A Craven Madness

For God did not give us a craven spirit, 

but rather a spirit of power 

and of love 

and of self-discipline.
II Timothy 1:7

I have been thinking about the children and teachers who were killed at the Sandy Hook Elementary School, six years ago today.

But those reflections led me to another multiple shooting.

My guess is that you do not remember the May 23, 2014 killings in Isla Vista, California.

Neither did I.

There are so many killings, it’s hard to keep track.

I came across a reference to Isla Vista as I was researching gun control issues in relation to Sandy Hook.

I found that I wrote a blog post about it at the time, but I still had only the vaguest recollection. The bare facts are that a 22 year old young man named Elliot Rodger killed six people and injured fourteen others before killing himself. 

In a manifesto he posted on “You Tube,” he called his plan “Rodger’s Retribution.” He said he planned to punish women for rejecting his sexual advances, and men for having more active sex lives than he did.

In the days following the killings, a Facebook “friend” had posted a link to Richard Martinez’s impassioned plea for gun control in the aftermath of his son’s death in Isla Vista, 

In a series of interviews, Martinez had called out the “gutless politicians” whose unwillingness to implement any meaningful restrictions in the availability of firearms was a major factor in his son’s killing. "Why did Chris die?" he yelled in one interview. "Chris died because of craven, irresponsible politicians and the NRA. They talk about gun rights. What about Chris' right to live?"

Near that same time, another “friend” posted a link to an article in The Onion. I love the satire in The Onion, but this seemed in very bad taste. Above a picture of grieving college students was the headline: “‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens.” The article is short and it isn’t funny at all.

ISLA VISTA, CA—In the days following a violent rampage in southern California in which a lone attacker killed seven individuals, including himself, and seriously injured over a dozen others, citizens living in the only country where this kind of mass killing routinely occurs reportedly concluded Tuesday that there was no way to prevent the massacre from taking place. “This was a terrible tragedy, but sometimes these things just happen and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop them,” said North Carolina resident Samuel Wipper, echoing sentiments expressed by tens of millions of individuals who reside in a nation where over half of the world’s deadliest mass shootings have occurred in the past 50 years and whose citizens are 20 times more likely to die of gun violence than those of other developed nations. “It’s a shame, but what can we do? There really wasn’t anything that was going to keep this guy from snapping and killing a lot of people if that’s what he really wanted.” At press time, residents of the only economically advanced nation in the world where roughly two mass shootings have occurred every month for the past five years were referring to themselves and their situation as “helpless.”

Why are we unable to do anything? Why are we so addicted to guns? And I know that three of the seven victims at Isla Vista were killed with a knife, so we could also ask why we are so addicted to violence. But guns are the common denominator in mass killings over the years.

As comedian John Oliver once observed, "One failed attempt at a shoe bomb and we all take off our shoes at the airport. Thirty-one school shootings since Columbine and no change in our regulation of guns."

After 9/11 we made drastic changes in airport security. Basically, we search everyone. We won’t allow anything more deadly than a paperclip carried on an airplane. We limit shampoo bottles to 3.4 ounces. We won’t let anyone park anywhere near the boarding areas. We tolerate restrictions that once would have seemed bizarre. And we do all of this to prevent another tragedy.

The total death toll on 9/11 was 2,996. The number still looks horrific. Even one death is too many.

But more than 30,000 people die each year in America from firearms. For the math-challenged, that would be ten times as many deaths every year.

About two-thirds of those deaths are suicides. If you don’t care about those deaths (and many don’t) you can feel free to discount them. Nine to ten thousand per year still seems like a lot, but maybe that’s just me.

And yes, I know people die all the time from all sorts of causes. I’m a pastor. I am well acquainted with grief. But that does not seem to me like a good excuse to do nothing.

We have lost approximately half a million lives to firearms since 9/11. This is madness. To borrow the word shared by Mr. Martinez and the Apostle Paul, this is craven madness.





Thank you for reading. Your thoughts and comments are always welcome. Please feel free to share on social media as you wish.

*Parts of this post were originally published in May of 2014.

Their Blood Cries Out from the Ground

When they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel, and killed him. Then the Lord said to Cain, “Where is your brother Abel?” He said, “I do not know; am I my brother’s keeper?” And the Lord said, “What have you done? Listen; your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground!” 
Genesis 4:8-10 

The images of the Boston Marathon bombing are everywhere. But maybe most of all, they are inside of our heads. I am guessing that everyone reading this can stop and call to mind the images from Monday. The pictures of the explosion. The wounded being taken to hospitals. The man holding tight to another man’s severed artery. And the pictures of those who died.

At Yankee Stadium they played “Sweet Caroline” as a tribute to the people in Boston. On The Daily Show Jon Stewart spoke about the rivalry between New York and Boston, and he said that in times like this we are reminded that it is “a sibling rivalry.” And later this morning, President Obama will lead a healing service for the people of Boston.

A small army of investigators is hard at work, carefully examining video tapes and picture, interviewing witnesses, and piecing together the evidence that will lead them to find the killer. No stone will be left unturned. No expense will be spared.

In the meantime . . . If the hours and days since the marathon have been average days in America, then there have been nearly 100 gun murders since the bombs exploded, and there have been nearly 500 people wounded by guns. And over 150 people have used a gun to commit suicide.

In their books on early Christianity, John Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg draw a sharp contrast between the Roman Empire and the Christian vision of the Kingdom of God. The Roman Empire, and every empire, is characterized by what they call “the normalcy of violence.” The Kingdom of God presents a radically different alternative based on non-violence and peace through justice.

In the United States we are so accustomed to gun violence that most of the time it seems “normal” to us. We are willing to stand in line at airports and have our clothing and baggage searched in order to prevent the violence of “terrorism.” But we are unwilling to cause even a small inconvenience in order to reduce the routine terrorism of gun violence.

Yesterday, with the images of Boston still playing in our minds, we watched the United States Senate fail to adopt a measure to provide universal background checks for gun sales. In an Op-Ed piece in the New York Times, Gabrielle Giffords wrote:

“Senators say they fear the N.R.A. and the gun lobby. But I think that fear must be nothing compared to the fear the first graders in Sandy Hook Elementary School felt as their lives ended in a hail of bullets. The fear that those children who survived the massacre must feel every time they remember their teachers stacking them into closets and bathrooms, whispering that they loved them, so that love would be the last thing the students heard if the gunman found them.”

And the Lord said, “What have you done? Listen; your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground!”