Theology in the Raw - 811: #711 - God and Guns in America: Dr. Michael Austin

Episode Date: August 17, 2020

Mike Austin is the author of the book "God and Guns in America" Mike navigates this super touchy subject with grace and wisdom, not coming down hard on either extreme: "Take away all the guns!" or "More guns = less crime!" Mike is a philosopher, so he carefully considers all sides and arguments of the gun debate.

Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. I have on the show today, Dr. Michael Austin. Mike is a professor of philosophy at Eastern Kentucky University, and he is the author of God and Guns in America. Now, he has a very well thought out, I would say, for lack of better terms, balanced perspective on the volatile debate about guns in America. He is a Christian. He is a very thoughtful guy. He's an author of 12 books, including his most reason book, God and Guns in America. And I had a wonderful time talking to Mike. I love how careful and gracious of a thinker he is. So you can check out more about Michael Austin's work at michaelwaustin.com.

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further ado, let's get to know the one and only Dr. Michael Austin. All right. Hey, friends, I'm here with Mike Austin, author of God and Guns in America. Mike, thank you for being on the show. And my first question is, do we have a gun problem in America and how do we go about fixing it? We'll start off with a nice and easy question. Yeah, good. Thanks for having me on. Yeah, I'd actually say we have multiple types of gun problems, right? So I'm a philosopher. I'll be annoying that way. And that there are a lot, I think there are piecemeal ways we can address it.

So big picture kind of stuff. It's close to 40,000 people a year now due to gun violence, die due to gun violence every year. And that's been steadily increasing over the years. It surpassed death by auto accidents in recent years. And I would say, I think one thing a lot of people, it doesn't get discussed as much. Roughly two-thirds of those deaths are by suicide. And so there might be different ways to address that than some of these other concerns. The mass shootings get, when they happen periodically, all the publicity and all the discussion about background checks and other things. And I think there's, of course, there's, I think there's merit to some of those policy changes, but at the core, you know, we can resolve, we don't resolve, we can reduce deaths

by gun violence if we do two things, right? If the church is more the church and there's more therapeutic interventions with people and if guns in homes are stored safely. So you're not advocating for reducing the number of guns, just more responsible possession or use of them? Or is it a both and? Yeah, I don't even know how. I mean, there's so many guns in America, right? I mean, I think more guns are the same number of guns as people, although the people that actually own them, they're a small number that own a large amount of guns. So, an example, a guy, an acquaintance of mine in town, someone else, a mutual acquaintance, told me he has about a quarter of a million dollars worth of guns in a safe in his house.

And so that's a lot of guns one guy's got. a lot of guns that one guy's got. So yeah, in some ways, I think we should reduce the number of guns only because that allows ease of access and they get into the hands of, easily get into the hands of people who will use them for, you know, immoral purposes. But the primary argument of the book in terms of policy is that, you know, we can reduce gun violence while protecting the rights of responsible gun owners and that followers of Christ have really good reasons grounded in their faith to do that. So there are policies, there are moral and spiritual things to address, right? It's a big thing, but we can make progress. Can you speak to like what specific maybe gun law reforms you would see as most urgent?

I've heard that like at gun, is it gun fairs or something where it's really easy to get a gun or lack, you know, background checks or somebody has had some mental health issues in the past that that sometimes doesn't go checked. Am I along the right lines here or what would you say? Yeah. Improving gun laws? Yeah, I think that's one thing that could be done. People call it the background check loophole, right? So if you go to a federally licensed gun dealer, they do a check. But several years ago, there's this huge open-air sort of,

I don't know what to call it, flea market thing near our house. And we walked, and there are guns just everywhere sitting out. Huge open air sort of, I don't know what to call it, flea market thing near our house. And we walked to one, and there are guns everywhere, I mean, just everywhere sitting out. And I grew up in Kansas, so I'm sort of used to that. But then I moved because of school to L.A. and then Boulder, Colorado. A little bit different approach to guns there. But yeah, anybody can just walk up and buy one. So I work some now with Everytown for gun safety. And one thing that they're advocating that I think is good is just make the background checks actually universal.

That's not going to solve everything because there's no perfect law, but it will reduce gun violence to some degree. So that's one. I also one thing that I think is more urgent even than that is to have some kind national, or at least through all 50 states, what's commonly called red flag laws, or extreme risk protection orders. So this is where a family member, healthcare professional, police, a friend can say this person is a danger to themselves or others, and they would get their, if they have guns, they're removed from their custody from anywhere, depending on how they can get into court, a few days to two weeks.

