This is the latest tirade from David Virtue in his quixotic campaign to move the United States to enact the kind of draconian gun control legislation other countries have. Here he rhetorically turns his back on us "AHOLE Americans" and addresses his friends in the countries mentioned in a condescending attempt to explain us to them. Again, I respond in italicized bold:
"TO ALL MY FRIENDS IN ENGLAND, EUROPE, CANADA, AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH AMERICA AND AFRICA. . . .
You write and ask me why is there such an obsession with guns in this country.
Many who die are suicides which, if there were not the easy availability of guns most would still be alive today. I knew two fathers who lost sons to suicide because loaded hand guns were in the home. In 2021 that figure was 24,000 and rising, about 70% of all deaths. The total number of killings topped 45,222 in 2021. At the present murder rate, it could easily reach 50,000 by the end of 2022. That’s the equivalent of the city of Nelson, NZ or Horsham, England."
I wonder how "Dr." Virtue reaches the conclusion that most deaths by suicide wouldn't have happened had it not been for the easy availability of guns. I'm calling on him here to publicly explain that.
I also wonder why Virtue, in accordance with logical consistency, doesn't address the easy availability of alcohol, which "causes" three times as many deaths annually as the easy availability of guns do. I'm calling on him here to publicly explain that one as well.
As to why guns are easily available, well, I have addressed in previous parts of this series, but Virtue sums it up in the next sentence:
Guns are held in the name of freedom and something called the Second Amendment.
Yes, "something" called the Second Amendment.
"The 2nd amendment was written at a time of single shot flintlock rifles. The 2nd amendment never envisaged the general populace buying or owning an AR-15 or AK 47."
I have addressed this silly argument in Part 3.
It never envisaged an 18-year-old who is too young to buy liquor walking into a gun store and buying a loaded semi-automatic AR-15 and then walk into a school and slaughter children.
I wonder how Virtue knows what the Founding Fathers envisaged. Perhaps he should public explain this one too. As I've already demonstrated, the Founding Fathers were learned and intelligent Englightenment men who were aware of all manner of developing technologies, some of them involved in that development (Benjamin Franklin and electricity). As to firearms, they knew of the Puckle Gun and the Giradoni Rifle, both prototypes of automatic fire weapons. They knew what primitive firearms technology was, how it was evolving, and where it was likely to go, and I maintain that if they were alive today they'd be on the side of us "gun nuts." Their political philosophy would demand it. The likely knew that evolving technologies would in many cases mean increased dangers, but they would accept those potential dangers, especially when rights are involved, in accordance with a cost-benefit analysis. In other words, they knew that liberty could be dangerous, but they chose liberty over security instead.
Today, these slaughters are the Republicans’ human sacrifices to the 2nd amendment. The most recent killing in Illinois, a 21-year-old white male bought not one but five weapons, two were semi-automatic AR-15s.
"These slaughters are the Republicans’ human sacrifices to the 2nd amendment." Here again, as is his wont, Mr. Virtue resorts to angry invective and inflammatory language, which while not technically libelous, is libelous in spirit. It is a form of false witness.
We are repeatedly told that guns don’t kill people, people kill people, probably the stupidest one liner in the history of one liners. The killers are both black and white. Black on black killings predominate in cities; in the broader populace killings it is white and people of different ethnic groups. Another fiction is that there are more deaths in Democratic states than Republican. A person wanting to go on a killing spree in Illinois can buy a gun in Indiana and cross state lines with nobody checking.
Yet in all that dog of a comment he never explains why the slogan is stupid. Is it not the case that metallic manufactured items don't do things unless used or set in motion by people? What a strange metaphysical notion to argue otherwise. In his 11th Homily on Romans, St. John Chrysostom uses weaponry as an analogy with respect to the role of the flesh in spiritual warfare:
"'Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin...but as instruments of righteousness.'
The body then is indifferent between vice and virtue, as also instruments (or arms) are. But either effect is wrought by him that uses it. As if a soldier fighting in his country's behalf, and a robber who was arming against the inhabitants, had the same weapons for defense. For the fault is not laid to the suit of armor, but to those that use it to an ill end."
So, the argument that guns don't kill people but people kill people is not so stupid at all. It is true on its face, and even The Goldenmouth would apparently agree.
The US Supreme Court recently upped the ante allowing concealed carry laws in some states thus allowing men and women to carry guns which, on an impulse, or an argument over a parking space one or both parties can pull out their hidden hand weapon and shoot. The gun has now replaced the middle finger. You have been warned. The United States leads the world in total number of people incarcerated, with more than 2 million prisoners nationwide.
And here we are treated to yet another of Virtue's hysterical assessments. Perhaps it has escaped his notice that 38 states have legalized concealed carry, yet shootings involving licensed carriers over parking spaces and suchlike almost never occur. Back in the day when we gun-rights activists were fighting for concealed carry, the hoplophobe left predicted mayhem on the streets.
