Pretty crazy guns

I think that they ought to let people ... have guns if they use them to hunt. And people who need guns — who need guns for their job like policemen and army. But I don’t think that we should just let anybody have any kind of gun and any kind of bullets that they want. That’s pretty crazy.

Jim Wallis’s 9-year-old son said that to his Dad at bedtime.  Jim Wallis is editor and main inspiration of Sojourner magazine, which publishes great sense about Christian faith, belief and action.  Jim is a 21^st century prophet. 

Of course he has to address, yet again, the gun issue.  What is often termed the American love affair with guns is suddenly yet again the foremost issue in the USA because atrocities where American psychopaths have run amok with guns have killed yet more children and teachers.  The National Rifle Association, hideously powerful and blind, is defending all they can see, the “Second Amendment Rights” of all Americans.  They know this litany better than they know the Ten Commandments.  The president of the NRA, often on TV at the moment, seems a reasonable, gentle, cultured bloke – nothing like the posturing idiocy of Charlton Heston, “...from my cold dead hands” – and yet Heston, it seems, spoke for  tens of millions of Americans unable to imagine life without their guns.  A very decent chap we once knew when we were living in Fiji is long since back in the southern USA, and he runs a gun shop.  It seems perfectly acceptable to him.  He is a Christian and a Southern Baptist officebearer. 

 

Wonderful people I stayed with in the USA told me that some of their friends could not accept an invitation to come and eat in their home.  Reason?  They chose not to keep guns at home and so their friends said they would not feel safe.  I think the issue is fear.  Living in fear.  It’s largely a choice, it seems to me. 

Part of the work of maturity is to make the choice whether to live in fear.  The choice is between finding your own ways, ways of faith, to live without being dominated by fear and in the circumstances and environment you choose, as long as you can – or to retreat into some protected environment such as a gated or retirement village or something worse.  Living without fear, it seems to me, eventually entails coming to terms with one’s own death and powerlessness, facing it down – deciding what survives that is of any consequence.  Mortality is the big scary enemy of the privileged, powerful, wealthy, and well-armed. 

Martin Luther King wrote: People often hate each other because they fear each other, they fear each other because they don’t know each other, they don’t know each other because they cannot communicate, they cannot communicate because they are separated...   But the wisdom of the National Rifle Association says:

 

the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.

 

That statement, writes Jim Wallis, is at the heart of the problem of gun violence in America today — not just because it is factually flawed, which of course it is, but also because it is morally mistaken, theologically dangerous, and religiously repugnant.

The world is not full of good and bad people, he writes.  We are, as human beings, both good and bad.  This is not only true of humanity as a whole, but we as individuals have both good and bad in us.  When we are bad or isolated or angry or furious or vengeful or politically agitated or confused or lost or deranged or unhinged — and we have the ability to get and use weapons only designed to kill large numbers of people — our society is in great danger.

Long ago, somehow, I saw a gun for what it is.  It is a very efficient device for killing people or animals.  A gun is for killing, summarily ending life.  Working in the freezing works as a student I watched animals being killed in great numbers by special pistols, a bolt shot through their brains.  Large cattle beasts immediately crumpled and lay twitching.  I had to work out for myself the facts of getting and eating animal protein, and the facts of killing humanely – but I also noticed how the process took something from the humanity of those who did it.  I am not tempted to be a vegetarian, but I do grant the force of those who point out that most people who eat meat from the supermarket have not had to kill the animal. 

Guns are only for killing.  Some guns are hugely sophisticated and powerful.  In Switzerland where the male population is expected to keep guns, it is also a fact that all who have guns are required to have had military instruction in keeping, using and maintaining them.  They also have to keep their ammunition at the local police station or armoury.  Not so in the USA.  That would be an unconscionable restriction which would violate their Second Amendment and their God-given Right to Bear Arms. 

What is it for? Can it be stopped?

The English are not very spiritual people, so they invented cricket to give them some idea of eternity, wrote George Bernard Shaw.  Indeed. 

One of my early tasks as a cadet reporter on the Auckland Star, long ago, was to spend Saturday at some apparently important cricket game and turn in a report for publication in the 8 O’Clock edition by 6 pm.  I had never played cricket or ever been remotely interested.  I had no idea what it was for, what the aim was, let alone what the finer points might be.  Older hands in the reporters’ room advised me to find the scorer who would know what was going on.  I phoned the office about halfway through the day, having discovered that this game was not over in 40-60 minutes but appeared endlessly self-sustaining – “How do I know when it’s finished...?”  The answer was that they would take the stumps up.  It was a day of terminal tedium and at the end of it I had not a clue what to write, so I went home. 

Another memory from those times however is what seemed to me a sudden Day of National Calamity.  Grown men groaned.  The New Zealand cricketers were playing England and were all out for 26.  It was 1955. 

And yesterday the Black Caps were all out to South Africa for 45. 

So now we have wall-to-wall post mortems and lamentations.  But it has seemed to me increasingly over the years that New Zealand, for all it has going for it, is embarrassingly incapable of cricket.  I have no idea why.  Does it matter?  The gestures, expostulations and wild excitements on the field when we manage to bowl someone out seem to me simply pathetic.  It was more impressive back in the stately days of “Oh, jolly good show...!”

We taught cricket to India, and presumably the West Indies, brought it to South Africa and Australia, and now look.  In New Zealand, however, the plant has been sickly from the start.  But I am trying still to find the intrinsic value.

Who needs it?  What is it for?  Can it be stopped? 

Wishing the couple well...?