And if there's evidence, then they're removed from their custody until they're capable to have them again. A key thing there is you want due process because you don't just want to be able to remove, you know, have your guns removed just because your neighbor is mad at you about, you know, mowing a swath into their yard or whatever. So part of that is you have to have actual evidence and provide it. But I think, look, the states where that's happened, Maryland is one of the earliest ones to adopt it. A sheriff in Montgomery County, Maryland, I believe, said out of the first 305 that were valid, five of those were potential school shootings that were averted. So that one, I think, can um have an important impact fairly quickly what is it true that most people that um are using guns to shoot people like you know illegal use of guns to kill people um or well

let's leave aside the suicide one for a second would you say that criminals um using guns would um are they buying guns legally would gun laws even um even if we made guns illegal you know what would that reduce the number of criminal activity with a gun is there what's the evidence say on that is there evidence what are your thoughts on that yeah it's a hard question because there are so many guns i think a lot i mean there are a lot of guns sold illegally um but there it could actually there's evidence like the city of milwaukee is a good example so a few years ago there's one dealer within the city limits was selling a lot of what are called junk guns right without really doing background checks so a large number of cheap guns found their way into the city.

And then once they clamped down on that, there was, and this is from memory, so roughly a 30% drop in gun crimes just because of that. I mean, people made that connection because it was such a big supplier. So part of the problem is buying them illegally. And so you've got to have, that's why just having the background checks, not going to solve it because there are a lot of guns out there in circulation right now. With that in mind, it would be a longer term thing that is guns become less available illegally. We might see more impact over 10 or 20 years, but yeah, I mean,

but the other, another problem is people who who wouldn't who can't pass a background check they have like straw purchasers um so someone will buy the gun for them you know go through the background check and sometimes it's really obvious they'll come into this is why this one gun shop got in trouble people would come in it was clear they were buying it for this other guy and they would just run through it and here you go so yeah that's why it's a hard issue because there's you know when you've got that many people can get them but there's evidence that you can reduce it right i think we always want to think well if we just do this we're going to solve it but you know there's

a policy angle we can take but there are other ones as well that are probably i would say actually more important but we'd love your thoughts on a couple slogans number one um guns don't kill people people kill people if they don't have a gun they'll use something else is that yeah that valid or uh i have a whole chapter in the book on slogans like that and luckily enough for me that's one of them um and that's one you know it's sort of the it's valid in a sense because it's true but of course the response is, if you want to like just marketing or trafficking cliches, you have people kill people with guns and it's a lot easier to do it. Right.

They're much more efficient. So, you know, I had, I debated a guy several years ago in print and he said something, you know, take away guns, people use knives, take away knives, they'll use rocks. Are you going to ban rocks? Cause you know, Cain killed Abel with a rock. I'm like, well, yeah, but guns are more effective, right, at killing. And so I think, especially from a Christian perspective, this is what I find really, I guess, interesting is it sort of cuts against certain kind of theology, right? We think human beings are fallen, and yet many people who would agree with that want sort of unfettered access to to weapons that can do a lot of damage so um people i i think we can we can make it

difficult more difficult for people to express that fallen nature um using a gun so yeah i would say there's merit in it but you know you could say the same people don't kill or, you know, people don't wait. Nuclear weapons don't kill people. People do. Well, I don't want my neighbor to have, you know, weapon of mass destruction. So, of course, that's extreme. But I'm just trying to point out the flaw in reasoning. It just seems like, from my vantage point, a little too overly simplified.

Almost non-falsifiable, right? It's like, I mean, you're a philosophy guy. It's like, well, of course, people kill people. But that's kind of like, it's kind of a red herring to the actual deeper, complicated questions that we need to get at. Yeah, and there are some of those on both sides. And look here, and so here's an example

of maybe why that's important. The guy, you know, back at the, when the Newtown shooting happened in Connecticut several years ago, there was a school attack that same day in China, a knife attack. Well, nobody died. I mean, people were injured, but nobody actually died in that knife attack compared to what happened in Newtown, Connecticut that day. So the point's not that we should ban guns. It's not my claim.

But they're deadly all right and if we can you know so that sort of reasoning that people kill people guns don't kill people people do well yeah but they make it really easy for someone intent on doing so to harm a lot of people quickly right right there's also and i don't know if there there's been studies done on this i'm sure there has or if you can measure it but there's something i don know, like psychologically altering or powerful with having a gun in your hands. I'll never forget. So I own a few guns. I don't shoot people with them.

