We can pass sensible gun laws

But we'll need to convert Christian nationalists

Just days after the 2018 Parkland school shooting, Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the National Rifle Association, spoke at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference and distilled in a few sentences the Christian nationalists’ platform. Speaking about the Constitution, LaPierre said:

The genius of those documents, the brilliance of America, of our country itself, is that all of our freedoms in this country are for every single citizen. And there is no greater personal, individual freedom than the right to keep and bear arms, the right to protect yourself, and the right to survive. It is not bestowed by man, but granted by God to all Americans as our American birthright.

(The emphasis is mine.)

That same year, a study from Clemson University, “Gun Control in the Crosshairs: Christian Nationalism and Opposition to Stricter Gun Laws,” looked at why conservative Christians tend to consider any gun legislation an interruption of their divine right to own firearms.

In fact, that approach to guns is not a big leap from the view among Christian nationalists that the Constitution is inspired by God (Like the Bible! Only shorter!). That claim, according to the Clemson study, grants the document sacred status, with all the confusion surrounding that word, “sacred.” It’s why discussing the Second Amendment with a True Believer can feel so fruitless.

This may seem like an oversimplification, but a Christian nationalist’s response to what a non-nationalist might see as a common sense piece of gun legislation (such as, say, banning AR-15-style weapons), would be: If God told me to I can own a gun, who are you to tell me otherwise?

And instead of considering readily available, high-powered guns an issue in our frequent mass shootings, Christian nationalists argue that gun violence springs, instead, from a general moral decline — a devaluation of Christian values.

On Wednesday, one of my favorite authors, Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite, wrote on Religion News Service that saying God gave Americans their guns is heresy, and that we are pushing a rock uphill to get sensible legislation passed:

We will not get those policy changes at all, or they will be so watered down they will be useless, unless we literally convert Christian nationalists away from their perverted, heretical view of God and guns.

In order to do this, Christians who know that to say God gives Americans guns is heresy need to be strengthened in their resolve to make this a theological struggle. I do not think it is too strong to say that it is a theological fight to the death, in fact.

Amen, Sister Susan. A. Men.