December 12, 2007
Bible Carrying and Gun Totin'
A few years ago I knew a husband and wife who had concealed gun permits and each carried a gun. Both were in their early 30’s and not members of law enforcement. I have to tell you, I didn’t like sitting in a pew next to a purse containing a gun even if it was stacked on top of a Bible. I know there is a time and place for concealed weapons, I just question the need for taking a gun to church. And now we have the recent church shootings in Colorado. While I’m thankful the security woman had a gun and was able to stop the shooter, I cringe at how this incident will impact churches across the US. Will we now start arming volunteer security people ‘just in case’?
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Gail;
-----When I was a child, we would go to Grand Junction a few times every year. That was before the highway was expanded to four lanes. It was before the highway was even widened. The cars zipped past each other from opposite directions only a few feet apart. I would ride in the back seat, starring out the window, marveling at how close to death at least five people came every time one of those 4000 pound steel boxes full of souls blasted past my window. A mere flinch at the steering wheel or one wrong decision at the wrong moment would create tragedy for many. I felt uncomfortable with that proximity to death, and I realized how tenuous life really is. But I knew how long it would take and how much effort would be expended to walk those sixty miles. So my comfort with the automobile was never actually lost.
-----For the car is just an object. It is mostly used for good, but sometimes it has been used for a weapon. The lady who ran her husband down in a hotel parking lot a few years ago, and the jerk in Texas (I think it was in Texas) who drug the gay guy to death behind his pick up are a couple examples that come to my mind. Then there are those guys who think it is funny to run down cats on country roads. I would feel like pasting one of them in the face if I weren’t also guilty of once running down a flock of chickens with a school bus. But if one thinks such criminal use of vehicles is a rarity, we need only think a moment before we realize that a vehicle is just as used for crime in a drive-by shooting, or a bank robbery, a hold-up, or practically any other criminal activity as is the gun also there used. I am surprised that the Department of Transportation does not exact fines and jail terms for the use of vehicles in criminal activity as does the postal system for mail fraud. Our attention is just never brought to this idea enough for people to realize that cars really do kill, steal, and rob.
-----Or is it that we never hear enough about the lives that guns save. According to the 1998 National Self-Defense Survey, about 7.1 million Americans carry a gun on their person. Less than .1% resulted in a violent crime. In a 1981 survey conducted for National Alliance Against Violence, 4% of households reported a defensive use of a handgun in the previous five years. That equates to about 645,000 incidents of protection per year. Other surveys have found similar rates of protective use in Canada. And a more detailed survey by Florida State University found guns of all types used defensively between 850,000 and 2,500,000 times per year. Mostly these were handguns merely brandished, but not fired. In a National Institute of Justice study of felons, 38% said their fear that a potential victim might be carrying deterred them from attempting a crime. America has a lower burglary rate of occupied homes than do other countries that prohibit gun ownership. (Google “guns and protection“, view Carrying Guns for Protection and Why Good People Own Guns)
-----As many valid points are made about the use of guns in crime as are made about their use for protection. But the number of news reports covering incidents of successful protection accomplished at gunpoint being far, far less than the coverage of guns used to commit crime is a great bet, even given very long odds. For one reason or another (often for deliberate effect) the good news about guns just does not play on CBS, ABC, NBC, or CNN. Since the most frequently presented ideas form the strongest public perception, it is not surprising that many people have a discomfort around guns. But like that starry eyed, little boy riding to Grand Junction, gazing at the possible death hurtling past him less than six feet away, yet retaining comfort in the car by reason, I think about all the possible guns being toted around me and, through the same use of reason, take comfort in the protection of their presence.
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