I believe in nonviolence. It'd be impossible for me to use them on an intruder because I don't believe I should. And I'll get some emails for that. But what was I going to say oh but i so we do a lot of hiking in the mountains here and there's there's some pretty aggressive wolves up in the idaho mountains and it's it's you know you go in the back country and it could be uh somewhat dangerous i i don't i don't have the same moral qualms shooting an animal that i do shooting a

human um so i so i went and bought a handgun okay nine millimeter to backpack with um and even me as somebody who believes in non-violence who would never in principle use this on a person i'll never forget walking out of that store which was incredibly easy to get by the way and in idaho i can carry it loaded with a bullet in the chamber on my holster open in downtown boise and there's no they changed the law a few years ago, which to me, uh, makes me nervous, uh, quite honestly. But, um, um, there was something, I don't know, in my own psyche, even given my worldview, there was something that just, I, there was just sense of like power that I felt even driving home. Like, man, if somebody flipped me off, they think that, you know, like, and I, i just felt that kind of like adrenaline almost i

mean is that is is there something to the almost unquantifiable psychological power that comes with somebody walking around packing a nine i mean i don't know yeah i think you know i mean of course it's a case-by-case basis but i think there is something to that you know there's a documentary a few years ago called armor of light about a guy named rob shank i don't know if you've seen that i'm good friends with rob yeah okay good yeah so i've gotten to know him over the years and work some with the dietrich bonhoeffer institute but yeah he in the video and in one of his books he talks about shooting i can't remember if it was an ar-15 but they're at the range firing guns and he just talked about the adrenaline and the the and those kinds of things. And so I grew up in Kansas.

I grew up hunting around guns. I own a shotgun. So that's a little different because the kind of gun culture I grew up around was primarily about hunting. And so I meant there's this, there's been this shift, people call a shift in America from gun culture 1.0 to gun culture 2.0. 2.0 is more about self-defense. And so I think, I think that's more relevant to what you're talking about. And yeah, there is something to it. In fact, what's interesting, some of the military training, this relates to the character and sort of that, how that impacts your psyche. You know, some of the people, the training in the military that started happening because of the low firing rates,

like there were, I want to say, 10% to 15% in World War I. This is like verifiable, and the military has accepted it, of soldiers actually fired at the enemy. They either wouldn't fire their guns, they would fire into the air. So they adjusted their training. By Vietnam, it was a 95% firing rate. A couple of things helped them. One of them was the type of training they did where they create a conditioned reflex to shoot, right? Without

thinking about what you're doing, which is understandable because you're trying, you know, to be an effective soldier, you need to do that. But the unfortunate by-product is that leads to a dehumanization of the other, right? You're not even thinking about them as human. And then the other thing to do with that, and this is more a moral question, is if you can dehumanize the other by their less moral or subhuman, so racist epithets, things like that. The reason I bring this up, and this is talked about by military authors, so it's not controversial in that sense.

It's not like a pacifist just railing on the military. They accept it, right? Those same things are present in gun culture 2.0. So targets used to be bullseyes, then they were silhouettes. Now some targets that people practice with are photographs of actual human beings that you're practicing shooting. And it's the quick shoot reflex, right? There are these drills where you go through. And then a lot of some of these open carry, and this isn't all gun culture, it's a segment of it, but they talk about themselves. So let's of these open carry, and this is an all-gun culture. It's a segment of it. They talk about themselves. So let's say I open carry.

I'm one of the sheepdogs, right? The other guys don't carry. They're sheep that I'm protecting. And then the bad guys are the wolves. And so I think all that stuff together is problematic from a Christian point of view. Because look, and I'm not a pacifist, but I've moved a lot closer to it actually doing the work on this book. And even since then, I just bought like four or five books that a Mennonite pastor friend of mine suggested. So I've been saying I'm not a pacifist yet because I feel like it's coming.

I'm about as close as you can get without it. But anyway, and I don't even know what I was talking about. Well, let me throw another slogan out. Yeah, go ahead. That's good. This is the one I hear a lot. The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a... Good guy with a gun, yeah. And that's another one I deal with

and that's demonstrably false. I give several cases where people have stopped bad guys with a gun through actually sometimes nonviolent means. This was several years ago in Atlanta. A guy was in court. Somehow he got a hold of a bailiff's gun. I think he shot and killed a judge, shot a couple people and escaped. He ended up carjacking a woman.

He's in her apartment. She starts reading to him passages out of all things Rick Warren's A Purpose Driven Life and the Bible. And he ends up letting her go and she calls the police. Um, there was the guy, one of the Waffle House shootings, I think recently, he just overwhelmed the guy physically. Uh, so there's several stories where look, and it's, it's just, it's not the only thing. Um, and so I think just like when you start reading as I am now about the power of nonviolent resistance over the past, even a hundred years, you start realizing there's a power to it that

can actually be effective. I heard a story of a woman who just, a guy broke into her house and she just took a strong authoritative tone. It was like, no, you do not belong here. And it just kind of freaked him out and he left. Now I'm not naive because not everybody's going to do that. But if, if someone's going to rely on a gun, my concern, I think I talk about a lot in the book here is you've got to be well-trained and you've got, there's a lot of conditions. Some of them just, I would argue are moral, some legal, because if you, if you've got a gun in the house, you're, you're realizing, and there are terrible stories like this, you might shoot somebody

