Beating Guns

by Shane Claiborne

  We love seeing artists share their work that speaks to gun violence and peacemaking—from dozens of shovels being formed out of bulldozed guns in South America to a giant plowshare in Virginia made from weapons confiscated in Washington, DC, to bombshells in the Middle East with “Made in USA” stamped on the side being turned into planters. America is infected with violence, and art points the way to the cure. It’s work like this that allows changing swords to plows to even exist. It dreams of neighborhood block parties with balloons instead of bullets. The art is prophetic because it has escaped to the wilderness and is begging us to create communities that value life over ego. Artistic expressions of changing swords to plows have been happening for a long time. Micah and Isaiah have an idea of what that healing process might look like.

  THE NARROW WAY THAT LEADS TO LIFE

  But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. (Matt. 5:39)

  Calvary (2018), bullet shells [Paul Villinski]

  Celtic (2018), decommissioned firearms [Paul Villinski]

  It’s a process—a Jesus process—this art of loving your enemy and turning the other cheek. These are the prerequisites for sitting under a vine and fig tree without fear. It’s not so much that we are never afraid or anxious but that love is stronger than our fear. Fear does not have to control us and change the nature of who we are.

  Poet and pastor Dale Fredrickson says, “My heart is a fragile trigger.”3 There is a trigger in all of our hearts. When we are under our own vine and fig tree and able to say that we are in fear of nothing, it’s because fear is no longer allowed to pull the trigger of our hearts. This is not some magical state we attain and then keep forever. It’s a never-ending process and discipline of resilience that is impossible without the support of a community. In fact, without the support of a community, any one of us is capable of pulling a trigger on a gun. Gun triggers are just as easy to pull as the triggers in our hearts.

  Changing swords to plows is about the holy, sacramental work of transforming hearts as much as it is about transforming metal. The questions we’ll raise in this book go to the very heart of what it means to be free. Is true freedom having a right to own a gun, or is true freedom the ability to live unarmed and fearless, refusing to fight violence on its own terms? Perhaps it is the powerful realization that our faith does not rest in “chariots and horses,” or in handguns or assault rifles. Beating guns is about creating a community—a world—where gun violence is a thing of the past, where we study violence no more.

  Nobody likes gun violence. And lots of people have their own ideas on how to stop gun violence (including owning more guns). There must be a comprehensive effort that transforms a country plagued by violence, a country that uses a gun as its primary tool for carrying out that violence. Communities of faith have an opportunity to step up right now, to lean into the wisdom of those prophets of old and allow them to lead us toward a world of plows instead of a world of swords and guns. The prophets of old can inspire us to raise up new visions of how we can build a world where everyone is under the vine and fig tree without fear.

  As with all fruit, the seeds only exist in tandem with the fruit. As the fig tree needs time to mature and produce fruit, so we need time to shift our imagination and create practical alternatives to guns and gun violence.

  Once a fig tree is mature and produces fruit, it must be cared for. If neglected, it retreats to a state where it cannot produce fruit. It can take many years to be fruitful again. The same is true for the survivors of gun violence. The trauma is everlasting. Recent studies show that grandchildren of holocaust survivors have inherited trauma.4 Trauma can literally affect our genetic makeup. We owe it to the generations that follow us and to survivors of gun violence to help them with their trauma and to make continual efforts to end gun violence in our country. Let’s start in our neighborhoods by turning guns into garden tools, feathers, and other lovely things that will change what our children inherit. Who knows? Maybe changing swords to plows will be part of the genetic moral makeup of our grandchildren.

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  The Mess We Find Ourselves In

  While they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him. . . . The LORD said, “What have you done? Listen! Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground.”

  —Genesis 4:8, 10

  VIOLENCE IS AS OLD AS HUMANITY. It goes all the way back to the garden of Eden. One of the first stories in the Bible, the inaugural sin outside the garden of Eden, is a brother killing a brother—the ancient story of Cain and Abel.

  The Bible says that Abel’s blood cried out to God from the ground (Gen. 4:10). The blood cried out.

  And the blood has been crying out to God ever since.

