The Gun Religion in America

The recent debate in America about possible new restrictions and regulations on gun use and ownership has demonstrated that there is a great deal of emotion and personal identity invested in guns in this country. It is indeed very difficult to have any kind of rational discussion on the gun topic because some of the people who are deeply involved in gun use react so extremely strongly whenever there is ANY discussion of putting ANY kind of restriction on gun access, ownership and use. They really, really, really feel an intense emotional bond with their firearms, and get really, really, really scared and angry, very very very fast, if ANYONE dares suggest possible limitations or restrictions on their ability to posses and make use of their guns. Many ask why such people have so much passion and intensity wrapped up in gunpowder and bullets.


As a religious studies scholar, it seems clear to me that what we are dealing with here is something more than a simple desire to enjoy the use of guns for target practice or hunting, or a wish to possess guns for self-defense in the case of a home invasion or some other encounter with a dangerous person. What we are dealing with is a valuing of guns to the point of conferring absolute sacredness upon them, that is to say, A GUN RELIGION. For those who follow this faith, a gun is not a simple weapon or mechanical device. A gun is SACRED. For those baptized in gunpowder (blessed be its name), any attempt by anyone to interfere with access to their holy of holies is a most horrible profanity and an unacceptable violation of their freedom of religion. Only by realizing that guns are sacred to gun-worshippers in the same way that a Torah is holy to Jews or a Qur'an to Muslims or the Virgin Mary to a Catholic can we begin to understand why guns are such an extremely emotional and, pardon the unintentional pun, explosive issue in American politics and in the American psyche.


We can even see something of a creation myth manifesting itself in the discourse of gun zealots in America. For the gun believer, the central moment in world history, a time of unparalleled sacredness, is the addition to the American Constitution of the Second Amendment, which speaks of the "right to bear arms and maintain a well-regulated militia." This is the moment when God revealed the key to salvation and the most important duty of any American citizen, which is to bear arms and love and honor guns above all else in existence, more than life, more than the government, more than patriotism. The Second Amendment itself, typically the only part of the U.S. Constitution or political tradition that gun advocates seem to find worthy of attention, could be seen as a kind of sacred scripture, to be enshrined in every heart and every home.


How and why the gun attained this sacred status is something I will leave aside at this time. All I know is that it certainly seems to be sacred to a substantial class of Americans, and approaching the controversy this way helps us to realize that this is an issue that must be dealt with with the greatest sensitivity, as what we are talking about here is not merely a lifestyle or hobby, but something deadly serious for those whose hearts have been touched and whose understanding of life has been formed or transformed by contact with this Sacred. This is why we find some individuals expressing their willingness, even eagerness, to die in defense of their most sacred of sacreds, most holy of holies. They see the gun as so existentially central and significant that they are ready to offer themselves up for martyrdom and to die holding onto --and firing-- their sacred objects.


How then can American society approach the issue of guns, how to balance the rights of gun-worshippers to have ritual contact with their sacred objects against the rights of non-gun-believers to be protected against the proliferation of something that they see as a menace to public well-being? I am not sure, but I would speculate that part of the solution might be for both sides to make more effort to acknowledge the other's perspective and values. Gun-believers need to realize that non-believers do not share their sense of the sacredness of guns, and have other concerns. Non-gun-believers need to understand that for the gun-faithful, the gun is much more than a mere weapon; it is absolutely central to the gun-believer's world-view and sense of self. I do believe that we need more restrictions and regulations on gun use and gun ownership in America, but to do this, the various congregations of gun-believers need to be reassured that they will retain their right to practice their religion and worship what is sacred to them. Since American society does function more or less successfully with a sense of respecting religious rights while also restricting the time and place of religious activity, I am hopeful that we will eventually be able to work this out.


Applying this line of thinking to Paganism, I see that I may have been unfair in my past judgments and criticisms of Asatru members and other Pagans who seemed to me overly involved with their swords, axes,guns and other weapons. Such things are not sacred to me, as my main association with such objects is violence, carnage and suffering, but I realize that to be fair, there is a need to understand that for some, these are truly holy things. For myself, I still wish to find fellowship with people who do not feel the need to bring weapons into sacred space and activities. I also still tend to think that the historical reasons for guns and other weapons coming to possess sacredness in America are not that pleasant to contemplate, but I will hold off from elaborating on that point today. The main thing is, weapons really are sacred to some people, and this does not mean that those people are deranged or malicious, only that this is the style of sacredness that they have arrived at, for whatever reasons. Provided that their worship of weapons causes no harm, I respect their right to practice such worship, though for myself, I take solace in the immortal words of Herman Melville's short story about Bartleby the Scrivener: "I would prefer not to."