in your family. You might shoot someone who you think is an intruder who's not. You're willing to kill another person made in God's image in general, criminal or something. And then second to that, there are terrible stories I read about a teenage daughter

popping open out of the closet to scare parents. And then the dad shot her. You know, the last thing she says, well, I love you, daddy. I mean, it's just as a father, you know, it's just like every time I think about that, it just makes me sick. And so I think we just, it all mixes together, right? America, we have this unique relationship to the gun. I mean, I grew up, I was in high school in the 80s. So like loved Miami Vice and thought that was so cool. And that forms our psyche.

Right. The cool guy with a gun that you don't mess with. Tombstone's one of my favorite movies. So I'm not. But, you know, there's this. I'm sorry. That's such a good movie. It is. OK, so I am a I don't like the term pacifist but for lack of better terms crystal i believe in crystal centric non-violence um tombstone and gladiator by two of my favorite movies and i i guess i can get away with it because these are historic right the fact is guns and violence and murder and all this stuff is part of history so understanding the truth of

history doesn't mean you whitewash it you acknowledge acknowledge it and so on. So, um, I don't, yeah, I don't think it's people said I'm inconsistent with my choice of movies and my theological views. I, I don't know. Maybe I am a little bit, I don't know. I don't think I'm fully on, but yeah. Yeah. I love what you said about the scenario. I mean, I've, I've often, I, when you were talking, you've probably read a lot of Ron Sider on this right he's got a whole book on non-violent revolutions and how um i mean from a christian standpoint i've often said i probably got this from somebody else but like christ demands faithfulness not perceived effectiveness even if more times than not killing the bad guy with a gun stops him from killing you that might be perceived as effective

doesn't mean it's faithful um you know and obviously there's so many passages in the new testament i could cite to faithfulness leading to death you know i mean yeah so um but even that that scenario of good guy with a gun bad guy with a gun good guy guy with a gun, good guy whips it out, kills bad guy, or somebody breaking into your house. It's such a two-dimensional scenario. And I was in a blog exchange with Doug Wilson, who we had a debate about guns and Christianity and everything. And he's

a really brilliant guy, you know? Um, but I'm going to bring it up like, you know, that's classic scenario. Someone breaks into your house. What are you going to do? You're going to kill him or let him, you know, rape your family. I'm like, okay, well, I don't know in this world you're creating for me. I have a few questions, you know, do I, I don't have a loaded gun in the house so i wouldn't be able okay let's just pretend you do okay so i keep a loaded gun laying around my house with four children you know do you know the stats on how dangerous that is okay okay it's locked away in the safe i'm like well how can i go to my safe and get you know like in the real world what does this look like okay it's just pretend like you can go to the safe you get it you come out you got a loaded gun he's got a loaded gun what do you do well am i a good shot

in your fictitious scenario yeah you're a great shot well then i'd shoot the gun out of his hand well no no you're not that good of a shot well okay well i'd be scared i'd miss him and hit my kid in the head behind if i'm not a good shot i'm start spraying bullets in my house where are my kids in your the more you start pushing the real world situation let alone the adrenaline and what happens to the human psyche when you're about to pull the trigger in that heated moment i mean trained military snipers say thousands of hours of training i have a buddy who was in um navy seals he was a trained sniper and buds and i mean top of the top he says do you know how incredibly hard it is to pull that trigger

and the psychological impact that you live with for the rest of your life even in a quote good kill to think that you're just like from the hip bam got the bad guy like that is so shaped by um an american myth and i don't mean myth as in completely untrue, but I'll say American narrative that doesn't represent the full complexity of real life. Anyway, this is your interview, not my interview. No, that's good. It's something I had to think through a lot because, you know, as I had sort of just war justified violence intuitions and beliefs over the years and just you know it's one of those things where it just seemed obvious right i remember we had a debate like we would do these on campus our philosophy department and i took this sort of

just war position and you know i said what are you going to do i mean i just it just seemed obvious to me and then you know then you actually start thinking and reading and really more than anything it was scripture that's pushed me to what this view i call peace building in the book which would push me which is about as close to the pacifist or christocentric non-violence right as you can get without being it and i think that's something that i think we have to take much more seriously as american christians because the the triumphalism the yeah the uncritical acceptance of a lot of slogans, both left and right, but honestly, especially among evangelicals, it's primarily the right leaning slogans and with guns that, that we accept.

