Thoughts on Orlando

Pastor's Note: I'm going to get about as political as I ever get in this letter, so if you're not keen on that sort of thing, stop reading now. Likewise, I want to make the point that these thoughts are my own and do not reflect any sort of official statement by the congregations I serve or the ELCA or anyone else but yours truly.

Over the past weekend, in the city of Orlando, FL, there were two high profile shooting incidents. The first involved former The Voice contestant Christina Grimmie, who was shot and killed by a deranged fan after her concert. Christina was an immense talent and I'll be the first to admit I was a big supporter of her Voice endeavor, helping in my own small way to get her that third place finish. I am deeply saddened that she is no longer with us.

The second, of course, was the mass shooting at the gay nightclub Pulse that left 50 people dead and as many more seriously injured. It stands now as the worst mass shooting in American history.

I should probably note at this point that I am also a proud (very proud) Virginia Tech graduate and I remember well the nightmare of seeing that shooting play out over my TV screen some nine years ago now. I wept then as I weep now.

It's truly pathetic how we've become so blase about these tragedies. I saw a tweet right after Pulse that made me despair for our society. 

Is this really who we wish to be as a society? Half our population lauds their "pro-life" credentials, and yet they tolerate this violence. News flash: If a particular type of person's life is more valuable than another, you are NOT "pro-life." 

We tolerate the slaughter of children, of people different than us, of just about anybody, and write it off as the "price of freedom." What a load of nonsense. Plenty of other nations have freedom and they do not have to pay this price.

Liberals decry the lack of gun control. Conservatives decry the lack of mental health aid. Both sit back and allow our paralyzed government to do NOTHING about either time and again. Enough is enough!

We the people must act. We must DEMAND change. Hold our elected representatives, regardless of party, to the fire.

I'm going to make a proposal as to what I think needs to be done.

1) Common Sense Gun Control

Point of disclosure: I am a gun owner. I enjoy shooting sports (even if I'm not very good.) I come from a family of gun owners, with uncles, cousins, brothers-in-law, and other relatives who hunt and shoot. I've seen the argument from both sides.

But let's be frank here. If you are truly a law abiding citizen, having a background check over a firearm purchase is really no big deal. And those background checks need some teeth behind them. We should be very diligent in preventing firearms from coming into the hands of dangerous individuals.

Step One: Close the Gun Show loophole that allows firearm purchases without the background check. This is a no-brainer, in my opinion. We should not have an open market for criminals to purchase firearms.

Step Two: Reinstate the Assault Weapons Ban. Don't give me that crap about how an AR-15 is not an "assault weapon." I'm not stupid. I know all about bump firing and how you can turn an otherwise semi-automatic weapon into a machine of death.

Don't give me the argument that it's not accurate firing. If you're bump firing an AR-15 into a crowd of dancers in a club, accuracy ain't going to matter. I doubt the murderer at Pulse cared much. 

No civilian should have access to a gun that can do that. End of story.

Step Three: Do not allow sales of firearms to people on the Terrorist Watch List. This is another one that defies belief. We jump through all sorts of ridiculous hoops to fly safe, like taking off our shoes and being prevented from taking bottles of water aboard. We might complain a bit, but we accept this inconvenience as the price we pay for living in a post-9/11 world.

But terrorists and potential terrorists can go into any gun store and buy a firearm. The shooter at Pulse was one such individual. If we kept the folks on the Terrorist Watch List ineligible for firearm purchases, Pulse would never have happened.

Yeah, I've heard all the arguments. Mass shootings are often done with legally purchased firearms. You'll never stop them all. But we cannot allow perfect to be the enemy of good here. I agree that there is no fail-safe way to stop all gun violence in our country with laws, but a reduction in gun violence would be a welcome improvement. Why make it so easy for people to do this sort of thing? Wouldn't it make sense to have it be a little bit tougher for the evil and the violent to purchase weapons?

But I agree the argument that "this won't stop it all" has merit. So what else can we do?

2) Mental health care reform

Too often, we've seen the debate boil down to gun control vs. mental health. Why not both?

When he was governor of California, Ronald Reagan began the process of shutting down mental health care facilities, which resulted in an explosion of homelessness and violence in the state. Oh, it saved money, but at what cost? When he was elected President, he took that program national and our country's been a mess ever since.

In my work as Pastor, I see a lot of mental health issues in people. In fact, I have a gentleman in my congregation now sitting in jail after a bipolar episode. He's not a criminal, but he is ill and needs help. Where's that help to be found? That's a good question. It's not easy anymore.

That's a serious problem.

I am not nearly as well versed on mental health as I am on firearms, so I have no specific prescriptions here. But there's got to be a better way to deal with this. We cannot allow talk about fixing our mental health system to just be talk without action.

3) A new attitude as a society

No law or reform is really going to get at the heart of what's behind all this: We have become a society that does not care anymore. About anyone or anything.

People who are different are threats. We must destroy them. Behind a lot of the gun talk is this fantasy, that a firearm will protect me from my enemies, many of whom are merely imagined. News flash, folks: Owning a gun does not make you Rambo and the guy next door whose skin color is different just wants a decent job to feed his family. He is no danger to you.

Taking care of people is too expensive. You see this one tossed out on everything from healthcare to food stamps to the above semi-proposals about mental health. You know what contributes to crime more than anything else? Desperation. You know what causes desperation? Poverty, illness, lack of basic life resources. You think it's too expensive to care for people? It's too expensive NOT to.

Toxic masculinity. As a video gamer, I spend way too much time in the cesspool of the gaming world. The number of young men who feel entitled to wine, women, and song simply by the privilege of their gender is appalling. They truly do not seem to get that women are people too and not merely props for their life fantasies. And when they are denied these "props," it is not uncommon for them to act out with violence. This is where "rape culture" comes from. This is why the shooter in San Bernadino did what he did. No more.

To me, this is where the Church comes in. Too often, we are at the forefront of the fear of the "other." Too often we are at the forefront of judging whether one is worthy of help in life or not. And too often, we are still a bastion of poisonous patriarchy. None of those things are truly Christian. Jesus embraced the stranger, helped without condition, and named women as some of the first to proclaim his good news ("Christ is risen" was first uttered by a woman, in case you forgot.) If we can better model this for society, maybe others will fall in line.

I'm not so naive as to think things will change overnight. But something's got to give here. We are awash in blood and it cannot continue. If we wish to make a better world, we need to start here.