Editor, Commonwealth:
In case anyone besides Derrick Washington, whose letter appears in the June 3 Commonwealth (“Blaming sin for mass killings is insulting”), totally missed the point of my June 2 letter to that newspaper (“Sin, not guns, is the cause of mass killings”), let me explain, not in my defense, but, if for nothing else, for Mr. Washington’s “frustration” (his word, not mine).
First, nothing even approaching the issue of race entered my mind when I wrote my letter, nor did anything even resembling a comment on race appear in my letter. My letter also did not even come close to saying, as Washington alleges it did, that “‘God’ is now punishing America for its hyper-sinful ways (whatever that means) by allowing (of all things!) Americans to use their ‘free will’ to mass murder innocent children, African Americans” etc.
Finally, Washington’s somehow reading into my letter anything at all that has to do with Nat Turner stretches all imagination. I’m afraid that Mr. Washington had something totally besides my letter on his mind when he wrote his letter in response.
Clint Guenther
What I was trying to say is that it doesn’t take a semiautomatic rifle to kill, and to kill a lot of people, even children. In 1995, the Oklahoma City bomber killed 168 people in one fell swoop, including about 20 children — in a day care center, of all places, and he did that with a single bomb made from fertilizer. No rifle or bullets were used. In the hands of someone bent on murder, any object will suffice.
My opinion of sin as the cause of mass murders was also not meant in any “holier than thou” or oversimplistic way. My point was that as much as we hate violence (and I do not own a single gun), in this country we have a constitutional right to bear/own arms (even cannons, despite our senile president’s statements to the contrary) with no restriction on that right. The restriction is in how we use those arms. The sad reality is that criminals scoff at our gun laws (as proven weekly in Chicago alone), and criminals will find and use anything to kill, if that’s their desire and intention.
Cain didn’t kill Abel with a semiautomatic gun; but just before Cain killed Abel, God warned Cain that sin was just outside his door, waiting to devour him. Cain (apparently) rebuffed God’s warning and, as a result, killed Abel and was forever cursed. I pray our country doesn’t stray so far from God and ignore his admonitions, meant only for our good, that He removes His influence over us, withdraws His blessings from us and turns our country over to so many of its people’s evil desires, as He appears to have done in Germany less than a mere century ago. That’s where the “sin is the cause” comes in.
As for guns, a semiautomatic rifle may be the instrument of murder, but even those guns are not the cause, any more than cars on the road are the cause of hundreds of deaths a year in car accidents involving drunk drivers. Otherwise, cars would (and should) have been outlawed long ago. To quote that trite but true saying, “If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.”
I don’t want, nor do I plan, to live in that kind of country, but Mr. Washington, and everyone else who feels like he does, is free to leave whenever they like. The freedom to enter another country, however, is another matter altogether. Most other countries have and enforce strict immigration laws; they do so with automatic rifles.
Clint Guenther
Greenwood