There's just a lot of like, well, let's just step back a minute and how have we been formed? Well, you know, good for good and bad. And what do we do with that? And this, the, yeah, I just think it breaks the way people talk. And this is something you see people talk on social media. And this is, I actually discussed this a little bit in the book, the way Christians talk about their guns. You know, I bought this new, here's my new gun and it'll stop a bad, you know, this guy in his tracks or my wife's gun pistol. Don't mess with her.

I'm just like, if you're going to take a gun in your hand as a Christian and you feel like that's something that you are led or permitted or obligated to do, that is so serious. It's not, you know, it's just, it's minimized. So like, just like killing, you know, I killed a bad guy in my house. Well, yeah. And then like, you're just going to not have trouble sleeping that night. I mean, it's not, you know, like your friend the SEAL said. These things have an impact. That's why veterans coming back, a lot of them struggle so much, right,

coming to terms with what they did. And we owe them an incredible debt of gratitude, obviously, for putting their lives on the line to protect so we can sit here and do this stuff. But we don't want to minimize the cost to them of that and how that would impact us who aren't trained. I mean, think about when your adrenaline's rushing. I don't want to have a gun pointed anywhere in the direction of my family because I can't imagine how much fear and adrenaline would be coursing through my veins as an untrained,

you know, untrained in that. Right, right. I mean, the title of your book is God and Guns in America. I mean, the title of your book is God and Guns in America. Can you speak to the conflation, the intertwining of American gun culture and American evangelicalism? It seems like, again, I have not read your book yet. Is that a theme in your book? Do you address that?

And how would you unpack that relationship? Yeah, I do a little bit. A lot of the more God-centered stuff is trying to walk through Scripture and sort of Christian thought about violence and gun violence. But there's a little bit about that. And I think for whatever reason, when you think about the Bible Belt, actually the part of the country I'm in now, there's a strong gun culture. I know there is out West. It's different there in some ways. The Midwest there is. different there in some ways. The Midwest there is. And often that gets intertwined with our faith,

patriotism, family tradition. So I just was telling somebody the other day about this story. Went to the barber before the pandemic. And one of the other barbers, he was talking to the guy in the chair and he says, oh yeah, I've got a gun. He pulls a handgun out of his front pocket. And it was one that's been passed down in his family. And I'm kind of used to it now. But the point of it is that was that was part of like this is like a valued family heirloom, for lack of a better way to put it. Right. So that gets mixed in. A colleague on campus, we were talking about the book briefly. She said, well, I'm looking forward to reading your book because that's what we believe in, God and guns.

And it just I don't know what, I mean, part of me wants to say, this is just an annoying philosophical habit. I don't know what that means to believe in guns. You know, I didn't do that to her because I didn't want to ruin her day. But yeah, it's sort of, somehow it's got intertwined, right? We're, there's these views about America being a nation blessed by God, which it is, obviously, in many ways, just like many other nations are blessed. And then the Second Amendment and guns and self-reliance and doubts about trusting the government. I mean, all that stuff gets mixed in. And evangelicals, I find, are the ones that often are kind of putting forth these cliches or throw out a proof text or two, like it's settled.

And I just want people to, okay, whatever you, will you agree with me or not? Let's just sit back and look at some of these arguments, pro and con, look at the relevant scriptures. Let's come to an informed spirit-led conviction, not just seat of the pants sort of gut reaction. Yeah, that's good. I was meaning to ask you, going back to the gun laws what do you think of ar-15s or so-called assault rifles i know there's a debate about even that phrase

assault i can assault somebody with my single shot 270 it'd do a lot of damage but it's not an assault rifle um yeah or semi-automatic but most gun i mean a handgun sent out semi-automatic, but most guns, I mean, a handgun is semi-automatic. Right. Yeah, anyway, AR-15s, ban them or no? Do you have any thoughts on that? Yeah. Is it a problem having the AR-15s in our country? I mean, I think it is a problem, banning or not.

Here's the difficulty with assault weapons, and I sort of beg off giving a definition of the book. I say we just need to come up with a good one because when you, it's like getting five philosophers in a room, ask them to define justice, right? You're just, you're going to go nuts,

right? People, the assault weapon, when they define it, it's either sometimes it's too narrow or so broad that it like somebody's automatic 22 rifle that you, you know, you give your 10 year old or something fit. So yeah,

it's tough. But I guess my thought is there's some reason why these, why the AR-15 keeps getting used. A guy, a friend of mine who was in the military medic, he said he would never take that gun into combat, right? Because it doesn't have the kind of fire, you know, stopping power or something you would need, but I don't know. It sure is effective in these mass shootings. So yeah, I guess that's an area where I'm not sure. effective in these mass shootings. So yeah, I guess that's an area where I'm not sure. Now you'll be surprised. We're going to get into this topic. I was actually on a podcast the other day. This came up and one of the guys lives in Texas about feral hogs in Texas. Do you know

