More Christianity in the Public Square Will Never Prevent Gun Violence

Here’s your daily reminder that not everyone with an opinion deserves to be taken seriously.

The Jefferson City (Missouri) News Tribune published a letter to the editor yesterday from Don Fleener, a man who has many thoughts about the causes of mass shootings… all of which are horrible.

He insists guns aren’t the issue. It’s really the lack of God.

Let’s walk through parts of this one…

… are these [shooters] Christians or people that believe in Christian doctrine? After having a discussion with an atheist friend I think they are not. Christian doctrine says do not kill and that there is an accountability after death of heaven or hell. The atheist believes after death there is nothing.

Every religion has some version of “do not kill” — it’s a Humanist position, too — and yet, to quote George Carlin, “More people have been killed in the name of God than for any other reason.” Just because it’s written on the Ten Commandments doesn’t stop Christians from murdering abortion doctors. As for mass shooters, they tend to lack a real community of any kind. That includes non-theistic ones. Some shooters have quoted Bible verses, but it’d be wrong to suggest they had somehow reconciled their Christian faith with their actions. They are more likely to be apatheistic than atheistic.

My belief is that if a person is having a troubled life and just want nothingness they can go out in a burst of glory to nothingness without an accountability after death. What is the reason not to commit a mass killing if you believe in nothingness?

That sentence may be the scariest one in this letter. Apparently, the only thing stopped Don Fleener from committing a mass murder is religion, and we all know how flimsy those beliefs can be… Somehow, millions of atheists who don’t believe in “accountability after death” live peaceful lives with no desire to hurt others.

The Democratic Party and much of the news media wish to divert the attention away from Christian ethics and divert them to possession of firearms instead of evil hearts. Creating more laws on ownership of firearms to try and stop mass killings is a fool’s errand; we already have a law against killing. Has that stopped mass killings?

Allowing Christian ethic back into the schools and colleges may help to change the evil hearts.

It’s not a fool’s errand. Gun bans worked pretty damn well in Australia after Port Arthur. Violence wouldn’t end, but mass violence as we’ve seen it would drop precipitously.

What we do know is that more religion hasn’t done a damn thing. The U.S. is more religious (and more Christian) than most nations in the world and we have, by far, the most gun violence. Nations that are less religious don’t have the same problem.

Anyway, all of this should be obvious by now to anyone who’s read anything about the subject in the past two decades. Fleener should put down his Bible and pick up something useful instead. He has plenty of confidence but none of the wisdom to justify it.

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