Steve Heronemus

A Radical Christian Response to Gun Ownership

I hate that I have to write on the topic of gun “rights” again. (www.steveheronemus.com/undercurrent/guns-do-kill) I hate that precisely nothing has happened to stem the tide of mass shootings since that post. And I hate that I have to write the word “hate”, which I use almost never. 
To every person in support of gun ownership rights, please consider this: Defending gun ownership is a particularly un-Christian position. You are not loving your neighbor as yourself and you are not working to make God’s kingdom come here on earth. 
Defending your “right” to own a gun for some perceived notion self-defense results in guns being available to the general public, and the general public loses 40,000 lives every year to gun deaths. What you are saying by claiming a “need” to own a gun is that you value your life more highly than the lives of those 40,000 people and their loved ones left behind. You are loving yourself and your own more than you love those others. 
Every time we speak the Lord’s Prayer, we ask for God’s kingdom to come here on earth just like in heaven. Nowhere in my understanding of heaven is it a place where guns exist, therefore every Christian ought to work for the eradication of private gun ownership. Guns are ultimately a symbol of power, and power belongs solely with God. Any power you try and claim for yourself is sinful and idolatrous. 
No private citizen “needs” to own a gun. No Christian can rightly justify a “right” for gun ownership.