The Strawman of Gun Control

On September 4, 2024, Colt Gray, a 14-year-old freshman at Apalachee High School in the Georgia town of Winder, walked down the hallways of the school firing an AR-15-style assault rifle. By the time one of the three armed school resource officers confronted him, two teachers and two of his classmates lay dying in pools of blood. 

Once again, the headlines scream of another school shooting in America. Sadly, these stories have become a routine part of the news cycle. 

Nothing to see here. Just another mass shooting story tucked in between the breathtaking coverage of rumors of immigrants eating cats and riveting analysis of who Taylor Swift and her hunky football player boyfriend are supporting for President. 

Now, move along to the commercials and support our sponsors, please! 

While parents suffer the unimaginable agony of losing their precious children, pundits on the right continue to send their “thoughts and prayers” while those on the left decry the American gun industry and their lobbyists as the evil purveyors of mass murder. 

Right on cue, the gun lobby sends out a platoon of elected officials and right-wing media outlets funded by them to say that what we need are MORE guns, not less. After all, a good guy or gal with a gun can defeat a bad guy with a gun, right? 

In response, the anti-gun lobby groups send out their cadre of media and political soldiers to push forward the idea that none of these shootings will happen if we just pass a law restricting the sale of military-style weapons like those used in 90% of these shootings. After all, if no guy or gal has a gun, then they can’t kill each other, right? 

Meanwhile, while they together build the skeleton of their fake strawman to sacrifice at the altar of public opinion, the bodies of the innocent keep piling up. 

And then NOTHING HAPPENS!

Please excuse my French, as they say, but this pisses me off, and I call BS on both sides!

The simplified straw man argument that gun control (or lack of it)  is the solution to the problem is the problem because it distracts society and prevents a deeper analysis of the actual causes. 

The bullets fired from a gun and the resulting tragic loss of life are symptoms of a deeper issue that begs different questions. 

First, why do these individuals want to commit these murders? What is happening in their personal, family, and social lives that have led them to this? 

Secondly, how can we prevent these individuals from committing these atrocities once we understand this?  

Rather than scapegoating or promoting guns, I propose a holistic approach that combines responsible gun ownership laws, preventative mental health care services, and law enforcement that focuses on proactive rather than reactive policing.  

As in most of these cases, there were early warning signs in Gray’s life indicating he might be a threat to others. Just last year, the FBI investigated him for his connection to threats made regarding the school on a Discord server from an account associated with his email address. 

The FBI report states that he denied knowing anything about it and had deleted his Discord account months before the interview. 

Gray’s father admitted that he was a gun owner with several guns in the house, but the guns were not readily accessible to his son. The FBI took the kid and his father’s word and closed the investigation.

As it turns out, not only did he threaten violence against his classmates, but his dad stated after his arrest that he bought his son the AR-15 used in the murders for his birthday!!  

As they say in football, everyone is a Monday morning quarterback once the game ends. It’s pretty easy to pick out the mistakes made from the comfort of the couch with the remote in hand versus in real-time when the action is taking place. 

In defense of the FBI agents, they simply followed their investigation protocols and outdated laws to assess whether he was a real threat. Beyond that, their hands were tied. It’s the old “we have to wait until a crime is committed before we do anything” approach to law enforcement. 

This reactive, after-the-fact approach to law enforcement policy is no longer good enough. 

A Holistic Approach

First, Congress needs to enact laws with stiffer penalties for those who threaten mass violence in schools.  If a kid makes a threat, the authorities need to immediately remove him from the school and apprehend him for evaluation. Full stop. No exceptions. 

Once removed from the school, a team of social workers and mental health professionals should complete a comprehensive evaluation of his mental condition, which also includes his family and home life. If warranted by the detailed assessment, the school district administration should transfer the student to a special school with resources and trained staff to handle the student’s issues. 

Second, to help manage the process, local law enforcement agencies should establish a task force to track students who are tagged as having certain risk factors. The monitoring process will work like the prison parole system, where a parole officer stays in touch with the kid and the family to get updates, including home visits and continuous dialogue with family members. 

Finally, once a minor enters the monitoring program, neither they nor anyone living in the household with them can legally own a gun. 

Many will challenge this as threatening a citizen’s 2nd amendment right to own and bear arms. However, there are many citizens in our society who are deemed ineligible to own guns because of their criminal history or ongoing mental problems. 

As in those situations, the right of the individual to bear arms needs to be balanced with the rights of other citizens not to be killed in a mass shooting.

The Hopeless Scapegoat

For the most part, it seems like the kids involved in these mass shootings are lost and broken souls who never had a chance. Many of them have experienced physical, emotional, and social trauma inflicted on them by those close to them and others in society. 

They have often been excluded and marginalized as “the other” by labeling them as  “weird” or “strange.” As a result, they are often treated as scapegoats by their families and peers, which results in bullying, neglect, and even violence against them.  

Sadly, this is the result of what happens when society takes fellow image-bearers of God, dehumanizes them, and turns them into hopeless and empty shells begging to be filled with anything that will relieve their pain. As a result, their hopelessness and loneliness lead them to strike out the only way they know how.  

Gray’s life, unfortunately, is a perfect example of this. His family life was a minefield of mental and physical abuse, divorce, financial hardship, and bullying by his classmates. His mother, Marcy Gray, has been in and out of prison for among other things, drug possession, robbery, assault, and theft. Most recently, she was charged with elderly abuse from an incident last year where she taped her disabled mother to a chair and left her there, where she was found 24 hours later by her sister when her mother didn’t answer her phone. 

His dad was often away from home working in construction, so for the most part, he was left on his own to fend for himself with obvious unfettered access to an arsenal of guns.   

A Christian Perspective

My pastor has often said that there are two things he and most Christians rarely feel after accepting Christ into one’s life. First, one rarely feels hopelessness. The hope Christ gives us in this life and the next is enough to overwhelm any black hole of hopelessness imposed on us by the world.

Second, one does not feel alone even in times of struggle. Jesus does not guarantee a life free of pain, rejection, and hardship. In fact, He guarantees it, especially if we take up our crosses and carry them in His name. However, He also ensures that He will never leave us in our time of need. Instead, like Simon helped Him carry His cross, Jesus will help us carry ours through our difficulties in life. 

The apostle Paul put it beautifully in Romans 8: 38-39: “I am sure that nothing can separate us from God’s love—not life or death, not angels or spirits, not the present or the future,  and not powers above or powers below. Nothing in all creation can separate us from God’s love for us in Christ Jesus our Lord!”  

Isn’t it wonderful that we have that assurance of unconditional love from God? Isn’t it wonderful that no matter how unloved the world makes us feel, the one who made it loves us no matter what? Isn’t it our calling as Christians to share this Good News with others so they can have the same assurance? 

Imagine the impact of one Christian neighbor reaching out to a family such as this one without judgment or preconditions. Imagine if one Christian student had stood up for Gray when other students were bullying him. Imagine having leaders with authentic character and conviction as examples for our youth rather than the brash bullies we elevate as examples for them. 

So What Can You Do? 

In closing, I encourage all of you to reach out to your elected officials and tell them that the status quo is no longer good enough. Tell them we are tired of the cable news talking head political pundit debates and demand that they come up with real proactive solutions that address the root causes instead of the symptoms.

Finally, I encourage you to pray to God to show you where He needs your help in reaching the lost and broken. Pray that he gives you the same heart of mercy and grace that He has shown you. Then, once he shows them to you, ask God for the courage to love them unconditionally, no matter the cost to you in reputation, money, or time. It could make the difference between life and death, both in this world and the next.