Having led a very sheltered life and not got out much, I was unprepared for the wedding invitation that arrived.  It was two A4 pages held together by two lolly-pink ribbons top and bottom.  The pages were two shades of pink.  Clasped in the top ribbon was a little heart made of tiny white plastic pearls.  The announcement of the time and place of the wedding was accompanied by the instruction: Dress Semi-formal.  I never take kindly to being instructed on what or what not to wear.  Presumably this instruction was to rule out blokes in black singlets and dirty bare feet, sweating through their tattoos – in Australia or New Zealand, but more so in the former, this may be a wise precaution these days.

An inset which fluttered out of the envelope further advised us that this couple already possessed everything they need for the maintenance of home life, and so in lieu of gifts the guests were asked to give money.  To facilitate this there would be a Wishing Well helpfully and strategically placed at the reception.  You could write your cheque or take your crisp banknotes, put them in the little festive container supplied, and drop them in the Wishing Well.  As you do, you are at liberty to make a secret wish of your own which may be fulfilled.  My own secret wish is probably better left in pectore. 

Startled, I think at the brazenness of this, I began a little swift research on Wishing Wells at Weddings.  It is almost an industry.  Couples who have been living together for some time already and have a house-load of domestic gear, it seems, would rather have straight cash to pay for a more luxurious honeymoon than otherwise.  I am not making this up.  There is also a new genre of poetry to assist the Wishing Well cause, and so we may get:

Because at first we lived in sin
We've got the sheets and a rubbish bin
A gift from you would be swell
But we'd prefer a donation to our Wishing Well!!

I may say that the poets supplying this cause need to do a little more work yet on rhythm, metre and scansion, but perhaps that is quibbling when we get this gem:

Our home is quite complete now,
we've been together long,
so please consider our request and do not take us wrong.
A delicate request it is, we hope you understand.
Please play along as it will give our married life a hand.
The tradition of the wishing well is one that's known by all.
Go to the well, toss in a coin and as the coin does fall,
Make a wish upon that coin and careful as you do.
Cause as the well's tradition goes your wishes will come true.
So on this special day of ours, the day that we'll be wed.
Don't hunt for special gifts but give money in it's stead.
And as you drop the envelope with money great and small,
Remember, make your wish as you watch your money fall.

So come and enjoy the day all sunny
We really would appreciate a little money.

I detect echoes in this... distant sounds of battle with the apostrophe, for one.  I wanted to add, as one does in my circles, the Latin “sic” after it’s, but in this context it would have been open to misinterpretation. 

Moreover, scholars of the protestant reformation may be reminded of Luther’s bête noire, the Monk Tetzel, who went around selling indulgences by which you could procure the release of souls from purgatory:

                As soon as the coin in the coffer rings

                The soul from purgatory springs.

The available Wishing Well anthology includes:

More than just kisses so far we've shared,
Our home has been made with Love and Care,
Most things we need we've already got,
And in our home we can't fit a lot!
A wishing well we thought would be great,
(But only if you wish to participate),
A gift of money is placed in the well,
Then make a wish .... but shhh don't tell!
Once we've replaced the old with the new,
We can look back and say it was thanks to you!
And in return for your kindness, we're sure
That one day soon you will get what you wished for.

This is a little different.  The option not to cough up cash is a bit more explicit.  And it seems the money is not so much to finance a honeymoon at the Burj al Arab, Dubai, but much more prosaically for the replacement of obsolescent household articles.  I have to say, that’s not the kind of cause that stirs my imagination as a donor.  Is this a couple who have given up on life?  All that remains to them by way of inspiration is a Maintenance Mentality, kicked off by a hideous fake White Wishing Well interlaced with yellow roses, all set against a background of Revolting Pink.  (Come to think of it, I am aware of one person in my clan who would think that simply lovely.)

Although a gift from the heart
Is always a pleasant start
We’ve lived together for quite a while
We’ve everything needed to live in style
What we really need is a getaway
In the form of a romantic holiday
To the Cook Islands we’d love to go
But to do that we need a little doh
So if you should choose to donate cash
To the Kristy and Jon honeymoon stash
There will be a wishing well provided
For you to drop your gift in to
Don’t forget to make a wish and
sign your name so that we can thank you

The one felicitous word in that doggerel, it seems to me, is “doh”.  If I’m not mistaken it was coined for our edification by Homer in The Simpsons.  Yes, Kristy and Jon meant dough, but their silly error is wonderfully expressive of the mindless tasteless humbug of weddings in the prevailing culture. 

The date has been set, and we’d love you to come,
To our wedding down south, a long way for some,
All you must do, is decide what to wear,
Then polish your jewellery and cob your hair.
Don’t worry about gifts, don’t buy us a yacht,
The things that we need, we’ve already got.
Don’t go out shopping or get yourself stressed,
Don’t alter your plans for a pre-wedding rest.
If you want to be generous, to the soon to be wed
Then save yourself the hassle and do this instead.....
Contribute to our wishing well, we will be grateful,
We’ll go somewhere hot, where it will be blissful,
A honeymoon would be marvellous, to start off our life,
In our long winding journey, as new husband and wife!

I think of them on their long winding journey, at least initially financed by these guests who have come such a long way.  It occurs to me that anyone holidaying in the Cook Islands these days may well be surrounded by these domestic veterans at mounting risk of terminal boredom, who thought and hoped that a rather expensive wedding copiously sprinkled with pink, might revive things.  Now legally married, they are riding those Rarotongan motorbikes, hooning around on their long winding journey which began by scraping the bottom of the Wishing Well.  Ye gods.  =