Guns...Guns...Guns...Guns

photo by M & R Glasgow / flickr

How many times must a man look up
Before he can really see the sky?
Yes, and how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
Yes, and how many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died?
The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind
The answer is blowing in the wind..."
            --Bob Dylan


I'm Preaching next Sunday on the third word that came down from the cross. From the cross Jesus saw his mother and spoke to her with a voice of great tenderness. Even as he died he remembered her. 

So I have been thinking of all those mothers from Sandy Hook to Parkland who are trying to deal with the loss of their sons and daughters. After the shootings--life will never, ever be the same again. Mrs. Robertson whose daughter was killed in the Sixteenth Street Church bombing said: "I was getting ready for church when my husband came home that morning to tell me that our daughter Carole had been killed by a bomb. Life was different," she said, "Always different after that."

I wonder in this yet-another-discussion of gun violence and safety ad nauseam--we need to stop and look at those mothers whose lives have been turned inside out. Funerals for fourteen-fifteen year olds were not what they signed up for as parents. 

All this stupid talk and all the pontifications of those who ought to know better--few mention the mothers who stand by their own personal crosses. Their faces and their grief have been lost in the shuffle. Doers the NRA care really about these parents? Has the President really stared at the pathos and pain of this yet-another-shooting? 

We don't need teachers packing guns. We do not need investigations about who fell down on their jobs. The Sheriff. His deputies. The Mental Health facility. The schools. The parents. The FBI. Or--God forbid--the Democrats. These last few months especially we have made a cottage-industry out of pointing fingers the other way. 

It is time, high time to do something about AR-15's. It is high time to do something about a non-law which says 18 years olds can buy these weapons made for war. It is high time to do something about real honest-to-God background checks. It is high time to dry up these gun shows where anybody can buy anything. It is high time to quit making money or power the bottom line in this gun debate. And for those who worship the Second Amendment--which says: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." The Originalist-addicts of this amendment forget when this sentence was added to the Constitution they had muskets in mind. They had slaves that might rise up and overpower their owners. They had people scared to death of Indian raids and attacks from England and other countries. They had wild hogs and huge bears in mind when they penned this document. 

There was no FBI. No Security systems. No 911. No police in every hamlet and city in this country. No National Guard would could come to our rescue as needed. Nobody will take our guns away--for hunting or even basic protection. Everybody knows this except maybe a few radicals.

But we do need to give attention when the most civilized country in the world is acting like the most uncivilized. Maybe our children will rise up and do what us adults cannot do. Maybe they will take to the streets by the millions until those in Washington might really hear the voices and the pain and the challenges of those who hid under desks and carried the caskets of their friends days later. 

Thomas L. Friedman, a columnist of the first order wrote last week about the utter gut-less-ness of our political leaders who are more afraid of their $174,000 annual paychecks and free parking at Reagan National Airport that they just look the other way when it comes to dealing with a problem that is killing innocents every day. It was first printed in The New York Times which is not particularly as fake as those who hide behind that word, fake to ignore the truth. Friedman ended his article by saying: "...never underestimate what some people will do for a $174,000 job and freer parking at Reagan National Airport."

God bless America--God knows we need it today as never before.

--Roger Lovette / rogerlovette.blogspot.com