by Bill Lyons
How did this gun-owner-since-he-was-eight find himself at a prayer vigil to end gun violence on the steps of the Michigan state capitol in 2013? The easy answer is that Michigan Prophetic Voices, a nonpartisan, statewide organizing clergy group invited me to be there. But I had another reason.
In my family owning a gun was explained as a rite of passage, not as a Second Amendment right. When my father handed me my first gun he said, “You are old enough now to learn how to use this safely. There is one thing you have to promise me: never point it at anyone. If you do, I will take it away for good.” I made the promise.
The man who said those words had heard different words from his father. “Never steal another man’s property,” my grandfather had told my dad, “and if it’s yours, you fight like hell to keep it.”
Those words shaped events of an early August morning in the 1970s when my father and grandfather leveled shotguns at would-be burglars in the family business and, out of fear for their own lives, fired. One of those 20-something burglars was killed.
As I stood on the capitol steps holding a card with the name of a Detroit 17-year-old killed by gun violence in 2012, I remembered lying on my living room floor as a 6-year-old and hearing the gunshots that killed the would-be burglar. The name on the card read Exil Johnson. I wondered what the name of the would-be burglar had been because I felt a need to pray for him and his family too.
Like families do, my little sister and I were shielded from every detail of that summer night. I had no idea that the man who handed me my rite-of-passage weapon had not kept the promise he was asking me to make. But on that cold January morning in Lansing I knew why he had demanded it of me. When I baptized my dad in the late 1980s, all he said when he responded to the altar call was, “I just hope God can forgive me.” He was still carrying — and carried until the day he died — the wounds of pulling that trigger.
My dad and I lived on different sides of the theological and political spectrum. But he and I agreed on stricter gun laws like banning civilian ownership of military-style weapons. Watching my dad’s pain because he didn’t keep the promise he had demanded of me took all the pleasure out of my being a gun owner. The Second Amendment contains no healing in its words.
My dad carries other wounds too. After the events of that summer night were over, my grandfather walked up to my dad and put his arms around him. “I’m really proud of you, son,” he said. It’s the only time my father can remember hearing those words or feeling his father’s embrace. On the capitol steps I prayed for my father’s healing, and thanked God that I hadn’t had to pull a trigger in order to hear those words or get a hug from my dad.
Moral suasion and political action must join forces if gun violence is going to stop. The Church is responsible for the moral suasion part of that strategy. Ending violence means teaching fathers and mothers to always choose their words with an eye to their children’s futures, and to find reasons to be proud of their children that are not related to violence or competition, as much as it means gun control laws. Ending the violence means taking gun violence video games out of our kids hands as much as it means taking assault weapons out of grown up hands. Ending the violence means having tough conversations in our churches and in our families about how our faith and our patriotism intersect, about our values and priorities, and about what sacrifices we are willing to make for the health and welfare of others. Ending the violence means taking a stand without worrying about losing friends or losing contributors. If only gun control was as simple as my father had made it for me.
This kind of empathy for self and for others is a building block of Nonviolent Communication. It’s a helpful skill (I’m totally a beginner).