the way of death
I don’t like guns. I understand that in our country we have a right to bear arms. But I wish that we could do a better job of regulating their use. If licenses are required for driving a car or even cutting someone’s hair, couldn’t there be a more effective licensing process for owning and carrying a firearm?
I get that some feel safer with a gun. I’m not one of those people. As a matter of fact, in two states where they have “open carry,” I’ve been seated in restaurants where the diner at the next table is wearing a handgun on his hip. That doesn’t make me feel safer at all.
Hunters need their rifles, I know. Although, when our house was burglarized while I was in junior high school, the burglars took money and my dad’s hunting rifles which were hidden on the top shelf of our guest room closet. That didn’t make me feel safer either. Those thieves knew where we lived, knew how to get into our house, and now they had our guns!
And don’t get me started on automatic or semi-automatic assault rifles. I don’t understand why anyone besides a law enforcement officer needs one of those. (I’ve heard that they are fun to shoot, but really!)
When we stopped in Perry, Iowa, I was reminded that just a year ago, there was a school shooting in the local junior-senior high resulting in the death of a sixth grader and the school principal. The young perpetrator took his own life. An investigation report concluded that his actions were “driven by a desire to commit suicide with the hostile intent of taking others with him.” How desperately sad.
I think about that as my own grandsons head off to school each morning. I push it out of my mind most days, but then another shooting happens and in the photos of the victims I see my own grandchildrens’ beautiful faces. What a world they are growing up in.
On our way across the country, we stopped in Abilene, Kansas, the location of the Eisenhower Museum and Library. It was too late in the day to visit those buildings, but the chapel where Ike and Mamie are buried with their young son, who died of scarlet fever, is always open for meditation. There are only two quotes on the wall. One spoken during the Cold War says, “Every gun made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed….This is not a way of life at all.”
An interesting quote from an old general. “Every gun made… is a theft,” followed by the echo of the words of Christ who hung on a cross so that we didn’t need to: “I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me…whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.” (Matthew 25:42-45) In other words, not serving our fellow humans, made in God’s likeness, is a theft from Christ himself.
Love, Liz
“Twelve people were killed and at least 40 people were injured after shootings marred three different high school events in two states over the weekend. 337 mass shootings have occurred so far this year in the U.S. as of October 11, according to the Gun Violence Archive.” Josephine Walker, Axios, October 13, 2025
