Marginal Christianity

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slowchurch/2012/12/17/the-cross-and-the-ak-47/ December 17, 2012 By Christopher Smith 3 Comments Debates about gun control are raging in the wake of yet another mass shooting.  The issues surrounding these recent shootings are complex, mental illness, a culture shaped by recreational violence and yes, of  course, access to guns. I don’t really want to debate gun control right now; in fact, I’m not opposed to all guns.  What I am opposed to, however, is the fear that drives people to own (and defend the ownership of) guns that are intended for nothing other than the taking of human life.  And this fear is a theological issue that must be addressed among Christians… I’m laying down a challenge: Someone PLEASE give me a justification for owning semi-automatic weapons, handguns and any other weapon intended for taking human life that is NOT rooted in fear? Because all I’m hearing in the defense of such weapons is fear — ...

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF Published: December 15, 2012 IN the harrowing aftermath of the school shooting in Connecticut, one thought wells in my mind: Why can’t we regulate guns as seriously as we do cars? The fundamental reason kids are dying in massacres like this one is not that we have lunatics or criminals — all countries have them — but that we suffer from a political failure to regulate guns. Children ages 5 to 14 in America are 13 times as likely to be murdered with guns as children in other industrialized countries, according to David Hemenway , a public health specialist at Harvard who has written an excellent book on gun violence. So let’s treat firearms rationally as the center of a public health crisis that claims one life every 20 minutes. The United States realistically isn’t going to ban guns, but we can take steps to reduce the carnage. American schoolchildren are protected by building codes that govern stairways and windows. School buses must m...

July 24, 2012 By scotmcknight 27 Comments http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2012/07/24/gun-laws/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+PatheosJesusCreed+%28Blog+-+Jesus+Creed%29&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher Sandy Levinson, at Balkinization: Some of this blog’s readers will know that I am against our gun laws — we are a violent society and our violence is magnified by the 2d Amendment’s right to bear arms, a right taken far too liberally in our culture. The issue for me, however, is not simply repealing the 2d Amendment or drastically reducing what constitutes the right to “bear” arms, but how Christians participate. The GOP is in bed with the NRA; the Dems learned from Al Gore’s opposition to gun laws, which many Dems supported, that they can’t win elections with that platform. So today no party is willing to re-examine our gun laws. The reality is similar with regard to firearms, including the ones used in Aurora. For better or wor...