The NRA’s dangerous theology

Broadcast on 2CH Sydney, Sunday 27 Jan 2013.

The great American civil rights campaigner, Martin Luther King, who would have turned 84 this month, once said: “People often hate each other because they fear each other, they fear each other because they don’t know each other, they don’t know each other because they cannot communicate, they cannot communicate because they are separated.”

Social justice advocate Jim Wallis added: “and in that separation they seek guns.”

Following last month’s horrific massacre, National Rifle Association executive vice president Wayne LaPierre said, “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”

Wallis rightly calls this view “morally mistaken, theologically dangerous, and religiously repugnant.”  Each of us is both good and bad, and “when we are bad or isolated or angry or furious or vengeful or politically agitated or confused or lost or deranged or unhinged — and [have access to semi-automatic weapons], our society is in great danger.

I’m Rod Benson for the NSW Council of Churches.