  Tubal-Cain was Cain’s descendant. According to Genesis, Tubal-Cain “forged all kind of tools out of bronze and iron” (Gen. 4:22). The ancient historian Josephus regarded him as one of the strongest men in the world, an expert in martial performance, and one of the pioneers of working brass. Not only did Tubal-Cain create and design weapons; he demonstrated better than anyone else how to use them.

  Tubal-Cain is the natural conclusion to a path that started with his ancestor killing his brother. The continual need to have a larger rock than your brother turns into a catapult with a giant boulder, which turns into a cannonball—and eventually the explosive that propels the cannonball is put in the cannonball and called a bomb. And don’t forget that we miniaturized the cannonball into a bullet, to be placed into a weapon that can be held in the palm of our hand.

  There is no room to imagine a garden when your mind is consumed with the next best way to destroy. If all we imagine is the martial performance necessary to harm our adversary, exact our revenge, or engage an intruder, there is little room to imagine a performance of another Spirit.

  Today we recognize the dangers of guns when they get in the wrong hands. Everyone admits this. The advent of “smart” guns tells us that the industry is aware of a problem. We now have the expertise, but not the incentive, to make guns that work only with a fingerprint reading as you grip it or a ring worn on your trigger finger that tells the gun you are a “safe” shooter, similar to how some phones have fingerprint technology that recognizes their owners. We have smartphones, but why not smarter guns that require fingerprint technology for activation? Some banks even use facial recognition, instead of a password, a pin, or a fingerprint, to access a customer’s account. Imagine what we could do if we used our best minds and best technology to make the world safer. Some within the gun industry resist the idea that this technology is needed, as it can be skewed as one more limitation on an industry that has enjoyed unprecedented exception from any regulation. We need more imagination.

  We are desperate to be able to keep using our guns, to be able to kill our neighbor if we have even a remote sense of fear. Perhaps you remember the fourteen-year-old boy in Michigan who missed his school bus and went to a nearby home to ask directions, only to find himself running for his life as the homeowner shot at him with a shotgun.1 This is the world we’ve created. It’s not hard to imagine a remix of Matthew 25 where Jesus says, “When I was a stranger, I came to you in need . . . and you pulled a gun on me.”

  We have trained ourselves to defend, so much so that a knock on our door means we grab our gun. Recently, in Colorado Springs a man shot his stepdaughter as she was sneaking back in the house after curfew because he thought she was an intruder.2 Americans are encouraged to impulsively grab a gun because, in an active robbery, a victim only has seconds to respond and yet the police are minutes away. But we must search our imagination for alternatives to this fear-based response.

  Then there is another Colorado Springs man, Mel Bernstein, often called “the most armed man in America,” who is a gun-shop owner and who has acquired more than four thousand weapons—from machine guns, to bazookas and flamethrowers, to tanks and attack jeeps (jeeps armed with loaded machine
guns). And it’s all legal.

  We Have a Problem

  The United States is the most dangerous industrialized country in the world. When all the murders of civilians in all the developed countries of the world are tabulated, 86 percent occur in the United States.3 Of all the children killed in the world’s twenty-three developed countries, 87 percent are American children.4

  We may not all agree on how to solve the problem. Some say more guns will help: “The answer to a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” Others will say more regulations or tighter restrictions.

  We may not all even agree on what the problem is. Some folks say it is a gun problem. Others say it’s a heart problem: “Guns don’t kill; people kill.”

  MEL BERNSTEIN

  (Note) Mel Bernstein rents and sells weapons. He has 260 acres of combat zone, often called Dragonland or Dragon Man’s (the nickname comes from his custom motorcycle that resembles a dragon). On the compound are six shooting ranges, a military museum, a paintball park, and a gun shop, in addition to his home.

  One person with more than four thousand guns. That’s America in 2018. In Mr. Bernstein’s own words, “You get addicted to them. . . . You know, it gets in your blood.”

  He talks about how gun sales skyrocketed after the mass shooting in Las Vegas. “Whatever the killer used, that’s what they want.” He talks like mass shooters are the best salesmen. He even holds up some of the weapons used in the shooting at the church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, and in the Vegas massacre, making sure folks know they are for sale in his shop. “We’ve been selling more guns in the last three weeks than we have in the last eight months.”

