America’s Guns, the Golden Calf — James Atwood
As the golden calf gave the ancients a false sense of security, many twenty-first century Americans look for security in weapons. When our leaders are absent or fail us; when our God is invisible and...
View ArticleFighting Our Real Enemies
In the cover story of the August 6 edition of Time magazine, Joe Klein offers a rather grim account of the U.S. national conversation about guns in the wake of recent mass shootings. He writes about...
View ArticleFighting Our Real Enemies: Now, Do We Have the Ammo?
We are in the middle of a trial of strength between two populations of political actors: guns and children. And children are vastly more powerful. We don’t have to idealize them to recognize that they...
View ArticleThe Culture of the Gun
Until we address ‘toxic masculinity,’ Newtowns will continue to happen.
View ArticleResurrection and Gun Control
A little over a month after the shooting at Newtown Elementary School which left twenty young children and six staff members dead, President Obama today offered bold Presidential leadership for a...
View ArticleA Fork and Knife (on Guns)
My father had a collection of duck decoys so numerous you might have reasonably assumed he hunted. And he did. Once. Oh, he didn’t have a gun. But my mother’s Cousin Jimmy coaxed him along to the duck...
View ArticleThe Irony of “Gun Control”
As we talk about the number and effects of guns in our midst, a cluster of concerns arises: public safety, constitutional rights, and policy decisions, among others. These topics, though, live and...
View ArticleMy Kids
Back when I taught high school, I referred to my students as “my kids.” Sometimes, hearing this, a chatty hair stylist would ask me how many I had. “Oh about 180,” I’d reply. There would be laughter,...
View ArticleRights and Responsibilities — Mary Brennan Thorpe
The NRA’s recent announcement of a grand master plan to end gun violence stunned me. Perhaps it shouldn’t have. I worked as a lobbyist at one point in my life, and I know all about positioning the...
View ArticleThe Bloody Altar of Liberty – How Much Gun Violence Before We Change The Laws?
Between 2005 and 2015 in the United States there were 301,797 gun deaths —so, roughly the same number as if every man, woman, and child in Cincinnati, Ohio were gunned down. It is not unusual for more...
View ArticleResurrection and Gun Control
A little over a month after the shooting at Newtown Elementary School which left twenty young children and six staff members dead, President Obama today offered bold Presidential leadership for a...
View ArticleA Fork and Knife (on Guns)
My father had a collection of duck decoys so numerous you might have reasonably assumed he hunted. And he did. Once. Oh, he didn’t have a gun. But my mother’s Cousin Jimmy coaxed him along to the duck...
View ArticleThe Irony of “Gun Control”
As we talk about the number and effects of guns in our midst, a cluster of concerns arises: public safety, constitutional rights, and policy decisions, among others. These topics, though, live and...
View ArticleMy Kids
Back when I taught high school, I referred to my students as “my kids.” Sometimes, hearing this, a chatty hair stylist would ask me how many I had. “Oh about 180,” I’d reply. There would be laughter,...
View ArticleDemocratic revolutions and gun rights – forging a more global perspective on...
Everyone is familliar with Mao Tse-Tung’s famous dictum, first formulated during the Long March in the 1930s, that “all power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” The saying often has gushily romantic...
View ArticleRights and Responsibilities — Mary Brennan Thorpe
The NRA’s recent announcement of a grand master plan to end gun violence stunned me. Perhaps it shouldn’t have. I worked as a lobbyist at one point in my life, and I know all about positioning the...
View ArticleThe State’s Justice and the Powers after Trayvon
For the family of the late Trayvon Martin, Saturday's ruling - that George Zimmerman was found not guilty of any wrongdoing in his shooting of Trayvon - is a terrible tragedy, and a miscarrying of...
View ArticleThe Bloody Altar of Liberty – How Much Gun Violence Before We Change The Laws?
Between 2005 and 2015 in the United States there were 301,797 gun deaths —so, roughly the same number as if every man, woman, and child in Cincinnati, Ohio were gunned down. It is not unusual for more...
View ArticleLive by the Gun, Die by the Gun
The school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, which left seventeen students and teachers dead, has reignited the debate about gun control and the Second Amendment...
View Article“The Right To Bear Arms”– What Kind of Right Is It, Really?
The Second Amendment should not become just one more issue of irreconcilable hyperpartisanship. Whether one finds themselves on the political right or the political left, one should realize that the...
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