Defensive Posture

From what I hear Congress has prevented the Center for Disease Control from studying the root causes of this proliferation of mass shootings.  So I guess it's up to us.  If you're more concerned about losing your guns than losing your children stop reading.

Still going?  Okay, first of all let me just say that I agree with President Obama, that our thoughts and prayers are not enough and that we need common sense gun laws (I assume that means tougher background checks and more restrictions on where you're allowed to take them once you buy them).  But I am not under any illusions that those regulations are going to be enough to stop the mass shootings that have become all too familiar in our nation.  To the extent that rules and regulations can address the problem, we ought to stop at nothing to make those rules and regulations exist and have teeth.  To the extent that we can address this problem with better mental healthcare and intervention programs we should absolutely do that yesterday.
I'm going to stay within my area of expertise though and talk about this.  For those of you who didn't click the link thingy, it's to an article by Garry Wills, in The New York Review of Books from 2012, yep three years ago, after Sandy Hook but before a whole bunch of other mass shootings.  Wills draws the connection between Guns and Moloch, the biggest baddest idol in all of Hebrew Scripture.  For those of you not familiar with the cult of Moloch, here's a thumbnail: Moloch or Molech was an Ammonite deity, who was known to require the sacrifice of children.  "Giving your seed to Molech" was mentioned in Leviticus right in the middle of all the juiciest nasty bits.  It was similarly forbidden in Deuteronomy, but apparently Molech had some staying  power, because he was still hanging around in the time of Ahaz (2 Kings 16), Ahaz was apparently a real first class idolator, it says, "he even made his son pass through the fire," which was most likely a reference to the worship of Molech that was taking place in the Valley of Hinnom, which was later called Gehenna, which is the word Jesus uses for Hell.  So this thing is really persistent and really bad mojo.
You sacrificed children to Molech by burning them alive on the altar to the god, and it is pretty much the most abhorrent and abominable thing anyone ever did according to just about every place in the Bible it gets mentioned.
Why would people do such a thing?
Short answer: fear.
Long answer: the same reason a lot of people own handguns and assault rifles, you know, just in case "stuff" goes down.  I'm not going to say anything about people who who own guns for hunting, or because they collect them, or because they like to go out and shoot at targets.  I have a couple of shotguns from my days of hunting, I enjoy shooting even though I don't hunt anymore, and I understand the powerful feeling of packing heat.  But I am highly suspicious that it is a false feeling of security, because of the simple, and rather unavoidable tendency of violence to escalate and get out of control.  Soldiers and police officers train extensively and perennially to be able to use a gun effectively in conflict.  In my experience, shooting a handgun with any degree of accuracy is a skill that requires a lot of practice, when you are calm and the target is not a threat.  In the case of a threat to my security, honestly, I think I would rather be armed with a baseball bat or something that does not require such precision.  The feeling of security that comes with being armed is an important sign of the idolatry that underlies much of this argument.
An idol is something that offers you a feeling, and really nothing else. You are required to show your devotion to the idol with sacrifice, and the idol gives you the feeling that you will get what you want.
So what do guns as idols give us: the feeling of security.  Not actual security, in fact, they make us less safe for the simple fact that they are what is known as a force multiplier.  An unstable, angry person with a knife is dangerous, but their danger has certain limits, their range has certain limits.  People have been known to go on stabbing sprees, or violent rampages with other weapons, but the impact of those rampages is nothing like what happens when guns are involved.
For a rather vivid illustration of the effect guns might have on people who are unhinged, check this out.  Oh, yeah, do you think the same logic might apply to these mass shootings?  You know, if there was no gun, it wouldn't be quite so easy.  Most of these shooters are, in fact, suicidal, they have devalued their own life probably before they were able to devalue the lives of their victims.
What I'm really trying to dig at here is the idolatry that underlies our approach to violence.  I agree with some of the pro-gun crowd that guns are not the whole problem, but they are a part of it, and they are the part we can most easily take concrete steps to mitigate. At some point we need to understand that the evil behind the idol is the idea that violence can solve all of our problems.  We need to understand that whether you're talking about a revolver or a thermonuclear weapon, the equation remains the same: sacrifice children to us and we will help you feel safe.
That trade is not acceptable.