Mass Killing by Knife and Evangelical Gun Culture

https://www.news10.com/news/rensselaer-county/police-deescalate-hostage-situation-at-troy-stewarts/

You don't read about mass killings by knife too often do you? I've written about this before, as have many others. Here's another recent case, pertinent in light of the recent wave of mass shootings in the United States.

A man in the Albany area uses a pair of scissors to take hostages. The situation was resolved with no injuries. Yes, had he chosen to do so, he might have stabbed and possibly killed one or two people.

Guns don't kill people – people do. And they can use things like knives and scissors. The Right is correct on that point but having a gun, especially a semi-automatic handgun or assault rifle does make a difference.

What if this man had an AR-15? It would have been another bloodbath. And literally so. I kept wondering why the parents in Texas had to give DNA samples for their kids to be identified. The reason finally came out. Several of the kids were decapitated – their heads blown apart by the force of the high-powered ammunition. That's not just a question of quantity – how many can be stabbed or shot with a knife versus a gun. This is a question of qualitative difference. These weapons are of a different order and obviously one is not going to shoot game with an AR-15.

We can debate the Second Amendment and the question of rights. The American system is flawed at times and certainly ties itself into knots at critical points. There are some real shortcomings to the system and this is one of them. It's not designed to deal with nuances like this – all the more when the original concepts in the Constitution have been hijacked. The Founders hadn't imagined a situation like the US has now – a corrupt party system that is highly polarized governing a largely urban country with all that entails. The monied party system introduces the political element in the question and as the public has seen – there's no resolution.

But for Christians this is easy. The Constitution is not some kind of semi-divine deutero-canonical document. It's a deeply flawed product of fallen men who forged a country in the depths of sin. We can debate the Second Amendment and whether it means what the Right thinks it means or not. But it doesn't really matter. The whole US system is fundamentally flawed and rooted in immoral concepts and narratives. We're not going to fix it and even if interpreted 'correctly' it will still be sub-Christian and wrong.

Additionally, we don't have to call for a massive disarming of the public or the mass seizure of guns though I would hardly care if such a thing happened. But what we cannot do is side with the pro-gun lobby and adopt its spurious and deceitful arguments or the larger gun culture.

One would expect resistance to gun regulation within the 'Common Sense', Semi-Pelagian, and Classically Liberal intellectual traditions of American thought which flourished in the context of the Enlightenment. Calvinism ultimately did too but by a different road. Yet you would think the heirs of the Puritans, people who purport to believe in Total Depravity would understand that their forebears had little time for 'rights' and libertarian ethics. Man is sinful and liberty must be ordered. And whether that view is right or not can also be debated but it's interesting to observe how many contemporary Calvinists have (with their individualist Libertarian leanings) more in common with the Enlightenment on this point than they do the Reformed Scholastics and Puritans.

But again, none of this really matters. The Right won't listen and won't have it. So the killings are going to continue and as we've seen every time the discussion comes up there's a wave of hysteria and a spike in gun purchasing – thousands more put out into society and potentially on the street. More people are carrying than ever and we're bound to see more shootouts like the 2015 gunfight in Waco, Texas.

And as more Christians lose their way and abandon New Testament ethics they will get caught up in these things. It's already happening. Just look at a false teacher like JD Hall and the ethos he projects.

And with the total abandonment of discernment and growing ignorance with regard to how society functions they will fall prey to nonsense and hype. My son came home today and reported his Right-wing gun-fanatic boss was going on about how the UN was coming to seize American guns. If you understand anything about the UN and its utter impotency and irrelevance you would realize how ridiculous this statement is. This person (who also happens to be a deacon in the PCA) frequently makes statements like this – simply flaunting his utter ignorance and incapacity to understand even the basics of the social order, politics, and law. This is what going to Trump and Glenn Beck rallies has got him – figures that have considerably more influence on his thinking than the apostles.

The Founders wouldn't have wanted such an ignorant fool casting votes and yet this poor deceived soul who confuses the Kingdom with 'God, Guns, and Trump' considers himself a super Christian patriot and as a business owner (one that incidentally was handed to him), he's viewed as a respectable and responsible member of society and thus worthy of the diaconate. And I can say this based on now decades of interaction with him – he probably knows more about the US system than he does the Scripture, let alone doctrine, and that's no exaggeration. It's a startling thing to say but I stand by it. What he does know how to do is toe the line and so in that capacity he makes a great Presbyterian.

Judgment is falling on American society and the acculturated and increasingly apostate Church.

Will no one say it? They've made their guns into idols – symbols of the larger idols they worship – mammon and power, typified by the American Empire and its system. God help them.

See also:

https://pilgrimunderground.blogspot.com/2016/01/guns-dont-kill-people-but-they.html

https://pilgrimunderground.blogspot.com/2021/10/guns-and-people.html