Category Archives: guns

The Nightmare of Talking Money

04 Saturday Feb 2017

Posted by in Church, Citizenship, Events, guns, Learning from mistakes, People, Racial Prejudice, Words

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dock at sunset

The nightmare began when the court declared that “money is speech.” It was a variation of the old saying that “money talks.” The door opened for many wealthy people to set up and use pseudo tax-exempt non-profit organizations to take part in partisan campaigns. Then that idea spread into the churches. Individuals who wanted to endorse candidates for office funneled money through tax-exempt churches for partisan support, expanding the cash available that was unreportable and unaccountable to public interests. This was all in the name of the First Amendment.

A candidate appeared who had his own wealth, who could go where he wanted, stay where he wanted, and say what he wanted. He lied often, long, and loudly, and captured an extraordinary share of media attention with his outrageous antics, and he didn’t need to raise funds from anyone else in the ordinary course of campaigning. Wealthy people could go elsewhere and spend even more to prop up candidates who would do their bidding and who would be accountable to them personally. The singular wealthy candidate was just another form of “money speaking,” since he could not only use his own resources, but he could use his unusual platform to increase his own resources without needing to answer to anyone else, reveal his conflicts of interest, or follow the customary ethics of transparency and disclosure. His party shielded him from investigation and exposure of foreign entanglements in the hope that they could carry out their own platforms of experimental political change and revolution while he was in charge.

The candidate pretended to be the voice of common men overlooked and ignored by the rapid transformations of global economies. Wealth sought the cheapest labor and the highest rates of return without regard to the public interest where goods were manufactured or where they were sold. His decisions, once he was elected, simply cleared the way for more aggressive domination of the multitudes by moneyed interests. Money continued to talk with a louder voice. Soon it was understood that speech was not free in any form, not in the press, not in electronic media, not in the Internet, who were all controlled by a small concentration of special interests. The old principles of the First Amendment were hollow. Personal freedoms were identified with the freedom to force others to obey the conscience of the person who chooses to discriminate, instead of the freedoms of the person who is the target of discrimination. People with money had the freedom to oppress people without money.

The only Constitutional Amendment that would could not be abrogated in any form was the Second Amendment, and the more weapons and the more powerful weapons that one possessed, the more political power a person had. The resulting condition of a heavily armed population was neither “well-regulated” nor controlled by any police or military force serving the common interest. Private military units and paid bodyguards became the norm for those who could afford them. The random, careless, and accidental use of arms to injure and kill accelerated to become the leading cause of death among all people. People had developed the habit of scapegoating strangers and different ethnic groups; finally they turned on each other, neighbor against neighbor.

Society descended into chaos. The social contract was broken. What began as the security of wealth became the reinstatement of the “law of the jungle,” and life returned to being the “nasty, mean, poor, brutish, and short” life (as Thomas Hobbes had described it) of the “good old days.”

These were thoughts of the middle of the night when the mind entertains what darkness hides. The dream does not have to end this way. The creative mind can move the ending in another direction entirely as the day dawns.

The Church between the police and the hood

23 Saturday Jan 2016

Posted by in Caring, Church, Faith, guns, Learning from mistakes

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We smelled smoke as soon as we entered the church. It was the fall of 1968, and the fourth Sunday that we went to worship at First Presbyterian Church of Chicago, located in the middle of the south side community of Woodlawn, a few blocks from our apartment. The usher said that someone had firebombed the church office, and many of the records had been removed before the fire, so it was clearly an effort to cover the theft of the records; more than likely it was the Red Squad, a unit of the Chicago Police Department. Fortunately, the fire had been reported and firemen had arrived to put out the fire before a lot of damage occurred.

The Chicago Police had entered the church a few months before and confiscated the weapons that the church had collected from members of the area gang that had taken the name “BlackPStone Nation” as part of an agreement to trade weapons for jobs and opportunities. The “P” in their name supposedly meant “Peace,” but not everyone was persuaded of their intent. The church had objected to the way the police had acted, but not the idea of removing weapons, because that was their plan all along, and they hadn’t decided what how they were going to eliminate the weapons in their possession.

