Guns and Hope

All of our hearts are broken after the massacre at Newtown, Connecticut.  The killing of twenty small children by a gunman who possibly had Asberger’s syndrome is monstrous.  The simple availability to him of an assault rifle and lots of ammunition is a terrible indictment of this culture of ours where the second amendment to the Constitution is revered above all things.  The National Rifle Association has been able to defend with impunity their ridiculous stance that guns are appropriate in just about every situation.  The absurd idea that we ought to be able to buy as many guns as we want has led to trafficking in guns in almost unbelievable ways.  The proposal to allow people to buy only one gun a month is in itself absurd.  Twelve guns a year?  Good Lord, what is in our minds.

I don’t expect congress or the president, or anybody else to come up with an adequate solution to this terrible gun problem that plagues this country.  We don’t need a conversation about guns, we need action and we need it now.  We tolerate guns in our video games, guns in our movies, guns everywhere.  We subtly teach our children that guns are a reasonable part of our lives.  I don’t know any hunters who take assault rifles with them when they go to hunt deer.  That doesn’t even make any sense.  But we have allowed senselessness to inhabit this argument for far too long.  We are now reaping the wild wind that overarching gun ownership has brought us.  It isn’t enough for us to ban the sale of assault weapons.  There are enough of them already in people’s hands to continually cause events such as Newtown.  We need to get these weapons out of the hands of people who aren’t qualified to possess them.  No one outside of the military ought to have these weapons.  That seems to me to be just common sense.

We are in the last week of Advent.  We are waiting with anticipation for the birth of our Messiah, the one who will bring peace and hope to this world.  I am attracted to Mary’s beautiful Magnificat and the past tense that she uses in describing God’s work in the world to touch our lives.  She says:

He has shown the strength of his arm; 
he has scattered the proud in their conceit.
He has cast down the mighty from their thrones,
and has lifted up the lowly.
He has filled the hungry with good things,
and the rich he has sent away empty.

In the birth of Jesus, our Messiah, we have the guarantee that God has adsorbed the intense hurt and pain of this world,  most of which is caused by ourselves.  I know that God’s tears have joined ours in our mourning over the precious lost lives in Newtown.  As we have caused this problem, it is up to us to find a way to solve it.  That is what God gave us minds and hearts to do.  God bless everyone touched by this horrible disaster, and God bless all of us as we find a solution.