  He shows off the 12-gauge pistol-grip shotgun used in Columbine, and he boasts of another gun that can shoot five hundred bullets in a minute. “We sell real men’s guns,” he says, smiling. And according to Mr. Bernstein, you can walk out of his shop with a gun in fifteen minutes.

  Mr. Bernstein is not just an eccentric gun enthusiast; he also talks about being bullied as he grew up in Brooklyn, having to pay twenty-five cents per day to keep the bullies away. “They bullied me, then I got older and I bullied the other kids. It’s a whole cycle. . . . I was bullied and I became a bully.”

  We don’t doubt he’s had a hard life. He lost his wife a few years back in a tragic malfunction of artillery, as a smoke canister exploded and went through her body. He also experienced a robbery at his shop when four people used Bernstein’s truck to smash into the store and steal nearly one hundred guns. It turns out that two of the suspects are members of Bernstein’s own family. So now he lives alone.

  Accompanying his arsenal of guns are four life-size mannequins, which he calls “the girls.” He dresses them up and gives them names—Betty, Jill, and so on. “I need someone to talk to, to tell them my problems.” They don’t talk back. They don’t want to go shopping or out to eat, he explains, laughing. They are easy to live with—in his words, “very polite.” He comes home from work, turns on the jukebox, talks with the girls about machine guns and hot rods, builds them a fire, and drinks some coffee. “When it gets cold in the winter, I even put underwear on them. . . . I’m a good boyfriend.”

  Honestly, we know plenty of people who have eccentric personalities and live in their own fantasy worlds and alternate realities, but the difference is that they don’t have four thousand guns. And Bernstein sells them with such enthusiasm.

  When I (Mike) was in high school, I took a trip with my youth group to play a few rounds of paintball at Dragon Man’s. There is a fairly long driveway with wrecked cars and mannequins sticking out of them, simulating a war scene, not a car crash. They are warnings to what would happen if you crossed a line, be it political or personal. When you check in to get your equipment, you can also see into the gun store where Mr. Bernstein has his collection of weapons.

  Paintball guns designed to look like real guns [grafvision / Shutterstock.com]

  Anyone who has played paintball knows the connection between paintball and real guns. It’s not a giant leap when you are playing capture the flag on one of the paintball courses to imagine this in real life. The whole experience is a glimpse into the next level. While you’re playing, you can also hear the gunshots from the firing range nearby. People who don’t play paintball or haven’t grown up with real guns may not know the difference between the two types of guns without the paintball hopper attached. If I spent most of my life in the bubble of Dragonland, I imagine I would be a different person.

  Though an extreme case, Mel Bernstein isn’t alone with his collection and story. In fact, only 8 percent of gun owners own about 40 percent of the guns in the United States. Beyond that, there are stories of folks accidentally shooting their own family and friends when they were seen as intruders in various cities across America. It’s getting messy.

  A gun barrel in the coals, with “USA” engraved on it

  We say it’s both. We have a gun problem, and we have a heart problem. That’s one of the false binaries that thankfully we don’t have to take sides on. As we peel away the layers of this issue, we will be careful to address both the gun problem and the heart problem. People kill people. And people with guns kill a lot of people. Hopefully, we can all agree that we want to save lives if we can. And we are convinced that we can.

  But let’s start with this: we have a problem.

  We’ve learned from friends in recovery from drug and alcohol addiction that the first step to recovery is recognizing that we have a problem.

  Considering that some say we are addicted to guns, the first step in our recovery is staring the problem in the face and acknowledging the damage done. In 2016, thirty-eight thousand people died from guns. That’s about 105 per day, up from 90 per day in 2013.5 And it’s been this way for far too long. Since 1979, the nation’s gun deaths have not dropped below thirty-two thousand per year. That means for nearly forty years we’ve allowed more than 1.2 million lives to be lost to guns—by homicide, suicide, and accidental shootings.

