Following the gun massacres in the USA (now at a once per fortnight pace according to CNN), the national dialog on gun control reaches a new level of support. Over 52 percent of Americans now support some kind of ban.
(For the record, though it is not the point of this post, my view is that there should be a ban on private ownership of military style assault weapons. It won't stop the truly "professional" criminal, but it will stop the casual idiot if there is at least a reasonable barrier to acquiring guns. I lock the doors of my home at night not because I think a professional thief could not get in, but because it deters the casual crook.)
Mel Lawrenz, writer and pastor in the Milwaukee area, has written a remarkably well-received Call for Wisdom in Washington. I support Mel, and I support some kind of national governmental action. But the call to a fitting response cannot be governmental alone. This is my main thesis: We need a broad response that calls on the expertise and influence of many disciplines.
Movie Producers: CNN carried a very interesting article this morning that shows that popular movies can include great content. Beyond that, have you thought through your role in creating a culture in which violence is expected to make a movie -- and by extension life -- truly exciting. Yes, you're led by the box office, but we need you to lead. In the great debate of whether media shapes culture or the other way around, bias your thinking to the perspective that media shapes culture and think wisely about it.
Pastors: We love and appreciate your service, but we don't always love and appreciate your services. We need you to take your pulpit beyond the platitudes that will keep us numb for an hour on a weekend. We need you to lead out of the gospel you know so well, but bring it to bear in a way that engages us broadly and points us more than theoretically to the Kingdom of God on earth. This will require unusual creativity. But we're created in the image of God, the great Creator. Surely there's a vast store of creativity there!
NRA and Gun Advocates: I understand and respect the ideas that hunting, target shooting, museum-like collecting and reasonable personal defense are legitimate gun uses. But stories like the one on NPR that cover our governors considering permitting, encouraging, or requiring teachers to carry guns is a shift in our culture toward the wild west of the American West of the 1800s... or Somalia. Is that where we want to live? We need you to lead us to a place where the human-on-human use of guns is rare. We need an answer that is better than just "more guns." As experts in guns, we need you to use that expertise to create solutions that are more nuanced.
Video game producers: I'm tempted to point you to the paragraph on Movie Producers. OK, I will. Musicians too!
Academics: Thanks for the statistical analysis. I believe there is a role for this kind of analysis and if you're really good at it, then please step it up. But as Nassim Taleb would argue, you're probably not really as good as we think you are. As so many of the great movements of our culture have begun on university campuses, we need you to give birth to a new era of violence intolerance.
Lawyers and Ethicists: Watch the Minority Report again. Then help us to frame how we will respond to those who say we should have better detection and better preemptive responses. On the surface, I like the basic idea of stopping gun violence before it happens, but at what cost? Are the risks of a presumption of guilt a price worth paying to reduce gun violence. (I can hear the automatic cry "NO!", but at least we should do the thought experiment and check our values to be sure we mean that.)
Men: Let's face it, we are the perpetrators. I don't want a culture of pansy men. We are wired differently and we have a different temperament and mandate. But hello, guys, this is not a time for us to just power-up, lock-up, and defend. We need to take that instinct for defense and add to it the best wisdom and creativity we can muster to solve this problem with something more generous than "protecting me and mine." If ever there was a time for bravery beyond the bayonet, this is it.
And you could imagine another 2000 paragraphs with a charge to every vocation on the planet. I don't expect many readers (I think blogspot statistics says these writings get about 20 hits a year), but I wonder what a national collective essay about the role we each play would teach us. For sure, I know this is not a problem that Washington will solve on its own.
(For the record, though it is not the point of this post, my view is that there should be a ban on private ownership of military style assault weapons. It won't stop the truly "professional" criminal, but it will stop the casual idiot if there is at least a reasonable barrier to acquiring guns. I lock the doors of my home at night not because I think a professional thief could not get in, but because it deters the casual crook.)
Mel Lawrenz, writer and pastor in the Milwaukee area, has written a remarkably well-received Call for Wisdom in Washington. I support Mel, and I support some kind of national governmental action. But the call to a fitting response cannot be governmental alone. This is my main thesis: We need a broad response that calls on the expertise and influence of many disciplines.
Movie Producers: CNN carried a very interesting article this morning that shows that popular movies can include great content. Beyond that, have you thought through your role in creating a culture in which violence is expected to make a movie -- and by extension life -- truly exciting. Yes, you're led by the box office, but we need you to lead. In the great debate of whether media shapes culture or the other way around, bias your thinking to the perspective that media shapes culture and think wisely about it.
Pastors: We love and appreciate your service, but we don't always love and appreciate your services. We need you to take your pulpit beyond the platitudes that will keep us numb for an hour on a weekend. We need you to lead out of the gospel you know so well, but bring it to bear in a way that engages us broadly and points us more than theoretically to the Kingdom of God on earth. This will require unusual creativity. But we're created in the image of God, the great Creator. Surely there's a vast store of creativity there!
NRA and Gun Advocates: I understand and respect the ideas that hunting, target shooting, museum-like collecting and reasonable personal defense are legitimate gun uses. But stories like the one on NPR that cover our governors considering permitting, encouraging, or requiring teachers to carry guns is a shift in our culture toward the wild west of the American West of the 1800s... or Somalia. Is that where we want to live? We need you to lead us to a place where the human-on-human use of guns is rare. We need an answer that is better than just "more guns." As experts in guns, we need you to use that expertise to create solutions that are more nuanced.
Video game producers: I'm tempted to point you to the paragraph on Movie Producers. OK, I will. Musicians too!
Academics: Thanks for the statistical analysis. I believe there is a role for this kind of analysis and if you're really good at it, then please step it up. But as Nassim Taleb would argue, you're probably not really as good as we think you are. As so many of the great movements of our culture have begun on university campuses, we need you to give birth to a new era of violence intolerance.
Lawyers and Ethicists: Watch the Minority Report again. Then help us to frame how we will respond to those who say we should have better detection and better preemptive responses. On the surface, I like the basic idea of stopping gun violence before it happens, but at what cost? Are the risks of a presumption of guilt a price worth paying to reduce gun violence. (I can hear the automatic cry "NO!", but at least we should do the thought experiment and check our values to be sure we mean that.)
Men: Let's face it, we are the perpetrators. I don't want a culture of pansy men. We are wired differently and we have a different temperament and mandate. But hello, guys, this is not a time for us to just power-up, lock-up, and defend. We need to take that instinct for defense and add to it the best wisdom and creativity we can muster to solve this problem with something more generous than "protecting me and mine." If ever there was a time for bravery beyond the bayonet, this is it.
And you could imagine another 2000 paragraphs with a charge to every vocation on the planet. I don't expect many readers (I think blogspot statistics says these writings get about 20 hits a year), but I wonder what a national collective essay about the role we each play would teach us. For sure, I know this is not a problem that Washington will solve on its own.
