USA and Guns

It's been a strange, and terribly sad, week overhearing the voices of the religious right in the American south voicing their opinions on Orlando over the social media. Bible Belt - '...where there are more prisons than Starbucks.' (Kevin Spacey's David Gale in The Life of David Gale)

These people hate the very idea of Islam. It almost seems as if some of them welcome fundamentalist terrorism happening so they can up the vehemence in their rhetoric.

These people hate 'gays'. You will not find the expression 'LGBT' in their tweets. They often gather outside LGBT events holding random verses from Leviticus.

So when an ethnic middle-eastern, USA-born, bi-polar afflicted, proclaimed gay-hater who turns out to be gay goes mad with an assault rifle in the name of Islamic fundamentalism in a club full of members of the LGBT community - well they find it hard to get their anger pitched exactly right.

Know this friends. The shares in the company who made the weapon used by the murderer apparently went up by 50% over the weekend.

Number of people killed by guns in the UK per 100,000 last recorded full year - 0.04
Number of people killed by guns in the USA per 100,000 last recorded full year - 3.6

Ninety times more likely.

One Twitter user went through every condolence tweet from every senator and congressman and added the amount of money they had received from the gun lobby in the previous year. Eye-opening. It was a lot.

All this information is gleaned from newspapers and I have no first-hand knowledge. Apologies if any of it proves to be incorrect. It surely can't all be.

Religion and Violence

I have found this an incredibly useful book. No easy answers but lots of excellent analysis and insightful stories and illustrations.

The central section revisits some of the Genesis family narratives with great gentleness and scholarship. What did the compilers of the stories of Cain and Abel, Ishmael and Isaac, Jacob and Esau, Leah and Rachel and Joseph and his brothers think they were doing? And have we, in going down the road of the scandal of particularity where God apparently chooses one over another, missed the point that always both parties get a blessing. And apart from the first example, where one party dies, they do not become enemies.

Wisdom usually whispers. The hard work of interpretation is to be preferred over the fundamentalist desire that religious texts be simple and taken at face value.

Islam, Judaism and Christianity have a common ancestor in Abraham - our future peace may well come from looking at these texts together and seeing what we have missed.

'When religion divests itself of power, it is freed from the burden of rearranging the deckchairs on the ship of state and returns to its real task: changing lives.'

Thought for the Day

As delivered at BBC Radio Bristol this morning:

In the American political drama 'The West Wing' news of a coup in the imaginary African country of Equatorial Kuhndu reaches the White House. President Bartlett asks Will Bailey, one of his speech writers, 'Why is an American life worth more to me than a Kuhndunese life?' 'I don't know sir' says Will, 'but it is.'

He is commended for speaking a hard truth to power.

Last week there were terrorist atrocities in Beirut, Baghdad and Paris. The highest loss of life was in Paris but the other events were not insignificant.

Two things diminish our capacity to care - distance and repetition. A suicide bomber in a place far away where these things seem common doesn't move us the way a local one does.

Now the French are our obvious neighbours and friends. It didn't happen so far away.

A man once asked Jesus who was his neighbour. As reply he got the well-known but often misused parable of the Good Samaritan. A priest and a Levite pass by a wounded Jew but a Samaritan, a traditional enemy, does the decent thing and looks after the victim.

Jesus turns the question round. 'Who was neighbour to that man?' 'The one who had mercy on him', says the questioner. 'Go and do likewise' says Jesus.

If you want to know who your neighbour is find someone to whom you can be merciful.

My condolences, of course, to any who are personally affected by tragedy today. Maybe the most solidarity-inspired action we can take in response to the harm suffered by our neighbours in Paris, Baghdad or Beirut is not to seek vengeance but to have mercy on someone. Anyone who needs it. Go on. Pay it forward.

Thought for the Day

As delivered this morning on BBC Radio Bristol's Breakfast Show:

A few years ago I was absent-mindedly glancing down the list of the Queen's New Year honours in the newspaper when I spotted a name I recognised. A friend from a previous town had received an MBE for services provided during the London bombings.

I won't name him because he is incredibly modest and wouldn't want me to.

But on the 7th of July 2005 he was on one of the tube trains that was bombed and in the next carriage to the bomber.

It took some time to squeeze the story out of him. He had told very few others up until the announcement of his medal. It turns out that as people were running down the track escaping he climbed into the damaged compartment to help.

I thought about him the other day when I heard of the courage of the Tunisian hotel staff, shielding guests from the gunman.

You don't anticipate that, as part of a normal day, you might be expected to put your own life on the line, or climb into a burning tube train and see what you can do to help.

Jesus told a story of a guy who had such an abundant crop of grain he built extra barns to accommodate it so he could take it easy and live off the profits. In the story God says to that man 'You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you.'

Complacency, in the Bible, is the enemy of all the things God intends.

And a willingness to value your own life as no more important than that of the person in the next carriage seems to me to be the ally of all that God counts good.

Quote of the Day

This is a very topical quote, although thirteen years old, given the current focus on terrorism and atrocity around the world:

796 ...change is only possible if the powerful understand the rage that moves those who hate us so. It is certainly necessary to pursue those who commit evil acts: but it is equally important to taste the bitterness of their hatred.
(John Kennedy, Independent on Saturday, 3/10/01)

Public Enquiry

If we had all the public enquiries people demanded we would have to double taxes, I swear. Yesterday the Radio 4 news returned a few times to a woman who represented the victims of July 7th 2005. She felt that there were too many unanswered questions, especially in the light of the accusation from the Saudis that the UK had failed to act upon information given that would have prevented those tube and bus bombings. She demanded a full public enquiry.

Time out. Can you imagine, can you possibly imagine, our security or police services sitting back and saying, 'Ah well, we lost that one but we'll carry on the same?'

I can't. Every agency which was involved in July 7th will have carried out a review and learn procedure.

A public enquiry might well serve the purpose of allowing terrorists to understand how they got through and also identify ways in which they might get through in the future. We would learn but so would they. I'm not anti public enquiries per se but I am realistic enough to know that some things which are secret are secret for a good reason and need to remain so.

I think our nation divides into those who broadly trust the police and security services and those who don't. Do you?