On the morning of March 28, 2010, in Tallahassee, Florida, Conor McBride, 19, was in a prolonged fight with his girlfriend of one year. They were good kids, well-liked by friends and viewed as promising student leaders. But they had been fighting continuously for nearly 36 hours by the time morning rolled around, in person, over the phone, via text message. At first they fought about nothing, but with little sleep the hours dragged on -- emotions raged and threats were made. At one point Conor ran to his dad's bedroom and picked up his father's shotgun. He intended to scare her, but by that point had no idea what he was doing.
At 2:15 pm, Conor McBride walked into the Tallahassee Police Department, trembling. "You need to arrest me," he said, beginning to weep. "I just shot my girlfriend in the head."
In case you haven't heard, there is a lot of talk about guns in America today. It's tiresome and it's scary. But the country has a serious problem on it's hands. Like any society, America has its share of deeply troubled individuals who commit horrendous crimes with violent weapons. Unexpectedly. Tragically.
Of course there are conflicting solutions for this problem, including the call for more guns. In schools. In homes. In all arenas of civil society. Proponents here sound the rather noisy refrain, "Guns don't kill people, people kill people!"
Well, frankly I've had quite enough of that. The fact is, guns do kill people. They kill people much quicker than people kill people, at any rate. But more on that shortly. The question I have for the "people kill people" club is: who, exactly, are the people who kill people?
You see, we seem to be deluded by an odd dichotomy. There are bad people (you know, the ones who kill people) and then there are the rest of us. Them and us. We are us, and us is good. They are them, and them is bad. The thing is, ladies and gentlemen, we are all us. And, like it or not, we are all them.
We are all broken. We are all hurting. We are all fragile. We are all prone to mistakes. We are all prone to be rash. But by God's grace we can keep it together. So we trudge forward. And we slip up. And, sometimes, we snap.
Conor McBride was not a bad kid. He was not "them". He was, and is, us. And Conor snapped. But Conor snapped, tragically, within arms reach of his father's shotgun. And his ambitious, beautiful girlfriend lost her life in an instant.
By this point, we all know of Adam Lanza, the Newtown shooter. Adam Lanza had deep issues. And though we will never know how severe his issues were, we will always know that on December 14, 2012 Adam Lanza snapped. And we will henceforth always regret that Adam Lanza's mother had a room full of assault rifles. Guns she bought to use against "them." 27 people lost their lives that day at the end of legally owned firearms. 27 of us.
Today, gun sales in America have never been higher. People are stocking up to protect themselves from all sorts of bad people. You know, from "them." Consequently, America's homes are being filled with lethal weapons. And this breaks my heart.
Think of the young kids now, bullies and their victims, who will so easily sneak one of Mommy's pistols to school, just to scare the other kids. Think of the insecure and misunderstood teenage introverts, who withstand torrents of abuse at home and at school until one day they snap, and reach into Dad's well-stocked gun cabinet. Think of the man who loses his job and family, and in a moment of extreme humiliation and anguish shoots himself... with the gun bought for "them."
We think we will never be these people, and, Lord willing, we will neither be them or know them. But we must not deceive ourselves. The pressures of the world and the sin strong within make many people snap. With guns -- the guns at arm's reach in our homes -- these episodes are inevitably lethal.
Mere hours before Adam Lanza broke into Sandy Hook Elementary School, another isolated and broken young man on the other side of the world also snapped. In rural China, a 35-year old man attacked students arriving for class outside an elementary school. 20 people suffered minor injuries, and the man was immediately apprehended. The Chinese man was not so different from Adam Lanza. But guns are near impossible to obtain in China. This man's weapon was a small knife.
I hope that sensible gun legislation can be enacted in this country, as it has been all around the developed world. In the meantime let us thank God for our health, and for our safety, and for strength on our rocky paths. And let us humbly remember that we are the "them" that we fear, and only love and grace, not guns, can be the safety that we seek.
