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I sit grieving over people in Texas whom I had never met who joined in a small First Baptist Church in a town few had ever heard mentioned before but will now have etched alongside others we remember for all the wrong reasons. If mental health is the issue, as the President says, when are we going to declare a national emergency to treat those who may be prone to such violent outbursts. If sensible gun laws are the reason, when will we at least raise the questions about how many rounds a magazine should hold and whether a "bump stock" should be illegal. Of course, there are gun laws, but few of them ever get enforcement priority with our overstretched law enforcement. If the problem spills over from the political anger in our land, when will we repent of our despising of one another for beliefs with which we disagree? My heart bleeds for people today whose only crime was coming to church, for families who found their lives shattered, for wounded people who may never recover physically or emotionally, and for our country becoming numbed to the violence that is so prevalent in our society. Lord, have mercy!

Part helpful. Part meaningless.

I'm not a purist on this but have honest questions about keeping guns away from those with mental issues. Who decides? What is the threshold? Does the gummit confiscate guns (and other weapons) already held or just kick back any new gun purchase? It's a tough issue.

Oh, was this on any mental illness list? Did the guy use a bump stock? How large were his magazines. News reports were that he fired 450 or so rounds.

We can all politicize this but my guess at this point is that the neighbor hero who shot the guy will win the day politically. What kind of gun did the plumber have?

This is nice for some good, cheap virtue signaling but not worth much as a solution. No one is talking about gun confiscation or single round only guns or limits on stocks of ammo.

But let us know if you know of anything that might help that actually has a chance of political success.

Have advice and information for William if he really wants to know. And has William googled Selling the Politics of Fear, Osnos, New Yorker.

I will be blogging later today calling on historically Baptist universities and the Duke Baptist house of Studies, Baylor, Furman, Wake Forest, Samford, Carson Newman to focus on this NRA event at a Baptist church in Texas that could have easily been the Bethany Baptist Church in Gaffney SC where my father was pastor for 16 years.

I am convinced Dietrich Bonhoeffer were he with us today would name the Leadership of the NRA and their apologist Steve Bannon the Face of Evil in AMerica today. To that end I am hoping this winter Furman's Karen Guth who wrote Claims on Bonhoeffer for Christian Century; and Charles Marsh, the UVA proff, Baptist minister's son of Laurel Mississippi and Dothan Alabama, the definitive biographer of Bonhoeffer will hit three of these schools and speak truth to the leadership of the NRA and the politics of stupidity, Bonhoeffer's phrase, not mine, but as Katy Perry said: "I like it"!

Point: Nobody from the NRA has shot anyone. Therefore, let's blame the NRA for a crazy person who shot up a church.

Point: Criminals don't care about laws. Neither do crazy people. Passing gun laws will have no effect on criminals or the use of firearms in crimes.

So, the liberal solution is ... let's do as much damage as humanly possible to law abiding gun owners. And we can all sleep better at night knowing that law abiding citizens will obey the law.

And, as a side benefit, we can put a smack down on the NRA, who has never shot anyone anyway.

John

Obviously he is willfully ignorant of the New Yorker Osnos piece, all the reports on NPR and what Bonhoeffer would do claiming the politics of stupidity for people like Sneed who...... Hey John, go to religiondispatches.org and elevate your mind for the Kingdom's sake.

I'm with Bonhoeffer on this one. Ride Wayne Lapierre to heaven if that's your choice and your so called "2nd amendment" rights as they have redefined them since the mid 90s and see how past St Peter you get before he hands down the indictment of your miserable spiritual discernment!!!!!

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/ar ... ns/545111/

Read the above piece on Congress fear of NRA

Read Religion dispatches and the woman who will take her "**** chances"

I'd suggest, stephen, that when you arrive at the pearly gates, you skip the roll call of name drops. No one will be impressed. Go straight to Jesus.

So here we are, another church shooting, 26 dead, most of them children, virtually half the congregation. It comes on the heels of another mass shooting not much more than a month ago, and yet another, in a church in Tennessee, just a little while before that. Many people in our country are still OK with doing nothing, and coming up with lame excuses to explain why we can't, even though none of what they say has anything to do with the constitutional right to bear arms. That's because there's no real belief in the sanctity of human life on their part, it wasn't their church, it wasn't their country music concert, it wasn't their city...

Maybe some people are starting to get the message. The NRA-funded gubernatorial candidate in the Virginia governor's race lost, by almost 10% of the vote. Was that a reaction to the shooting, coming so close to election day? Churches have already tightened up their ideology and theology to turn people away, now maybe people will be uneasy enough to simply avoid sitting in a pew or a chair in a church on Sunday because of what might happen to them. Or maybe they will be intimidated by the amateur gun toters out in the parking lot.

Interesting piece at CNN.com