about this? Like wild hogs, like they're a problem in Texas. And so this guy said, I need my AR-15 because like a massive 50 of these like really dangerous pigs show up in my yard you know like eating my crops or attacking my family you know and people roasted him on twitter but it's actually a real problem and you need an ar-15 for that a good old 270 or uh yeah that's my two probably do the trick but no yeah yeah i got i guess one bullet doesn't bring them down so you need a larger caliber but another guy i know i've been dialogue some on the internet talks about like protecting sheep like literal sheep from coyotes and wolves so i want

to be open to that stuff but yeah i'm just i guess my that's where my skepticism comes in i think i'm not sure you know those are like the exceptions do we need wide access to these and if we're gonna have if we're gonna allow people to have them that's where i would like tighter controls meeting some conditions because they can kill a lot of people in a short amount of time was that matt anderson that said that that's right of course matt you got wild matt you should dig up bowhunting, man. Come on. Bam, bam, bam. Yeah, he was just waiting to pull that one out. That's great.

Me and Matt go way back. We agree on most things in life except for some things surrounding this conversation. Yeah. Yeah, he's a very smart guy. More guns, less crime. I think that's the title of a book actually that i was reading a while back um that if we reduce the number of guns crime's gonna go up and the argument which is actually a good one i think a good i'm not saying i necessarily agree with it but like if you're a criminal and you're going into a neighborhood you're gonna rob um a house if you knew that

everything there was a gun in every one of those houses would you be more likely or less likely to go steal the tv or whatever um i mean that's a good art and just to clarify my own position like i my main focus is on the ethics for the church i am very kind of mennonite issue in that way um i'm an exile living in babylon and i i my main focus is to have a strong exilic community and theology. As far as Babylonian politics and how Babylon can manage its own crime, I don't have the authority or even framework to do that. So in a sense, when it comes to gun laws and all this, I don't have a necessary or particular investment or knowledge. I don't claim to have any knowledge on this.

I'm just a learner. So maybe more guns would mean less crime maybe it wouldn't i just don't think it's ethically right for a christian to shoot people so anyway but in terms of the policy is is that true more guns would equal less crime or is that debating yeah that's pretty highly debated and really there's the main guy that makes that case a guy named john lott yes um he him and gary cleck are kind of the two main sort of researchers and yeah i guess there's look so i think i've read some criticisms of law and some responses and as a philosopher i hesitate to get into all the because i don't understand you know how people crunch numbers and statistics but from reading people that seem to understand it i think i don't buy his research about that there's

an intuitive sense of that right but it looks like the data doesn't show that that's you know that's a minority view it doesn't mean it's false but people that know this stuff argue against it i actually there's a there's a book called the gun debate, what everyone needs to know. Um, it's, it's for normal people, you know, it's not written academics and it's pretty fair. Like it's honest about certain flaws and, you know, gun control policies and talks about what works and what doesn't. That's actually something that helped me a lot. And then I read some other stuff too. I would say this though, that's true, both for, um, both for Babylon and for the church is, number one, American – let's start with America. American democracy aspires to something higher than that.

We don't just want everybody armed and we're just sort of like a detente between two gangs, as one author put it. The book called The Guns Make Us Free, Furman Day Brander. It's hard to say his last name, but it's an excellent book. So that was some, you know, we should aspire to more than that, just in American democracy, right? And then he makes the point, there was a situation, he was in Baltimore where an elderly man, right? People were saying, well, he should have, if he was armed, he would be safe from the gangs around him and the drug gangs. But 20 young guys with guns aren't worried about an 80-year-old guy with a gun, right? I mean, they're not.

He's vulnerable either way. Maybe less so, but I'm skeptical. They're not going to avoid his house. It does also feel a little, again, two-dimensional. More guns, less crime. also feel a little again two-dimensional more guns less crime even if that's true more guns would also mean more accidental shootings more suicides more mistaken identities more shooting somebody who is trying to steal your flat screen and sell it because his family's starving to death and now you kill them that doesn't make stealing right it just means there's a fuller context here

that in the split second decision of i have a gun he's a criminal bam bam justice is done that's not the real world and if again you keep that loaded gun around the house so that you can grab it quickly when the guy's breaking in you now put your risk kids at a much much higher risk um or if it's in the car and your car gets jacked now you have an illegal gun you know there's just there's even if the narrow binary of more guns less crime that doesn't solve the layers of complexities that come from that i've got questions about this might get us into an area that we're not neither you or i are prepared for i don't know um but i think of um over like fourth of july weekend i there i don't know if it was a record high um because i don't know um but i think of um over like fourth of july weekend i there i don't

