The film maker and famed political commentator, Michael Moore, has composed a 28th Amendment to the Constitution. He presented the Amendment to Congress on July 11, 2022.
The 28th Amendment would repeal and replace the 2nd Amendment.
As lifelong hunter and gun owner, I would vote YES.
You can check it out here at Moore’s blog. I have also reproduced the entire Amendment below:
XXVIII AMENDMENT
SECTION 1.
The inalienable right of a free people to be kept safe from gun violence and the fear thereof must not be infringed and shall be protected by the Congress and the States. This Amendment thus repeals and replaces the Second Amendment.
SECTION 2.
Congress shall create a mandatory system of firearm registration and licensing for the following limited purposes: (a) licensed hunters of game; (b) licensed ranges for the sport of target shooting; and (c) for the few who can demonstrate a special need for personal protection.
All who seek a firearm will undergo a strict vetting process with a thorough background check, including the written and confidential approval of family members, spouses and ex-spouses and/or partners and ex-partners, co-workers and neighbors. A mental health check will also be required. There will be a waiting period of one month to complete the full background check.
SECTION 3.
Those who meet all the requirements for the restricted gun owners groups and successfully pass the background check must take a firearms safety class and pass a written test on an annual basis.
SECTION 4.
The minimum age for the restricted groups who can own a firearm is 25 years old. Renewal and review of the firearms license will occur on an annual basis.
SECTION 5.
Congress will stipulate and continually update the limited list of approved firearms for civilian use, including weapons in the future that are not yet invented. The following firearms are heretofore banned:
• All automatic and semi-automatic weapons and all devices which can enable a single-shot gun to fire automatically or semi-automatically;
• Any weapon that can hold more than six bullets or rounds at a time or any magazine that holds more than six bullets;
• All guns made of plastic or any homemade equipment and machinery or a 3D printer that can make a gun or weapon that can take a human life.
SECTION 6.
Congress shall regulate all ammunition, capacity of ammunition, the storage of guns, gun locks, gun sights, body armor and the sale and distribution of such items. No weapons of any kind whose sole intention is the premeditated elimination of human life are considered legal. Congress may create future restrictions as this amendment specifically does not grant any American the “right” to own any weapon.
SECTION 7.
Police who are trained and vetted to use firearms shall be subject to comprehensive and continuous monitoring and shall be dismissed if found to exhibit any racist or violent behavior.
SECTION 8.
Persons already owning any of the above banned firearms, and who do not fall into the legal groups of restricted firearms owners, will have one month from the ratification of this Amendment to turn in their firearms for destruction by local law enforcement. These local authorities may organize a gun buy-back program to assist in this effort.
As more details about the recent Texas school massacre are released, the picture becomes increasingly disturbing.
Eye-witnesses are now explaining that local police stood outside the school, leaving the killer inside the building for nearly an hour. They made no attempt to enter the school or to stop the shooter during this time.
In fact, the police prohibited locals gathered outside the school from launching an assault of their own when the police refused to intervene and stop the killing.
Police actually tasered one man who tried to enter the school on his own. Meanwhile, local police entered through the back door to remove their own children from the school while listening to the murderous gunfire killing 19 children and two teachers.
As it becomes increasingly clear that that US police are being trained to place their own safety above public safety, it is long past time to ask questions.
When and where was this decision made? Where are the training materials being produced? Why does anyone enlist for a potentially dangerous job if they are not willing to take risks?
Our risk-averse police force is literally killing people.
The police shoot unarmed black people regularly. Now they have the blood of another 21 people on their hands because they cared more about their own safety than they did about the little children they had sworn to serve.
The traditional law-enforcement motto, to protect and serve, seems now only to apply to themselves.
Javier Cazares, whose fourth grade daughter, Jacklyn Cazares, was killed in the attack, said he raced to the school when he heard about the shooting, arriving while police were still gathered outside the building.
Upset that police were not moving in, he raised the idea of charging into the school with several other bystanders.
