Have Gun Will Enslave

"If you need a gun to make yourself free, then you're not really free."

The right wing gun nuts like to equate their right to own guns to their right to live as free people. If you want to visit a community where everyone arms themselves to the teeth, you don't need a time machine to the Old West but a plane ticket to El Salvador. I visited the country as a seminary student in 1995, shortly after the end of the decades long civil war, and everywhere I saw guns! guns! guns! with children as young as 13 carrying assault style weapons in the dirt filled streets. Posters pasted to concrete walls, on the side of buildings, and tied to metal fences extolled the virtues of a martyr society with pictures of Romero, the six slaughtered Jesuit priests, and other leaders, (some unlike the priests who had used gun violence to achieve their aims) and they had all died by guns. The society was many things, but it was definitely not free.

During our trip, our group met with the head of the Christian Democratic Party. A minister, he carried a gun easily visible at his side. His predecessor had been assassinated the previous year on the front porch of the very building we had entered moments before. One of us pressed the issue and chided him for packing heat as a minister. He explained violent struggle was necessary to achieve democratic results and then he ended with this statement.

"If I don't carry a gun, I can't defend myself. I would die."

Even with the gun, you're going to die, I thought. 

Jesus abhorred violence and with no exceptions, he taught his followers to do the same. Jesus didn't make allowances for just wars, collateral damage or necessary kills. For Jesus, the one who kills another human being murders his own soul. 

Freedom comes from love and not violence. If you need a gun to make yourself free, then you're not really free.