A suicide by shotgun in the City of Fairfax, following closely on the heels of the Navy Yard killings, has rocked many members of my congregation. As I counsel them, I struggle to find words to bring comfort and guidance in a time of trauma. I also realize that my church, and the larger religious community, has offered a terribly muddled message on gun violence.
Perhaps this is no surprise, since most congregations include both gun control advocates and gun owners. The clarity of the message “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” is not lost on me, nor is the fact that the headquarters of the National Rifle Association is located just a short distance from my church.
But the religious community needs to unite around a message that will keep guns out of the hands of people who will use them to do violence to themselves and others, whether they are depressed young people, delusional shooters, or children who stumble across guns in the home. I’m not talking about new gun control laws, but instead a new consensus on the proper place of firearms in our society.
At a recent Faith and Media Conference sponsored by Odyssey Networks in New York, religious journalist Lisa Miller suggested that guns are a “stumbling block” for both the mentally ill and children, and our moral obligation is to remove them from the hands of such people. She cited the work of Rabbi Marc Katz of Brooklyn, who points to the command in Leviticus 19:14 to avoid putting “a stumbling block in front of the blind.”
What does this have to do with guns? Rabbi Katz says that the rule speaks not only of a physical barrier, but anything that creates undue danger or harm. Guns are a “stumbling block” for children who don’t comprehend their deadly power, or for mentally ill people who don’t have the ability to keep their emotions under control. It is the responsibility of the community to avoid putting stumbling blocks in front of people who can easily fall.
Continued, here.
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