Religion and gun control

With all the talk about gun control issues in the new lately, it got me thinking again on something that’s always kind of puzzled me.  One would think that those who follow Biblical teachings would be the biggest proponents of laws that bring stricter controls on guns.  

The very nature of what Jesus had to say was peaceful and would seem to suggest that he, above anyone else in the world, would be very adamant about avoiding any instruments of war and killing.  I’d even venture to say that if he were alive today, the thought of one of his followers owning a gun would be appalling to him.  Putting these few things together, it seems like a no-brainer that those following Western religions would be inherently against guns, but in many cases the opposite is true.

Of course, the whole affair is a matter of opinion and based on each person’s interpretation of the Biblical teachings.  So I decided to look in to what some others were saying about the subject, seeing as how it’s all over the new right now.  So what did they have to say?

One editorial in the Washington post looked at the actual statistics revolving around Christians and gun opinions.  He found that minority Protestants and Catholics were generally in favor of stricter laws, while it was primarily white Protestants that opposed them.  Most of what he found he attributed to cultural and social elements, such as whether guns were an important part of the lives of these individuals.  White Protestants occupy more rural areas, thus resulting in more cultural acceptance of sports like hunting, whereas the groups opposed were more centered in urban areas, where guns are used primarily for crimes and to stop crimes.

Another editorial comes from the Canada Free Press.  This one is from the point of view of a Christian who is against the stricter gun control laws.  I can’t say I was too impressed with the man’s statement, since he spent most of his time twisting the issue, bashing atheist and creating strange justifications.  According to his editorial, gun-control leads to passive/aggressive behavior while being allowed to own guns leads to assertive behavior.  He judges that assertive behavior is more beneficial to society and that stricter laws would be inherently harmful to our country.  Of course, he then goes on to talk about the peaceful, loving person that Jesus was, which is, in my opinion, quite hypocritical.  It’s almost as if he’s suggesting that while Jesus used peaceful means to change the world, humans need to use more aggressive means, despite the divergence from Jesus’s teachings.

One more interesting point of view comes from an article in The Huffington Post, aptly titled “Would Jesus Buy an Automatic Assault Weapon?”  The writer brings up the interesting question of whether Jesus, should he be alive today, would be the first person in line to buy guns following a mass shooting.  And whether, if we could ask the man himself, he would tell us “sure, we need more guns and teachers need to be armed” or he would instead tell us something similar to his argument about turning the other cheek.

In the end, this debate is more about the people and less about the religion.  People will adapt a religion to fit whatever needs they have, even if it means twisting the words of the Bible or ignoring parts of it completely.  Many mass killings have been made in the name of the Christian God and if people in the past justified such horrible crimes with religion, how much easier it is to justify a strong pro-gun stance despite what the teachings of Jesus say?  Still, it seems strange to me, regardless of its inevitability.

Image courtesy of neg8thehate.com