Local Voices

Gun Control is an Issue of Life and Race

Posted on January 22, 2013 at 4:57 pm

As Evangelicals celebrate Pro-Life Week in many of their congregations this week, I have to wonder how many pulpits will courageously connect President Obama’s Gun Control proposals to the issue of life? Also, as we celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day this week, I wonder how many participants will connect these same proposals to the issue of race?

I truly believe that if white youth were dying from gun violence at the same rate that black youth are, there would be an outcry so deafening that the NRA would be forced to tuck tail and run for the hills. But, we are do not live in a post racial society, nor do we live in an age of courageous moral leadership, so very few are likely to address this important issue from either of these relevant perspectives, and two important and timely platforms that might have provided us a real opportunity for real change will be sadly missed.

Upload Photos and Videos

Mark Felton

8:43 am on Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Mr Erlenborn,
That you choose to frame your argument with a 'what if' racial consideration, does not validate your belief that the National Rifle Association is a dystopian organization. The issue of urban violence is a function of the liberal politic, which presumes that black people are somehow so developmentally disabled that urban crime is their appropriate milieu; white people must be parental overseers because, of course, they cannot succeed upon their own philosophy, integrity and initiative. Black people need you to stop pitying them, expecting them to fail when on a leveled field, and using them to forward your racist agenda.

Carbon Bigfuut

8:49 am on Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Scott, this issue has nothing to do with race. It does have a lot to do with moral leadership, which seems to be one cause of the current criminal element. Of course, leadership begins at the top with qualified leaders, and that's what is missing.

Carbon Bigfuut

4:38 pm on Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Scott's letter is referring to national issues, so my response referred to (the lack of) national leadership. No, there's nothing in the constitution requiring leadership skills; you would think that leadership would be the natural outcome of an election. As we saw last November, people are more inclined to vote for the guy with the biggest giveaways.

I'll agree with you that leadership starts in the home. Learning morals starts there, too.