Whatever the church had tried in order to create peace in the neighborhood and that necessarily involved working with the neighborhood gangs, had come under suspicion by the police and some of the political leaders of the city, although other leaders had encouraged their efforts; the church and its pastor, John Fry, kept trying. If the gang leaders ever had good intentions, in cooperating with the jobs and opportunities programs, some of which were funded through the federal government, they eventually gave up when the church came under relentless criticism and was subjected to warrantless searches and fire-bombings.

So we worshipped, prayed for peace in the neighborhood and jobs for the young people, and listened to amazing and prophetic preaching from Pastor Fry. Fry published some books about the issues, notably, Fire and Blackstone, testified before a Congressional Committee, and lectured around the country on efforts to work with one’s neighborhood.

Months later Jan got a job as interviewer with the Illinois State Employment Service on 63rd Street, and she tried for a year to combat the hurdles of inadequate resources, job discrimination, and miles to go within the city environment for people to get to job interviews, much less to land a job that paid enough to keep making the trip. By that time, I was working on projects that took us to other churches within the city. Pastor Fry moved on. Efforts to establish peaceful work and education programs for the young adults of the South Side largely fell apart. Gang leaders and many of its members eventually landed in a cycle of prison, release, and more prison, until they either died or retired. Last time I checked, First Presbyterian was still there, smaller and older, trying to serve the neighborhood, gangs are still operating in the neighborhood, and politicians still are covering their….

Dangerous Domestic Disputes

12 Thursday Nov 2015

Posted by in Caring, Church, Farm, guns, Small town life

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Chicago Old TownApart from random reckless hunter’s shots and target practice on my car traveling through inner city neighborhoods at night, and the occasional shots through the parsonage windows that occurred at Tilton, Minonk, and Burlington, one bullet hole apiece, the only serious threats occurred as I tried to moderate domestic disputes.

At Tilton I learned that domestic disputes provide the most common setting where guns come out.

I was making a regular pastoral visit to an aged grandmother, whose several children lived within a few blocks of her house. She informed me that her daughter was going through a terrible ordeal and needed my help. The daughter had no phone, but she was home. Could I go and talk to her? I could and did. Talking to daughter and grand-daughter together, they explained the abuse they had endured and the sense of despair and hopelessness they felt. Where could they go? In the midst of that conversation, the husband came home early and drunk, and before I had a chance to say anything more than hello, he held a gun on all of us. Forty years later, I do not remember much of what I said, only the feeling that these could be my last moments, and the resolve to be calm and non-threatening, as I explained that I was a pastor, there to help all of them and not to take sides. His gun could only make things worse for him and for those he loved. Gradually he lowered his gun and began to cry. How it happened, I never did know, but over the next several months that family survived intact, that husband stopped drinking, and eventually they became active in the church.

In another situation a father held his gun on me when I came with his daughter to his house to take her children away from him. They had lived together for several years, but the daughter had resolved that her children’s well-being and her own required that they live on their own.  Only with repeated assurances that he could still see the children regularly, and no threats about legal actions or custody, did he give up his threat to use his weapon and kill everyone.

When I later agreed to serve as a volunteer chaplain for the city police department, the first instruction dealt with the dangers of domestic conflicts. The police trainer noted that officers wanted to have chaplains with them in family disputes to shift the focus from law enforcement to peaceful resolution. They felt more secure when the chaplains could join them, but they warned us that these situations remained volatile and unpredictable. They didn’t have to tell me.  In the months that followed, twice more I wondered if I would make it out alive. Years later, in another town, when I received another request to serve as a police chaplain, I decided that I was dealing with enough stress without adding that to the list.

