[Dialogue] [Oe List ...] more on guns

Tue Dec 18 08:33:18 PST 2012

Gordon -  This deep analysis seems spot on - gets at the depth contradiction:  our images of Who We Are as Americans.  Seems to me that for every glorious image I would really cheer for (welcoming, learning from,  and delighting in, cultures from all over the world, for instance) there are powerful forces working to shift them into something dangerous.  "Be afraid - these immigrants will take your job - they will destroy the rule of law - they will overwhelm us and change all we hold dear.  Be very afraid ..."   

All this needs exploration,  watching for clues to positive change, exchanging thoughts about strategies.   Gosh, I value so hugely this ICA connection!

Janice Ulangca

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Gordon Harper 
  To: Order Ecumenical Community 
  Cc: ICA LIST SERVE 
  Sent: Tuesday, December 18, 2012 4:52 AM
  Subject: Re: [Dialogue] [Oe List ...] more on guns

  Since I'm part of this problem and hopelessly complicit in sustaining it, I'll start with a little confession.  Like many of us, I grew up in a gun culture, in my case as a Wisconsin farm boy.  I loved the various rifles and handguns I accumulated over those early years, and I continued to sharpen my target shooting through college and graduate school and even as a young professor (never really had the heart for hunting).  I was (full disclosure) a member of the NRA starting in high school, so that I could get my cases of 22 ammo for a pittance.  (I dropped my membership while in college, when the organization started to morph into the right wing entity that we see today.)   

  When our family joined the symbolic order and moved to the West Side, I got rid of everything except for a special treasure, my Ruger Single Six (replica Colt six-gun) with its beautiful rosewood grips and fancy Mexican fast draw holster.  Lane Erskine and I used to enjoy sharing our fascination with our handguns' workmanship.  Unlike Lane, who was given to packing heat as he moved about in 5th City, I kept mine unloaded and in a locked case in our room.  

  After a few months, however, I became concerned that even with those safeguards, in our community, with the kids having easy access to everyone's rooms, it was too much of a risk.  With great sadness, I took my beloved revolver and holster to a gun shop in Wisconsin and sold them, thus ending my gun ownership phase.  When it came time, a few years later, to decide which of my siblings would inherit our father's firearms, I chose not to participate in the distribution.

  I start with this to make the point that what we're dealing with in this gun culture lies very deep in many of us.  I've had--and still have--a love affair with the classic American Western film.  This is a tradition that exalts the single shootist, who is able to do good and make things right for others precisely because he has at least one sidearm and when necessary uses it well.  

  I see myself mirrored in the fascination of young people today for all the first person shooter games, battlefield adventures and standing one's ground against those hordes of attacking vampires.  It's a manifestation of our special culture as Americans, with our frontier tradition and mythology.  Which in turn is an aspect of what we sometimes refer to as the concept of American exceptionalism. 

  To deal seriously with gun violence, it seems to me, is to take on the challenge of shifting these profoundly rooted national and personal images and stories of who we are.  They are so much a part of us that we hardly ever feel the need to talk about them--they're simply assumed, taken for granted as part of the common ground we share as Americans.  

  We all grieve when events like those of this past week occur, and we feel personal shock and pain when one of them hits close to home.  At the same time, at some deep level we also find our way to accepting these occurrences as the tragic but necessary side effects of our special nature as a frontier people and the unique role of our nation in the world.  

  It's like the collateral war damage to innocent people that we've accustomed ourselves to living with.  We lament it, and we truly want to keep it to the bare minimum, but we also feel that our historical role requires our paying this cost (a bit of White Man's Burden, redivivus).  Theologically, there's a strong connection here with the myth of redemptive violence, which provides a religious rationale for many among us to accept the way things are and for at least part of the deep resistance we encounter to changing the gun laws. 

  I suspect that we will now begin to see some modest changes in access to semi-automatic weapons, some improvements in preventing, spotting and caring for mental illness, maybe even more support for our educational systems.  I'm hoping it's also a point in time where we will see, in various formats and venues, the start of the conversation about our national identity and values that we very much need to have.  

  What I find myself looking for are ways to engage our neighbors and ourselves in surfacing and exploring together these largely unquestioned images and stories that so powerfully shape our behavior.  What is really special or exceptional about America--the good, the bad and the ugly--relative to what is special and exceptional about any other nation and people?   How are we to understand that exceptionalism, and what do we do with it in today's world?

  Some of us might like to get rid of the whole idea of exceptionalism, but I think in this country, it's there, and we have to engage it.  Doing so, it seems to me, is key to that long range and indirect strategy we've been talking about in this conversation.  It's essential if we're to have a real shot at changing the images from which we continue to act and from which we and others continue to suffer.  

  Engaging these conversations, I'm afraid, means welcoming and listening deeply to those with whom we strongly disagree--sharing and discussing together what we think the times call us to preserve in our heritage, what to leave behind and what to recreate.  If it's to work, it will have to be uncomfortably inclusive, in a big tent, as the Occupy folk like to say.     

  We could begin to start such conversations in our workplaces, our churches, our book groups, our community meetings, at the pub or coffee shop, over dinner with friends, on line, using all these wonderful social media tools.  It's something each of us could tackle, if we chose to, without much of an organizational structure.  Maybe down the road at some point, . . . .

  Is this a tactic--and a conversation--we want to be part of?

  Gordon

  On 12/17/2012 1:45 PM, jlepps at pc.jaring.my wrote:

    Colleagues 

    I'd like to add one more note to this lively dialogue (which I hope continues, and perhaps even begins to focus). 

    It's obviously the case that a change of heart is required in this situation. The question becomes how to make that happen, and I'm reminded of Martin Luther Kings's response to us WASPS who were opposing desegregation because "we need to have hearts change to support integration." To paraphrase him, "Laws can't make you love me, but they may prevent you from killing me." Strict gun control may be that kind of law. And, IMHO, whatever will prevent this sort of mass murder is worth doing. Also I've noticed that hearts are remarkably adaptable to their external situation. 

    In terms of luring the tiger, the question now that she's out of her lair (sorry Cynthia), what do we do: well perhaps something initial like forbidding the sale of assault weapons and mass magazines. That might be able to get some support from tigers. After all, we endure considerable inconvenience to insure safety on airplanes,, so perhaps the inconvenience of forbidding access to these instruments of mass destruction might be a possible first step. 

    I don't believe we'll be able to change tigers into lambs, but maybe we can help de-fang them! 

    John 

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