The Culture of Violence Devours Its Young

The recent (Dec. 14) mass killing in Newtown, Connecticut, a town not so far or so different from the one I was born in, sickens me with grief and anger, with hot, bitter tears repeatedly welling in my eyes over the last several days. The only good thing that can be said about this cruel slaughter of 6 and 7 year old children and those who worked with them is that it seems to be provoking the wayward conscience of my countrymen to consider once more some kind of action to limit gun violence in our country. It is hard to be too optimistic about this, however, as we have had similar mass killings in recent years that also stimulated discussions of possible new gun control measures, only for these to quickly fade as America reverted to its characteristic acquiescence in a culture of violence with a society divided between those who think we should have less guns in circulation and those who think the answer to gun-related deaths is always MORE GUNS.

I am in favor of more regulations on the ownership and distribution of guns, such as a renewed ban on assault rifles and other rapid-fire weapons, which are designed for battlefield carnage, not the civilian needs of personal protection or hunting, and an ending to the bizarre loophole in our gun laws that make "gun shows," bazaar-like sales of all manner of guns and gun paraphernalia, exempt from most regulations in effect at regular gun shops, making it easy for people to buy the most dangerous types of weapons and huge amounts of ammunition with few questions asked. I think there is a lot that could be done without interfering with the right of people to own some guns and use guns for sport and self-protection, while indeed quite deliberately interfering with the foolish and dangerous belief of many in this country that Americans should be allowed to carry and use guns anywhere, anytime, anyhow.

Should you respond with the gun-rights battle-cry of "Don't infringe on my liberty! Second Amendment rights!!!," let me suggest a bit of context here. No liberty is absolute. No rights are absolute. There are always compromises made in the interest of the public good. (Of course, if all you care about are private rights and don't accept the notion of a "public good," this will probably not make much sense to you.) We don't allow people to drive anywhere they want. You may want to drive on the left side of the street, Brit-style, and may not want to stop at traffic lights, but you accept that kind of restriction of your "freedom" because that is what is needed to ensure a modicum of safety and order in our streets and cities. We don't allow people to walk around naked in public places. Maybe this infringes on a person's self-expression and personal identity, but we restrict it as it is thought to be offensive to public morality. You may want to dump toxic chemicals from your garage or your business into the local river, because it would be convenient for you to dispose of these things this way, but it is not allowed because it would be bad for public health and the environment. Even dogs are no longer free to shit on the streets, sidewalks and parks without their owners "bringing up the rear" and scooping up the poop. Terrible restriction on personal liberty, isn't it? But we generally accept that in all of these cases, personal liberty is not absolute, but has to be tempered by consideration of the public good. I think the same applies to gun control laws. No one is talking about an all-out elimination of all gun ownership in the USA. All that is being proposed are restrictions on the sale and ownership of the most dangerous weapons, and a more careful procedure for gun sales and registration in general.

It would also help a great deal to have NATIONAL laws, not state laws regulating guns. If one state has very tight gun restrictions and the adjoining state has lax laws, all a person in search of the most carnage-inducing instruments of death has to do is drive across state lines and find a gun merchant. For gun laws to be effective, they have to be NATIONAL in scope, and it would be even better to work at INTERNATIONAL gun treaties to avoid the problem noted above from being relocated to the international stage.

My main purpose today is not to argue about gun control, however, even if I have started off that way. I am more concerned with the WHY of our ever-increasing gun violence. Some look at incidents like the one that just happened in Newtown and put the blame on mental illness. That guy was sick, that guy was crazy, they say; we need more mental health services and more screening for mental illness, and then we'll be fine.