Fire Call #4 at the Guns and Ammo Store

11 Monday May 2015

Posted by in Events, fighting fires, guns, Small town life

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Yellowstone Pool

The siren blasted on a fall evening after dark, calling us volunteers, not to an retail merchant’s store, but to a single story ranch-type house set on a one acre wooded lot, with several other homes nearby. The house was smoking heavily when we arrived. The owner had been smoking heavily also, but he awoke in time to escape and stood nearby. We responded with a full crew and three trucks and had the hoses out and charged when the explosions started inside the house. We began to hear whizzes and pops against the side of the new firetruck where I was adjusting the controls, and I felt something hit my helmet hard.

“What’s inside that’s doing that?” Don, our chief, asked the owner, and he answered, “A hundred or so guns, positioned around the house, and lots of ammo. They’re worth a lot of money. I’d like to see you get busy and save what you can.”

Don called out in his loudest voice, “Pull back. Pass the word. Pull back now.” As the explosions continued and the occasional sound of stray bullets, also, the crew repositioned the hoses and the trucks about thirty yards farther back, aiming the new high pressure hoses from a distance, breaking the few windows that remained, blasting holes in the burning sides of the house, but mostly watching that the wind did not carry flames or debris toward the neighbors north and east of the house.

The owner was angry, and protested the decision to pull the crew back and away from the house. It was obvious that the house was going to be a total loss, after the delays and the new orders from the chief. “As I see it, I’ve got three duties that come before saving your house. Saving my firemen. Saving your neighbors’ property.  And protecting our equipment.”

“What about my stuff?” the owner asked.  Don answered that the owner had already taken care of that, when he set fire to his own armory and shooting gallery. The owner did not respond well. The year was 1974, before the country as a whole had gone gun-mad, but this man already had the conviction that he had to be ready for anything. That’s why he had loaded guns and ammunition in every room of his house. Unfortunately, he was not quite ready for anything.

The first time I was shot

29 Wednesday Apr 2015

Posted by in Farm, Growing up, guns, Learning from mistakes, Racial Prejudice

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3 Owls

The first time I was shot was when I was fourteen years old. I survived, obviously, almost unharmed.

It was winter and I was walking to the west barn to feed and water the cattle that we sheltered there. I felt a painful bee sting on my upper arm. Bees don’t show up in winter. I quickly clapped my left hand over the spot, to swat the bee, finding the hole in my heavy winter coat and the bullet that had just barely penetrated my skin. I became angry immediately.

The barn sat fifty yards from the property line. On the other side was a ten acre triangle of woods bordered by our farm, the river, and the highway. An attorney and his family had purchased that land, built a house, and moved in a few months before. They were friendly neighbors and nice people. The two boys, ten and eleven year-olds, had the run of the woods, just as I had the run of the farm. I had heard them shooting their guns before, assuming they were target practicing.

When I was shot, I realized they were just shooting carelessly. Not thinking about the trajectory or range of their guns, not conscious about anything but the power of their toys. That made me angry.

After that, our parents had a talk. I never heard their guns again, and I was glad.

My father carefully controlled who was able to hunt on the land that we farmed. In hunting season we were very cautious about where we were and what we were doing, watchful for the hunters who were in the neighboring fields. Hearing about gun accidents was common. When my father brought out his guns, he used them sparingly and taught us how to use them as we became old enough and strong enough to use them..

I didn’t have much interest in guns. Raising animals to eat seemed both more efficient and kind, since shooting with poor vision and aim was always a poor substitute for acquiring meat for the family table. We considered pistols useless for anything that we needed to do on the farm, whether shooting for food or for protecting farm animals from predators or pests.

That was 1960, a different world, we think, and a different mentality, than 2015, when the typical targets for guns seem to be other people. They are often innocent children who are finding poorly stored guns, or who are watching an adult demonstrating or cleaning his gun. They are people committing misdemeanors, or minor felonies, which, through the confusion of circumstances, receive capital punishment without a semblance of due process. They are people stepping onto porches, knocking on the wrong doors, playing their car radios too loudly, “looking like threats” in the estranged eyes of suspicious people. In 1960, I thought such dangers were reserved to the racists in southern states, organized crime zones in the cities, and the accidents of hunting seasons. I learned  it could be anytime, anywhere, even when I was minding my own business, doing my chores, just like today.