know if it was a record high um because i haven't paid attention to every fourth of july in the history of you know since i've been alive but it seems like more people were killed last fourth of july that i have ever seen i mean chicago alone i think 111 people were shot. Something like 18 or 20 were killed. Many of them were underage teenagers and children. Atlanta had a lot. Baltimore, I mean, they're all over the place. And South Chicago obviously has been a hot place for loads of gun violence. How do we address that, man and it includes race conversations it includes

poverty conversations so i know it's it's probably really complex but do you have any thoughts on kind of like yeah that kind of gun violence going on in america yeah and it's it's the past like this past month this was actually prior to the july 4th weekend so it probably even worse now so chicago new york philadelphia i think atlanta three but at least those first three jumped to mind there's recent story gun like the number of shootings is up 45 to 55 percent over just a year ago um now i think what's we've got this pandemic stuff in the mix too people are just i mean we all you know i've got it pretty easy in the mix, too. I've got it pretty easy.

I can still teach, and I've done my job. But there are times where I'm just like, I'm sick of this. I've got these pent-up emotions and stuff. There's a ton of stuff there, but it doesn't have to be that way. The July 4th stuff, different parts of the country, it's like, we celebrate July 4th, you know, shoot your gun into the air. So guns are, you know, people are drinking kids around guns are out, bad things are going to happen accidentally. Um, and then just, yeah, like all those cases you mentioned. So the poverty, yeah,

this is where I just think the solution has got to be, it can't be just policy and it can't just be changing, you know, people's heart, one person at a time with a gospel. It's gotta be all that stuff plus a bunch more, you know? So there are people doing really good work, churches on the ground in these communities being, you know, if we can resource them more addressing poverty, addressing the mental health issues, addressing, you know, they, people that feel hopeless or, you know, there's the drug. I mean, all kinds of stuff lead into gun violence. And so I'm not naive enough to think you make it harder to get a gun.

That's going to solve it. But that's one small piece. I would actually prefer, I mean, if I could, if it was up to me, if I was like king for a day, there were some policy things I'd change, but I would go more at the, what I think of as the moral and spiritual issues, right? Yeah, let's just, what's eliciting so much violence and careless violence out of the human heart, and how can we address that? And individually and on a social basis. I love what you said address the heart issue among individuals who are being raised in this environment now you need structural change

obviously um but it's a both and this is this is the problem i see i don't know in some of the race conversations happening today it's like either it's all individual responsibility or it's all structural and you kind of take away human agency and or individual agency and i just it's camping either or i just see this pendulum yeah back and forth and it's so sad the farther you read on the left or the right the farther on the right then it's like all individual there's no structural problems farther on the left it's almost like there is we're just a bunch of robots defined by our group identity, and there is no individual moral responsibility. It has to be both, right? It has to be. I cannot say it's both.

Yeah, I'm with you on that for sure. Yeah, and I think Chicago is a case where people often say, look, gun laws don't work because Chicago has strict ones and gun violence is rampant. This is one where there was a study, I think, of guns confiscated by the police in 2006, 2011, something like that. 30% of those guns came from one gun shop, traced back to one gun shop outside of the city limits, I think in Indiana. Yeah, Chicago is minutes away from Indiana. Yeah, exactly. So it's like saying, yeah, it actually makes the case for more widespread restrictions on who can get a gun or the conditions.

Because, look, for anything, okay, I can't get them here. Well, I'll go down there and buy 100 and then sell them on the streets or whatever. But anyway, yeah. Yeah, this is why it seemed like, and again, this is way outside my area, but it seemed like laws would have to be made at a federal level because we live in such close proximity to other states. I mean, on another level, it's like Idaho doesn't have, marijuana is still illegal in

idaho well i live 45 minutes from the border of oregon it's funny the freeway coming in in ontario oregon the last stop before you come into idaho there's this massive pot dispensary there you know it's almost like they have a drive-thru i don't know if they have a drive-thru yeah go in grab it's like well i'm not saying it doesn't help or whatever if people in idaho think it still should be illegal but it's like i don't know like it's not that hard to get around it on a legal level let alone you know obviously buying stuff illegally whether it's guns or pot or whatever but um right uh man well um Man, well, one more question.

I mean, it has to do again with the church and the gun culture. Have you experienced just a lot of just heatedness, emotional attachment to like the Second Amendment in ways that are unhealthy? And where did that come from? And how do we, again, not, how do we, I'm not saying at all, how do we do away with the second amendment, but maybe dethrone it. So that it's not like, you know, 11th commandment in the Bible or something. Yeah. That's something that has bothered me, especially among evangelicals who were in part of the sort of taking scripture seriously, really have a view of the Bible and those kind of things, and yet there's this appeal to the Second Amendment like that settles the issue.

