MyOutSpirit.com Gay Spirituality Blog

Changing the Way We Talk About "Gays with Guns"

A few weeks ago, I was blown away at the fear and violence that was being vented on in the discussion under the Joe’s post “Gays with Guns.” I don’t deny that physical assault is a real danger faced by many queer people, both because of their queer identity and because all people face a statistical threat of physical violence. However, I question the usefulness of guns, ostensibly for self defense, as a reaction to this danger. I firmly believe that the prevalence of guns in the marketplace only perpetuates an arms race between potential victims and potential attackers. We only drift into a situation where large numbers of people are carrying lethal weapons. These weapons tend to cancel each other out in terms of effectiveness for attacker and defender, which only encourages both sides to seek more powerful guns. The arms race becomes a vicious cycle, driven by the fear of potential victims and the desire of attackers to overpower their victims. Meanwhile, with little increase in safety, we see huge increases in the danger of collateral damage, i.e. people who were not even initially targets of violence becoming victims of the range and lethality of the bullets.

 

In his post, Joe mentions several responses to the danger of physical assault that are good alternatives to guns and that would allow us to break the arms race cycle. However, his most useful suggestions are ignored by those caught up in the arms race, who instead prefer to point out that within the context of the arms race cycle, taking a self defense class is not as good a solution as I high-powered, easy to carry sidearm. In this post, I’d like to move away from the discussion under “Gays with Guns,” which has become trapped in the rhetoric of the arms race cycle, and instead introduce the language, understanding, and techniques of non-violence into the discussion.

Gays with guns

by Joe Perez

"What would you do if armed terrorists broke into your church gay bar and starting attacking your friends with automatic weapons in the middle of a worship service night out cruising? Would you be prepared to defend yourself and other innocents well... ? Would you be justified in doing so? Is it time for Americans to consider such once-unthinkable possibilities?"

The Christian right-wing website WorldNetDaily asks these, um, poignant and timely questions in its review of Shooting Back, a "biblical defense of bearing arms." The review says: "Using the Bible as his guidepost, [Charl] van Wyk makes the case that Christians not only have the right but the duty to defend themselves and other innocents from ... aggression." I guess "turn the other cheek" gets conveniently forgotten.

The new book tells the story of van Wyk, a South African defender of Good People against Terrorists. Wyk: "Instinctively, I knelt down behind the bench in front of me and pulled out my .38 special snub-nosed revolver, which I always carried with me ... I would have felt undressed without it..."