I don't buy that argument. It is too easy and too narrow. It may be that many of the people who go on gun rampages have some kind of psychiatric ailment, but this does not explain why they act out their disturbance in the same way, again and again: loading up on guns, usually including the most lethal, high-capacity types, and then seeking out a public area where they enact the same ritualized scenario, again and again: shooting as many people as they can in a short period of time and then taking their own lives, or dying in a hail of gunfire that they bring down upon themselves. These killers are not each coming up with a unique, creative scenario, but all seem to be following the same basic script. Did they create this script, this pattern, this idea, all on their own? If they have, then we can rest easy that this is simply a misfiring neuron or chemical imbalance or thought disorder, the tragic malfunctioning of a diseased brain, and all we need to understand is which psychiatric label to apply to said brain, medicate or lock away the person bearing bad brain, and voila! Case closed.

But these disturbed murderers are not coming up with these mass-killing scenarios, these die-in-a-blaze-of-glory extravaganzas all on their own. Our media is saturated with images and stories of people who live and die by and with guns, constantly shooting, killing, bleeding, more and more bodies, more and more deaths on our television, movie and video game screens EVERY DAY. And our young are becoming addicted to violent entertainment. It may be that for most young people, this exposure causes no lasting harm, at least no obvious inclination toward mass murder, but how do we know for sure? How do we know how many people who resort to guns in killing and maiming others may have been influenced by the flood of enticing violence in our culture? More research needs to be done, no doubt, but isn't it common sense that if we allow our media to constantly bombard people with narratives and images glorifying gun violence, and we then see a trend of gun violence in our society, that our media may very well be contributing to the problem? Doesn't our economy run on the assumption that massive advertising is able to sway people's behavior? Don't we believe that media communication has an effect on people? Well, shouldn't the same reasoning apply to media violence? WE ARE CONSTANTLY ADVERTISING, MARKETING,BUYING, SELLING, MANUFACTURING AND PROFITING FROM FANTASIES OF VIOLENCE AND KILLING. WE ARE TRAINING OUR YOUNG TO KILL AND BE KILLED.

We need to address this larger social context, and not take refuge in false comfort that all we need is to label, medicate or lock away a few disturbed or diseased individuals. Yes, we need more mental health services, not only because of gun violence, but because it is part of having a humane society, assuming we still believe that such a thing is worth striving for. But we need to think more about how we educate, indoctrinate, advertise and seduce people into loving images of blood-drenched, bullet-riddled violence and narratives of glorious killing. We have to start thinking about restricting such pathways to violence, and building pathways that lead to more peaceful and humane places.

Yes, I am talking about censorship, but this is nothing so different from what we already do in certain areas. We do not allow kids to buy pornography. We slap massive fines on mainstream television performances that feature obscenity or nudity. We do not allow terrorists to use media channels to advocate violent attacks.
If in these cases we accept the need to limit free expression where it is seen as injurious to public health, safety or morals, why on earth don't we put limits on how many shootings and deaths can be shown per night per television program or video game? Yes, the entertainment companies, being immoral corporate greed monsters, will scream and cry that this is against free speech, this is un-American, this is against liberty and consumer choice, but we have to keep our eyes on the prize here. Those media companies will just have to find some different ways to enthrall and entertain their viewers and gamers. They may just have to come up with more compelling stories, characters and scenarios and diversify beyond the rote production of images of carnage. If the media giants are incapable of creating forms of entertainment that are not based upon mass violence, then we should take away their broadcasting licenses and put them out of business.

As a Pagan, I pray that all Pagans will focus their spirituality on glorifying peace and nature, not weapons and death. We can be part of the solution, or part of the problem. In a time when our society is so sick and so sad, let's be part of the solution.

Why Conservatives Love Guns So Very, Very, VERY Much

For many years, I have pondered the question of why so many conservative Americans have such a strong attachment to guns and make such a huge issue out of gun rights and the Second Amendment, which sometimes seems like the only part of the U.S. Constitution that they care about. Today, I want to share my own theories about this.

I think the root causes for conservatives' intense gun-love are (1) overwhelming fear of the changing world of increasing cultural and ethnic diversity that we live in, and in response to this fear, (2) a desire to cling to an idealized past version of America that they find more reassuring. That is to say, conservatives are both very very scared and very very nostalgic.

For quite some time now, beginning with the defeat of the pro-slavery Confederacy in the U.S. Civil War, American conservatives have found society changing in ways they didn't like, and have had a keen sense of frustration that they were losing the battle of ideas in American culture. What exactly do they so object to about trends in modern American (and indeed world) society? I think the main issue is loss of white privilege in the movement toward a more open society that is more accepting of equality between various ethnic, racial and/or religious groups. Remember, it was fierce resistance to Reconstruction efforts to empower blacks that set off the ugly Jim Crow laws and the paramilitary terrorism of the Ku Klux Klan.

