We are wasting too much time bickering around the margins. Neither gun control nor mental health screening will ever solve anything as long as we live in a country where the mentality is to worship guns. The reasonable view should be that a gun is nothing more than a tool, like a hammer or a toothbrush; handy when you need it, but staying tucked away in the toolbox or drawer until then. No one I know builds their whole lifestyle around collecting bigger hammers and meaner toothbrushes, hangs them all over their walls, or carries them around in the pockets of their camos, cargo shorts and hoodies in order to make a social statement. If examining mental issues is what is warranted, then the the mental issue that we should start with might be the psychology of our society at-large..
We live in a nation that was founded by angry, anti-government rebels. We fought a civil war instigated by angry, anti-government rebels. So our fundamental culture in the United States has always been one of violence, not peace. We don't look to Gandis and Dalai Lamas as our leaders; we go with Cheneys and Trumps. And, as long as we continue to wave the banner of anger and teach our children to distrust and rebel, any effort to limit gun sales to the gentle and passive of spirit will always be an exercise in hopeless futility.
So I suggest that we stop using the politically poisonous words "gun", "mental" and "screening" altogether, and shift the discussion instead toward the prospect, however unlikely, of reforming our culture from the medieval mindset of anger and violence to one of peace and understanding. It should be possible. After all, that is exactly what Jesus did vis-à-vis his own culture. Not many went along, but those who did transformed the next two thousand years. And you and I and our civilization came out of that very reform movement.
We don't seem very Jesus-like today, however. So what happened to us?
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