Gun Violence (remarks before Ashland City Council)

March 18, 2014 Remarks to the Ashland, Oregon, City Council

As it considers proposals to require limiting access to guns by children

and a municipal ban on loaded weapons in public areas

By the Rev. Father Tony Hutchinson, SCP, Ph.D.

Rector of Trinity Episcopal Church, Ashland Oregon
As prepared

Thank you for the chance to address shortly some of the moral and spiritual aspects of the legislation before you.   I recognize and celebrate the wonderful breadth and variety of spiritual and ethical traditions we as a community enjoy here in Ashland and the Rogue Valley.  And I am a firm believer in the importance of a strong separation of Church and State in a democratic and free society.  I admit that as a minister of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, I can address these questions only from the perspective of my tradition.  I hope, however, you might find them helpful as you consider these important issues. 

The Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, the Most Reverend Katharine Jefferts Schori, on February 12, 2013 gave testimony to the United States Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights on the issue of gun violence in the United States.  In part, she said,  “Far too many lives have been cut short or maimed by both random and targeted acts of gun violence.…    Each year, gun violence claims the lives of more than 3,000 children in the United States.  The victims of … these shootings are members of our families, … congregations, and communities, and we continue to grieve for the living as well as the dead..  …[T]he moment has arrived when our nation must come together to ask the difficult questions, and to discern what may be equally challenging answers, about how we can begin to break the cycles of violence…”  

The fact is—we are a violent society.  We glorify violence in our arts, have movies that tell stories of the good guys blowing the bad guys away, use armed force as a major component of our foreign policy, and proclaim it in our political memes.  And guns are an important part of this culture of violence.    

When the founders of this nation offered to the opponents of federalism an American “Bill of Rights” to help speed the state ratification of the Federal Constitution of 1789, it was in conscious imitation of the English Bill of Rights promulgated a century earlier by William and Mary:  a writ of freedoms that lays down limits on the powers of the sovereign, protected the rights and freedom of speech of the elected representatives of the people, including the right to petition the monarch without fear of retribution.  Most pertinent to our discussion here, the English Bill reestablished the liberty of Protestants to have arms for their defense within the rule of law, and condemned the deposed James II of England for “causing several good subjects being Protestants to be disarmed at the same time when papists were both armed and employed contrary to law.”   The American Bill of Rights included the “Right to Bear Arms” because “a well ordered militia” was essential to a democracy.

Our national political process is currently held hostage to an extremely small minority of gun manufacturers and merchants, and gun lovers, who believe that the Second Amendment Right is inviolable and absolute.  The corrupting influence of money and resulting political bullying has made it virtually impossible to enact reasonable and thoughtful controls and limitations on this national scourge.   Many today, and we have heard from some of them tonight, no longer see the right to arm oneself for self-protection as a contingent and bounded right that of necessity must be framed within the rule of law and regulation. 

At heart of the extreme fundamentalism of the guns right lobby lies the assumption that violence is the ultimate fixer.  Just as 17^th century English Protestants wanted guns to make sure they would never have to fear rule by Catholics or crypto-catholics again, and just as guns held by white night riders under cover of darkness and not the rule of law helped lynch oppressed people for two centuries in America, today’s Second Amendment fundamentalists really are interested in guns without controls because guns are lethal weapons.  They see them as giving them control and power over their own lives and those of others.  That’s why there is such a bullying and threatening tone in much of the discourse on this issue.   

I understand that there are strong feelings on this issue, and that others may differ from my perspective on this in good faith.   When such a belief is grounded in a faith that violence or threat of violence overcome the problems of this world and fixes what ails us and drives away what gives us fears, however, it is just plain wrong, and spells spiritual death.    God calls us to peace, and mutual love and service.  Jesus was an opponent of the Roman Imperial state, but an opponent who believed in non-violent resistance.  I do not believe that Jesus would think much of the boast of a Second Amendment fundamentalist about having to pry his guns from his “cold, dead, hands," even if that man once held back the waters of the Red Sea in an acting role as Moses.  Instead, Jesus says, “be wise as snakes, but harmless as doves.” 

But the founders also included in the Bill the Tenth Amendment, with its doctrine of reserved unenumerated powers:  “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”  I believe that means that states and municipalities have the right to enact reasonable laws to frame and regulate our rights and enhance the safety and security of their people. 

I was raised in Eastern Washington, and love to hunt.  I understand the safe and appropriate use of firearms.  I support the Second Amendment when it is seen as part of a well-ordered rule of law.  But unless municipalities and states, and yes, the federal government, become willing to impose reasonable and moderate controls to fight this scourge and resist the siren call of the Second Amendment fundamentalists, I think the overwhelming majority of the American people will eventually become so revolted by the carnage of gun violence that they will rather simply abolish the Second Amendment than continue with the horrors that take place in its name.  And I believe that would be unfortunate.    Please vote for both of the proposed measures.  Thank you. 

Gao Brothers, Execution of Christ, 2009