It was the mystical "power of the gun," as well as other forms of violence including bombs and lynchings, that made it possible for white southerners to terrorize blacks and keep African-Americans in a fearful, subordinate position in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It was also the power of the gun that subdued the Native American "savages" so that the West could be won for white settlement, a display of race-based violence to be long celebrated in games of cowboys vs. Indians and Western films. The current "Cowboys and Aliens" film shows how our society has, to some extent, moved away from this viewpoint with a narrative that requires white cowboys and "red" Indians to work together for mutual survival.

Anyway, let's go back into the conservative dream-world of beautiful, blood-white-and-blue patriotic violence, a harmonious, segregated world intoxicatingly scented with freedom-loving gunpowder. Thanks to his trusty gun, the White Man was indeed king of the country in the late nineteenth century. King of violence and racism, I would say, though I am sure conservatives would say that this use of violence in defense of the (white) "American Way" was something entirely noble and necessary. In the twentieth century, the KKK would form chapters all across the country, even in supposedly liberal strongholds like New York State and Connecticut, demonstrating that the violent defense of white privilege was not limited to the Southern states alone.

When the Civil Right movement emerged in the 1950s and 1960s, it was countered by massive violence in the South, and the cry of "State's Rights!", reaching back to Confederate slogans of the Civil War period to justify the right of states like Alabama to refuse equal rights to blacks and other non-white Americans. It would seem that they preferred returning to the Civil War rather than risk the unspeakable horror of granting Civil Rights to non-white Americans, and one must wonder if some such sentiment is among the motivations that have made Civil War reenactment so popular in recent decades. It certainly factors into the love for the Confederate flag in the South.

When the Democratic Party became the champion of civil rights for minorities, many white Southern former members quit the party to become Republicans. In every Presidential election since the 1960s, the majority of white voters, especially in the South, have gone Republican. Where Democrats have scored a victory, as with Carter in 1976, Clinton in 1992, and Obama in 2008, the Democrats' margin of victory came from African-American voters. The same demographic dynamic applies to the Tea Party, which is an almost exclusively white movement. The Tea Party desire to limit and dismantle government obviously appeals to those who see the national government and the Democratic party as overly concerned with the civil rights of minorities and allowing the country to sink into a sewer of mixed-race multiculturalism. (Note the endless sneering and sniping in the conservative media about "political correctness;" so many are nostalgic for the day when they could feel free to make jokes about niggers and Jews and faggots and whoever else they enjoyed insulting "back in the good old days.")

The gun issue has developed into a great vote-winner for the Republican Party, which has positioned itself as the protector of the seemingly sacred "right to bear arms," in opposition to the Democratic Party, which used to advocate for gun control and careful restriction of gun rights, though it no longer seems to possess the moral or political courage to stand up for this anymore. Many Democrats lost their seats in Congress the last time there was gun-control legislation, back in 1994, largely thanks to the efforts of the NRA. If one asks gun-loving conservatives, why do people need or want so many guns, the two pat answers are "hunting" and "self-defense." When one points out that no gun control effort has ever attempted to abolish all hunting in the USA, but only to place certain reasonable restrictions to prevent potential harm or abuse, just as we do with driving or alcohol, gun-minded conservatives will commonly express disbelief that gun control is anything other than an evil plot to eliminate ALL gun use and gun ownership in the USA, or they will pivot to the second issue of self-defense. This is something that conservatives are often quite passionate about.

It is particularly in the self-defense argument that you can see the latent, even unconscious racism, blended with FEAR, like an emotional accelerant: fear that the minute they let down their guard someone is going to break into their home, rob all their possessions, kill everyone in the family, fuck their dog, cook it on the backyard grill, and then eat it. Who exactly is it that they are thinking of in these fearful fantasies? The history of Republican political advertising,such as the Willie Horton advertisement from 1988, shows that the typical fear is of blacks, particularly black men. More recently, Hispanic men, increasingly mythologized as super-violent Mexican drug-runners, have been added into the paranoid mind-mix.