Now, it does legally, especially given Supreme Court decisions in 2008, 2010, about the individual right to own a gun. But, of course, as Christians, that's important for us as American Christians, but much more important is, well, what does Scripture say? How do I answer these questions as a follower you know, how do I answer these questions from, from the person, from, as a follower of Jesus, how do I answer these questions? That's what matters more. And so, you know, actually Rob Shing, you hear him say occasionally we've replaced the second commandment with the second amendment, right? And there's something to that, right? And we just, I mean, yeah, I look at the constitution.

I'm, I'm good with it. Right. I'm not, I don't ask for banning the Second Amendment or, you know, thinking, of course, our country, I mean, we see this now, a mix of good and bad, a terrible legacy in many ways. We don't live up to our ideals. But if I'm a Christian, it doesn't, and that's not the question. It's the spiritual question that, it's the, I mean, I hate to use this old, old slogan is the, what would Jesus do kind of question, right? And I just struggle on, this is probably what pushes me more to, to nonviolence is I really struggled to see if Jesus was here today. It's hard to see him carrying a gun. I just can't picture that. And so that's what, that's what challenges me the most as a follower, a follower of Christ, right? So it's to live his

life as if, or live my life as if he were in my shoes. And that's a tough one. Well, one more quick political question, because you might be more knowledgeable on this than I do. You know, I've heard mostly conservatives or Republican Christians say, man, these liberals, these Democrats, they're just going to take away our guns. They say they're not, but they are.

And they, you know, I've heard soundbites of people saying, yeah, absolutely just going to take away our guns. They say they're not, but they are. I've heard soundbites of people saying, yeah, absolutely, I'll take away your guns. I think Beto O'Rourke or others, you know, quotes it. Do you think, I mean, is that just from a purely political perspective, if, say, Biden gets elected or say there's a lot of, you know, or maybe it's not Biden, maybe it's the next one or whatever. Do you think that's a real possibility that they would make guns either very, very, very hard to get or they would literally come and take away people's guns? Or do you think that's just a fear kind of tactic? Yeah, I think in general, it's a fear tactic.

I mean, there surely are people in the Democratic Party, broadly speaking, who want that, who, you know, would want to repeal the Second Amendment. But look, I mean, in the United States, I'm not worried about if Biden gets elected, you know, any more than, I mean, look, they're all worried about it when Obama, you know, we still have our guns and actually gun sales and ammunition sales. I mean, my dad talked about he couldn't get ammunition for his shotgun because whenever it was available, people buy it up because they're coming, right? So look, of course that's a right enshrined in the Constitution. It's not easy just because someone takes power as a political party to get rid of it. It's going to have to go through the Supreme Court.

But look, I think out of the two parties, Democrats are more willing to do some of these things, although there is, from my experience, doing a little work in D.C. on this issue, both Republicans and Democrats are open to like the red flag law. That's one reason I think there is some common ground where we can take guns out of people's hands who are demonstrably a danger to themselves or others. But yeah, I think just like people, it's just like everything else. It's like the liberals, this, the Democrats, that the Republicans, this, and as a, someone who identifies as a moderate and is registered independent, I get the joy of just saying you're all wrong.

You know, just all, just stop it. And I really bothers me when Christians do that. It just, especially with like the Democrats or this or the liberals or the lefties. I'm like, come on, man. Just let's. Yeah, we have disagreement. Let's do better. So, no, I'm not worried about that.

Now, who knows in 50 or 100 years. But look, right now, it'd be political suicide to do that in America. But there is broad. I mean, surveys show most people want more restrictions while protecting the right. And I think it'd be smart to do that and right. Yeah, that's, yeah, I'm 100% with you on politics. That's exactly where I'm at. I just, yeah, I just imagine a scenario when people say,

oh, they're going to come take away our guns. I'm like, if that went down in Idaho or Texas, do you know that that would be World War III? There are more. The average person in Idaho, I swear, owns 50 guns. I mean, I don't know if it's a stat, but it's everybody I meet has, like you said, your friend with $1,500. That's like, oh, dude, I got people that would go far. They just collect guns like baseball cards.

Like I used to collect baseball cards, you know. And they're, you know, the government's not going to tell me what to do. Like that would be not just political suicide. It would be all out literal war. I mean, yeah. Yeah. I think left or right fear.

You want to get people to give money and support you on fears affected. Right. So both sides use it. And I just think it's overblown. Yeah. Mike, thanks so much for being on the show and thank you for your work. If you want to support this, uh,

channel, you can go to, uh, patreon.com forward slash theology in the raw, um, to support both the podcast and the YouTube conversation. Uh, Mike,

um, any blessings on your future work in this area and beyond. Yep. Thanks. Appreciate it. Preston. Thank you.