It didn't happen. We proved them wrong, and David Virtue is wrong with them.
Apparently, Jesus wants Americans to be armed to the hilt to kill nonexistent communists living in Boise, Idaho but willing and able to kill their neighbors because any moron can buy and own a gun. Many of the killers write manifestos declaring their intention and nobody challenges them because of free speech issues. Threats abound to people who oppose the NRA an organization so corrupt it is under investigation by the attorney general of New York State in connection with its lawsuit that seeks to dissolve the NRA for an alleged pattern of self-dealing.
And there he goes again with his emotive rhetorical overreach. We gun owners believe "Jesus want's Americans. . . etc., ad nauseam." Yet another unchristian caricature of American gun owners.
As for the NRA, while some reforms are needed, our organization will survive. Even one of its critics says so:
But while it may be tempting to cheer the organization’s troubles, the NRA isn’t dead yet. “It will reconstitute itself without a problem,” an anonymous former Trump adviser told Politico on Friday. The NRA isn’t the only gun-rights organization in the U.S., either; the Politico piece even mentions a few, like Save the Second and Gun Owners of America, and some view the NRA as being unacceptably moderate. Even if the NRA did shut its doors, it seems entirely likely that some other group will attract the group’s donors. As long as the money flows — and it will — gun-rights lobbyists will find jobs.
This past weekend on July 4. . . . (long, meandering rant snipped here in the interest of brevity. You can read it at his site. It's basically a litany of woes about gun violence.)
With all the guns already in existence there is no stopping the killings. None. Not only can teenagers buy semi-automatic weapons, rising illegal drug use with its own gun culture, and the easy purchase of guns, no one is safe anywhere any more in America. Red flag laws will be flouted. Gun laws in some states are as open as a colander, the massacres will continue, they will never stop.
Well then I guess there's no stopping the killings, because all the guns already in existence are not going to magically disappear, though Virtue may rant and rave and wish otherwise until he's blue in the face. Nor will the sale and purchase of millions of fireams be prevented in the future. That being the case, Virtue and his fellow hoplophobes in the the US, the Anglosphere, Europe and South America are going to have to find another narrative, you know, a narrative that is far more realistic, like praying for national spiritual renewal and hardening targets.
My wife and I never shop together any more in big box stores, only in open farmers markets where you can duck behind a tree if some NRA loving gun slinger pulls out his semi-automatic weapon and starts shooting.
Poor David and his wife, living in such abject, irrational fear of us "NRA loving gun slingers". But now that he's alerted us publicly, I'm going to tell all my fellow NRA members to start frequenting open farmers markets and look for the Virtues hiding behind a tree. ;)
Seriously, here once again Virtue resorts to an unchristian, vituperative attack on American gun owners, most if not the vast majority of whom are Christians of one form or another. Like I said, this is standard fare from him. If Virtue were not an Anglo-Protestant but rather an Anglo-Catholic, as a priest I would enjoin him to repent and go receive the sacrament of Confession. But he is an Anglo-Protestant, so as a priest I would counsel him to confess to God for his sinful acerbic rants which are devoid of any degee of Christian reason or charity.
The future of America is all downhill. Our politics are a mess, evangelicals are mostly vacuous, theologically empty-headed “Christian” nationalists who can’t figure out the difference between the Kingdom of God and the “Kingdom” of America, while a former president controls the Republican Party. Democracy is on the line. Civil War is a real possibility if people continue to promote and believe the Big Lie. And America has millions of guns to make it happen.
Three things:
1) We're treated once again to an instance of Virtue's unchristian inflammatory rhetoric, devoid of all reason, and what's more, it's an instance of the ad hominem fallacy;
2) It's also an instance of the hasty generalization fallacy. Virtue can't pretend to know the mind of Evangelicalism at large on the basis of his limited experience;
3) And I always laugh at modern Anglo-Protestants who rant and rave about "Christian Nationalism", when Anglo-Protestantism is the natural offspring of English Christian Nationalism (Erastianism). Virtue prays his Offices and observes the service of Holy Communion from a book that emerged from English Christian Nationalism.
But that is a topic for another day
FOOTNOTE: England, NZ and Australia all banned semi-automatic weapons after mass shootings. They have never had a repeat mass shooting.
FOOTNOTE: Causal fallacy, and once again, the US is not England, NZ, Australia, Canada or any other statist nation in the Anglosphere, Europe or South America. We are the United States of America, and in the United States of America the right to keep (possess) and bear (carry) arms is settled constitutional law. That means hundreds of millions guns including so-called "assault weapons" with their proper furnishings, and an untold number of stockpiled rounds of ammunition. No gun control laws patterned after the law of New Zealand and Australia will ever be enacted here. Get used to it, Dr. Virtue.