Here is how I see the race-fear/gun-love matrix speaking: "See, if you got your gun, and those black or brown-skinned devils, those niggers, Mexicans, Muslims, whatever, come to your house, you can blow them all away and defend your sweet wife and angel-faced children against the inevitable evils that come from all this modern multi-culturalism and civil rights bullshit: the savage, violent blacks, browns, and others who don't know their place and need to be reminded of the one primary fact of life in these United States, that the White Man's got the gun."

In the nineteenth century so idealized by conservatives, the blessed age before horrible transgressions of the American spirit like Social Security and civil rights, the violence-enforced "proper" place for non-whites like African-Americans and Native Americans was either on plantations or reservations. Our twenty-first century equivalent is prison for the blacks, with an absolutely skyrocketing rate of incarceration for African American men, deportation for Latinos,which has actually increased under the not-really-so-liberal Obama, and the various wars against Muslim populations, another brown-hued people to be put in their place.

In recent decades, the conservatives have succeeded marvelously in their "law and order" agenda, with gun rights always available as a sure-fire way to fire up the conservative masses and distract them from thinking about anything else. Fear is now ruling the national soul, and guns and threats of violence are everywhere. Funding priorities have shifted from schools to prisons, education replaced by incarceration. National security has replaced human rights and civil rights and, it would seem, almost any kind of rights other than gun rights as the top national priority. Criminal justice is a booming major on college campuses, replacing the fading idea of social justice that was once a common phrase on the campuses of the past. Real law is CRIMINAL law, you see; real justice is PUNISHMENT and nothing else. Invading other countries and brutalizing other peoples has become commonplace, and with new technology evolving rapidly, we will soon be able to do this without risking harm to any human American soldiers. The twenty-first century Sinatra will just have to sing, "Send in the drones..." The drone is the ultimate wet-dream of irresponsible violence, sanctified by the cult of technology: the gun acting alone, as it were.

Make no mistake: The gun, and with it the conservatives, are winning the national debate, for now, anyway. Fear rules the country, and the gun is our national sweetheart; the big, hot, red-white-and-blue penis that everyone wants to stroke and suck. Why do you think there are so many cop shows on television, so many variations of CSI, Law and Order, on and on? What picture of society and human nature is reinforced by this repetition?

Public figures of all sorts from politicians to newscasters to comedians know they cannot advance any criticism of our gun-wielding enforcers, from police to soldiers. Watch for how such supposed liberal icons like Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert slobber and coo when they have military guests on their shows. Discussion of what these wars are doing to the peoples of Iraq, Afghanistan and wherever else we are invading this week? Maybe raise a question about the killer drones in Pakistan? Question whether the wars are morally defensible? Ask your guest how many people he has killed? Forget it; that kind of discussion doesn't happen in today's militaristic America. All must bow before The Gun and He Who Wields the Gun (or the missile, or the drone, or any other new form of the gun.)

Contrast this to critiques of police brutality and protests against the Vietnam War in the 1960s and 1970s. Why was there no sustained outcry or movement for more restrictions on guns after the near-assassination of Gabrielle Giffords earlier in the year, or the Virginia Tech massacre a few years back, or any other such events in our sad history of national violence? Because the right has won; guns have become sacred.

This has its effect on American Paganism too. In some forms of Asatru or Heathenry, there is a great devotion to weapons. Where is that coming from, and where does it lead? These are two questions that have so disturbed me that I have taken my leave of American Asatru. Whatever spirituality is to be found through the barrel of a gun or the swing of an axe is not something that makes any sense to me.

Resist the gun.

Speak up for peace.

Fight the fear.

I believe that in the long run, the future belongs to diversity and pluralism. There really is no going back. Conservatives may want to retreat to some kind of racially, socially, and ethnically cleansed past, and may be dreaming, as Anders Behring Breivik did, of using violence to achieve or enforce that, but they will never succeed. Yes, the law-and-order, gun-obsessed, anti-diversity crowd is riding high right now, but I don't think the majority of Americans are really with them. Once the intentions of the most extreme conservatives become clear, America will reject this and return to the path it was traveling in the past that led us from the Constitution to Emancipation to Civil Rights.

And praise be to the people of Norway for not becoming fear-and-punishment obsessed in the light of their national tragedy, and for striving to maintain their very open, very supportive society. They are showing an emotional maturity and social wisdom that seems sadly lacking in the United States.