I made this point just the other day in a story about mass shootings and stochastic terrorism.
In the United State through the end of April, we suffered more mass shootings than we have had days in the year.
The latest highly publicized mass shooting took place in Allen, Texas, perpetrated by a self-described neo-Nazi who who cited an anti-LGBTQ fanatic as one of his biggest inspirations. He apparently hated non-White people and Jews too.
He's just the latest in a long line of right-wing haters to take an arsenal of military-style assault rifles into a public space and start blasting away.
Anyway, in the aftermath, as people all over the US called again for restrictions on assault rifles, politicians on the right offered mere "thoughts and prayers" for the families of dead children.
Some of those politicians puffed up in outrage over observations that God isn't going to fix the problem, that only they can pass laws to reduce the increasing slaughter.
But if course they won't. The U.S. right is synonymous with Christianity, and if there's one value that unites them, it's the value of unrestricted gun ownership – including ownership of military-style weapons designed especially to kill mass numbers of people in moments.
I don't know how these weapons, which literally nobody needs for any legitimate purpose, became an important Christian value, but they have.
In my own state of Michigan, several elected sheriffs —who run for office on what faithful Christians they are— recently told reporters they will refuse to enforce a soon-to-be-passed "red flag" law designed to identify mentally unstable people and prohibit them from owning guns.
They say that as Christians they can't "violate their oaths" to the Constitution. That's the hill they're prepared to die on –unrestricted gun ownership no matter what.
How is that Christian?
I don't know. But I'll tell you this much. Identify a gun nut in the United States, and they will almost certainly be an outspoken Christian.
As children continue to die in hails of bullets.
