Let”s talk about guns

Now it is a debate. When professors Thor Madsen and Rodney Harrison of Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary wrote their bold column for Baptist Press on Jan. 22, they broke the near silence of conservative Baptists on the subject of gun control, gun ownership, and the Second Amendment. Read the column here. Perhaps the boldest statement, the most uncomfortable for those who are unfamiliar with firearms, was their last point: The framers of our Constitution did not prohibit the seizure of arms held by private citizens because they wanted to protect deer hunting. When public figures ask why anyone needs an assault rifle to hunt deer, they are missing the point. We are given the right to keep and bear arms in order to ensure that we are governed with our consent, not by the use of raw, unchecked force.

Love the fact or hate it but this is the purpose for putting in the Constitution an allowance for the people to keep what General Washington called their “liberty teeth.” That’s why most gun owners will glaze over when someone begins a question with “why does anyone need…” If you ask such a question you will have difficulty understanding the answer. 

The first few pundits I read on the subject, among Baptists and former Baptists, were uniformly in the “potential safety trumps liberty” camp. Of course the national dialog has been understandably emotional—the killing of innocents is an emotionally charged event. Madsen and Harrison are serving all who will hear when they ask that we pause a minute for national grief before we start writing laws and making national policy. That’s not what our nation has done, but there is still time for us to be deliberate in our actions. Rather than being a mere response to a tragedy, our nation’s policies on its citizens’ rights should be carefully developed with a bias toward liberty.