After two more mass-shootings last weekend (El Paso and Dayton), more innocent lives have been taken because of our inability as the American people to wrestle with the complex history of arms and rights here in our nation, and to take action that would minimize these sorts of events in which the lives of bystanders are taken. Within Christianity, although our scriptures say many things about violence, we have no distinctive Christian consensus on how to reduce gun violence .
I’m not one for banning guns altogether. Certain types of military weapons should be highly restricted, and we need tighter controls on who can access guns, and where they can do so. With the continuing death toll, I believe that this sort of sensible gun control is coming, but the lingering questions are when, and how many more innocent lives will be sacrificed before it does?
Here are some very helpful books for Christians that wrestle with the complex social and legal histories of guns and gun violence in America, and with the theological ramifications of our obsession with guns.
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Americans have always loved guns. This special bond was forged during the American Revolution and sanctified by the Second Amendment. It is because of this exceptional relationship that American civilians are more heavily armed than the citizens of any other nation. Or so we’re told. In The Gunning of America, historian Pamela Haag overturns this conventional wisdom. American gun culture, she argues, developed not because the gun was exceptional, but precisely because it was not: guns proliferated in America because throughout most of the nation’s history, they were perceived as an unexceptional commodity, no different than buttons or typewriters.
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I am very disappointed, to say the least, to see such an unbalanced list of books on gun violence. I think your bias is showing.