Christians and their Gun Laws

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I guess we honestly need to find out, once and for all, whether, as the NRA and pro-gun folks (lumping them all together) claim, the existing gun laws are not vigorously enforced.  Is it true?  Is law enforcement turning a blind eye to illegal gun sales?  Or is the law pretty much impossible to enforce?  If the existing law is simply unenforceable, or inconvenient to enforce, or if enforcement is not appropriately funded, then something has to be done.  We must deploy the few miserable pennies that the wealthy allow us to levy in taxes to effective law enforcement.

Christianity, as I understood it in my youth, was a very demanding religion, and not for the faint-hearted or the feeble-minded.  But now it appears that most of those who adhere to it like glue are precisely those.  The large evangelical mega-churches coach the faithful more to protect the leaders, and then protect their own narrow interests, rather than to see to the welfare of mankind at large.  The attitude seems to be that the masses have their reward in heaven; the faithful must lead a cushy life now.  This is not the gospel I remember.

Well, it belongs to them, and I suppose it has evolved.  At least the Mormons and the Christian Scientists go about it honestly: they have modern prophets who have elucidated the message of the scriptures.  The rest of them are twisting the meaning of the gospel.

A recent poster making the rounds conflates the ridiculous storm in a teacup of the Starbucks' "Holiday" mug falling short of its Christmasyness, and the recent mass shooting(s).  It's naive to think that agnostics or atheists are less violent than Christians for philosophical reasons.  The sort of violent horror in the US that the meme refers to is hardly caused by reason of some ideology or philosophy.  On the other hand, maybe it is, but it appears to be the norm to always put it down to insanity.  We probably ought to create a splinter group of Christianity into which we can quickly assign the culprits of mass shootings, and blame that sect, rather than insanity.

So what's going on?  Are the majority of Christians innocent victims of a small, violent minority among them, who force the rest of them to refrain from the kind of charity that the horrible economic straits of our poor demands?  Is there a pernicious core in the Christian church that holds some mysterious power over the Chosen, that prevents them from encouraging their representatives to enact effective gun control laws?  Or is it that the system does not work, and the deceitful candidates for public office cannot be trusted to carry out the wishes of their constituents, and simply pander to the lobbyists of special interest groups?  We know that the gun lobby is among the most powerful in Washington.  Few electoral districts have candidates who have the courage to stand up to the gun lobby.  We are a nation of cowards.

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