconvenient that the poor happen to reside in areas that are dangerous? Helping the poor just might involve risk and I think that keeps people from actually helping. I can’t emphasize this point too strongly. It will NEVER be convenient to help the poor. It will be a risky venture but it is one we are clearly called to do. People have been avoiding certain parts of town for far too long and we are seeing the results. This has got to stop and if we do get over this hurdle I think we can see more measurable improvements than any piece of legislation could ever hope to accomplish.
The other stumbling block is one that I am entirely guilty of and have been for a while. The issue is a false identification of oneself as ‘poor’. Rather than identifying ‘with’ the poor we identify ‘as’ the poor. There are no doubt people who should properly identify themselves as poor but what’s ironic is some of those very people wouldn’t even think of themselves as poor. Recently my pastor returned from a large group trip to Kenya where they did a variety of service projects. One thing that he mentioned was how amazing it was that people who literally had nothing acted and worshiped as if they had all they needed. Far too often there are those of us who do actually have all we need to live but worship, or give, or complain like we don’t. It’s time for many of us to stop thinking of ourselves when we read in scripture about the poor. We need to get off of ourselves and think of who the poor are, where the poor are and how we can help. When we falsely identify ourselves as poor we will never have the eyes to see the truly poor in our midst. God’s economy is one of abundance. The issue is distribution and whether or not we’ll help in the delivery.
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