  Our country started keeping records of gun deaths in 1933. Since then, hundreds of thousands of lives have been lost. We’ve had more Americans killed domestically by guns in two decades—right here in our own country—than we have seen killed in all our foreign wars in the past 250 years.6 Students routinely practice active shooter drills, and school entrances are being redesigned to mitigate school shootings. We now have companies selling bulletproof blankets and backpacks. Some folks think we need to arm teachers. And some of our own politicians have argued that we need to arm schoolchildren as young as four years old!7 It might not be an exaggeration to say that our country feels like a war zone. Kids are scared to go to school. Teenagers have enough to worry about—taking final exams, dealing with acne, finding a date to prom. They shouldn’t be afraid of mass shootings, and yet over and over they are happening in our schools. What a strange world we live in, in which the number of kids killed by guns since Sandy Hook surpasses that of US soldiers killed in overseas combat since 9/11.8

  Memorial to the Lost

  PULSE NIGHTCLUB, ORLANDO, FLORIDA (JUNE 12, 2016)

  On June 12, 2016, forty-nine people were killed in an act of hatred at a gay nightclub on “Latin Night.” Many of the victims were Latinos, and it was the deadliest attack against LGBTQ people in US history. It was the worst act of domestic terrorism since September 11—and at the time it was the deadliest mass shooting by a single shooter, though that record sadly was soon surpassed by the Las Vegas massacre. The weapons used included a SIG Sauer MCS semiautomatic assault rifle and a semiautomatic Glock 17 pistol. In addition to the forty-nine people killed, fifty-three others were injured, many in life-altering ways. Here are the names of those who died.

  Stanley Almodovar III, 23 Mercedez M. Flores, 26 Eric Ivan Ortiz-Rivera, 36

  Amanda Alvear, 25 Peter O. Gonzalez-Cruz, 22 Joel Rayon Paniagua, 32

  Oscar A. Aracena-Montero, 26 Juan R. Guerrero, 22 Enrique L. Rios Jr., 25

  Rodolfo Ayala-Ayala, 33 P
aul T. Henry, 41 Juan P. Rivera Velazquez, 37

  Alejandro Barrios Martinez, 21 Frank Hernandez, 27 Yilmary Rodriguez Solivan, 24

  Martin Benitez Torres, 33 Miguel A. Honorato, 30 Christopher J. Sanfeliz, 24

  Antonio D. Brown, 30 Javier Jorge-Reyes, 40 Xavier Emmanuel Serrano Rosado, 35

  Darryl R. Burt II, 29 Jason B. Josaphat, 19 Gilberto Ramon Silva Menendez, 25

  Jonathan A. Camuy Vega, 24 Eddie J. Justice, 30 Edward Sotomayor Jr., 34

  Angel L. Candelario-Padro, 28 Anthony L. Laureano Disla, 25 Shane E. Tomlinson, 33

  Simon A. Carrillo Fernandez, 31 Christopher A. Leinonen, 32 Leroy Valentin Fernandez, 25

  Juan Chevez-Martinez, 25 Brenda L. Marquez McCool, 49 Luis S. Vielma, 22

  Luis D. Conde, 39 Jean C. Mendez Perez, 35 Luis Daniel Wilson-Leon, 37

  Cory J. Connell, 21 Akyra Monet Murray, 18 Jerald A. Wright, 31

  Tevin E. Crosby, 25 Kimberly Morris, 37

  Franky J. Dejesus Velazquez, 50 Jean C. Nieves Rodriguez, 27

  Deonka D. Drayton, 32 Luis O. Ocasio-Capo, 20

  Even our own military service members are more likely to die at home than they are in combat overseas. Soldiers are being killed by their own guns more often than by the guns of any foreign enemy. Suicide by gun has surpassed war as the military’s leading cause of death; over twenty veteran and active service members die each day from suicide—nearly one per hour.9 Two-thirds of them use guns to take their lives.10 It is a national health crisis, an epidemic of violence.

  In the United States, we have the most guns in the world, by far. And we have the most gun deaths in the world, also by far. When it comes to gun homicides, the United States leads the world. We have more gun homicides than all the other industrial countries combined. There are 29.7 gun homicides per million people in the US.11 The next most violent country when it comes to guns is Switzerland, with seven per million. So we have four times more gun violence than the next country. We have six times more gun homicides than Canada, and sixteen times more than Germany.12