There are some folks who argue that they just love ’em their guns. There are some who make arguments for their ownership, whether sport, defense or, in the case of an authoritarian government, offense. There are some, like me, who aren’t actually gun fans, but as long as the Second Amendment exists, will defend it as part of the bundle of rights protected from government intrusion.
The gun debate makes sense only when we understand that individual gun owners are mostly very kind, friendly people who love their kids and their neighbors but who, despite evidence to the contrary, share a kind of cultural faith that guns are a means to security, safety and freedom. They articulate the problem of gun violence in individual terms; the problem, they argue, is the sin of the individual who pulls the trigger, who commits murder. And of course, that is a grievous sin. However, to cast America’s gun deaths as purely the fault of individuals is to deny a broader cultural idolatry that makes any individual sin far easier to commit.
The last-quoted sentence above has a rational disconnect as American as apple pie. Guns are inanimate objects. They don’t go off firing on their own, whether for good purposes or bad. But non sequitur aside, can it be denied that the availability of guns facilitates their use by bad actors as well as good?
The false gods of power promise to keep us safe and make us strong. That is why we love them. Yet what they deliver is more and more death. This is how idols work. Ironically, our ardent devotion to them, in the end, subverts the goods that we think they protect, including the safety of our children. The concept of idolatry reminds us that things can be good and valuable — like freedom, autonomy and individual rights — and end up harming others if we hold them above all other goods.
There does seem to be a devotion involved that distinguishes guns from other objects, like hammers or knives. Some people tend to accumulate them for no apparent reason other than they love them. Being a collector of things myself, I can appreciate the desire to accumulate objects that interest you. I can further appreciate the desire to share them with others who are similarly fascinated with the collected objects. Are guns any different than, say, tool wristwatches or Georgian sterling silver?
The example of guns, which is largely a politically partisan issue, implicates the ideological right, but idolatry occurs across the entire political spectrum. The left has its own idols as well, which, like those of the right, remain largely unconscious and invisible to its adherents but drive societal dysfunction. It has its own manifestations of disordered worship of power and individual rights. The challenge, for all of us, is that it is easy to spot the idols of our ideological opponents but far more difficult to see our own.
Is the problem that guns are inherently weapons and can, and too often are, be used to take a life, or is the problem that to the left, guns represent a right-wing fetish and facile tool to level blame on the other tribe for criminal conduct perpetrated by individuals whom the left prefers not to blame?
Or are human beings simply inclined by our nature to grasp onto things and then rationalize why we adore them?
Guns take on a sacred quality among devotees. Sometimes this is overt, such as the trend highlighted by The Atlantic last year of Catholic gun enthusiasts posting illustrations of saints holding AR-15s or photos of guns draped in rosaries. Usually, idolatry presents with far more subtlety. Most people would not valorize violence. They would not profess a worship of weapons. But our devout attachment to guns springs from a broad societal adoration of power and of individual rights.
That people feel a need to believe in a higher power to give meaning to our lives has long explained our need to embrace an ideology, for better or worse. Are guns the idols of a religion-like worldview? Some might reply that guns represent the American love of freedom, or individualism, but is that all they represent?
Understanding our hearts as idol factories invites us to the difficult work of honesty and humility. It tells us that people do harm, sometimes without knowing it or without meaning to, which means that we probably do as well. It tells us that we are not driven by pure rationality or unfettered love to the degree we suppose we are. And this humility allows for compassion and charity to others, even our enemies. It tells us that they are not uniquely evil. They are driven by disordered passions and loves just like us.
By analogizing guns to idols, does it make it easier to understand why some people treat guns as sacred or is it a way to denigrate people who love guns as mere religious fanatics praying at the altar of AR-15?
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