Opinion: There’s no ‘God-given’ right to bear arms

In a recent gathering on gun rights, state Senator Cris Dush, R-Brookville, warned of “radical progressives” who oppose the “God-given right to keep and bear arms.” He asserts that these views contradict “our sacred right to arm and protect ourselves.” Leave aside, for the moment, the divisive and fallacious rhetoric he employs: either you agree with Senator Dush, it seems, or you are a “radical.” As a man of faith, I am appalled by this calculated invocation of the word of God to endorse policies that, in fact, inflict violence and death upon our communities.

It is not clear how Senator Dush might justify his claim that these rights are, in fact, “God-given,” and of course, a gun rights rally is hardly the venue for a detailed defense of such claims. But let us consider what it might mean for something to be “God-given.” Among other things, what is God-given is a source of goodness and justice, peace and safety. I believe that those who oppose Senator Dush are arguing, with greater consistency, against the unregulated presence of guns in their communities on exactly these grounds.

For instance, it is not from a source of goodness that gun violence is now the leading cause of death for children in this country. Nor is it just that those who wish to do our children harm are allowed unfettered access to the purchase of assault rifles like the AR-15. And when our children have to spend school days in lockdown because of suspicious-seeming people near school grounds, I think we can agree that they are not at peace, and they are not safe.

For too long, voices on the right have controlled discourse about the place of God in politics. But there is a large contingent of Americans, myself included, who are fed up with this kind of talk. Religious Americans are not a monolith, and people like Senator Dush do not speak for us. We are tired of remaining silent and passive while fundamentalist zealots put our children at risk and make our communities less safe.

Recently, I joined forces with a number of other local religious figures to form the Centre County Interfaith Coalition for Gun Safety. We are a politically diverse group committed to creating a peaceful community free from preventable gun violence. We formed as a result of exasperation with leaders like Senator Dush: people who value guns more than children’s lives and have the audacity to claim that God is on their side when they do so. We are here to say: no longer. No longer will we allow the Cris Dushes of the world to control discourse around God and guns. No longer will we sit idly by, yielding our voices to those who claim that the proliferation of weapons of violence and death brings us closer to God.

In other words, I suggest that those like Cris Dush practice the worst, most cynical, most hypocritical form of faith: for they invoke the word of God merely to exploit its power without care for what it actually demands of its followers. Such people inevitably end up justifying only that which is unholy: in this case, putting our children and other innocent people at risk of preventable death.