“Let’s just rush in because the cops aren’t doing anything like they are supposed to,” he said. “More could have been done.”
Below is a clip from Breaking Points News which discusses this new dimension of the Texas shooting story. They include video of the parents standing outside the school shouting at police to enter and subdue the shooter:
This morning we learned about a mass shooting in Atlanta, GA. Eight people, most of them Asian women, were shot dead by a 21 year Southern Baptist man.
. . . Just like we address sin by targeting it in specific ways, we can’t lean on the mantra of “just preach the gospel” as though that hasn’t produced Christians who are also deeply racist. What we are learning about the Atlanta massacre suspect is that he was raised in a white evangelical, Southern Baptist Church and had described himself as “loving guns and God.” When you see these things together, you can often conclude white Christian nationalism is close by.
Don’t hear me saying that we shouldn’t preach the gospel. Yes, preach the gospel in and out of season, but make sure you also shepherd people out of the patterns of the world (especially the patterns that perpetuate the racial hierarchies we see). You cannot treat every illness by giving it a chemotherapy treatment. In the same way, “just preaching the gospel” will not address the specific illnesses sin has caused. We also need to disciple people through and out of certain things.
In light of what we are seeing with the massacre in Atlanta, mourn with Asian Americans (and those from other communities), grieve with us, lament with us, pray with us and pray for us. For those who have their ears to the ground, these events weigh heavily on us. I am grateful for friends who have reached out as soon as they saw what happened. It was particularly special when they came from outside the Asian American community.
Preach to hearts and minds that need to get out of thinking that leaves them complacent when tragedies impact those they might not be proximate to. Call out racism whenever it rears its ugly head. Support churches and organizations doing holistic, race-conscious discipleship. Offer classes to help people learn about how the sin of racism uniquely manifests across different racial lines. Stand with us whenever you see injustice.
Racialization and racism impact different racial groups in different ways. Along the Black-white binary, racism against Asians and Latinos does not often register. It doesn’t register because we (Asians and Latinos) are racialized differently from white and Black people. If we want to address the sin of racism, however, we have to understand how it works. We have to understand that it often manifests differently for different communities.
In the ways we address specific sins with the gospel by discipling people through those sins, we need to do the same with racism. As long as the racial hierarchy of the world is unchecked in the church, we will see the same issues of the world in the church and lose our moral credibility as ambassadors for the eternal king, Jesus.
Mother Emmanuel African Methodist-Episcopal Church
On June 17, 2015 Dylann Roof walked into the Mother Emmanuel African Methodist-Episcopal church and sat down to join a Bible study group.
Dylann was welcomed by all, and invited to sit with them. As everyone’s eyes were closed for the final prayer, Dylann took out his gun and killed nine people, shooting them at point-blank range.
One of the victims was the leader of the group, 59-year-old Myra Thompson, a retired public-school teacher and guidance counselor, who
Myra Thompson
just hours before had just been licensed to preach in that very church.
I heard about Rev. Thompson’s book while listening to a local Christian radio station. Rev. Thompson was telling his amazing story of what it had taken for him to forgive Dylann Roof for the crime of killing his wife.
More than that, Rev. Thompson mentioned his continuing attempts to befriend Roof and visit with him in prison, where he is serving a life sentence with no chance of parole.
I heard a powerful story about the healing power of Christ’s forgiveness and the personal resolve of a deeply compassionate, unusually obedient disciple of Jesus Christ.
It was a story that might normally bring tears to my eyes, were it not for the one thing that the interviewer and host of the program failed to mention – the very thing that I had suspected would go unremarked.
The interviewer and hosts failed to mention that Dylann Root is an avowed
White supremacist, Dylann Roof
white supremacist and neo-Nazi. His most chilling statement from prison was a declaration that he had no regrets. He was not the least bit sorry, remorseful or apologetic for what he had done.
Neither did the radio hosts mention that Root had chosen the Mother Emmanuel African Methodist-Episcopal church because it is a black congregation.
Root deliberately chose a venue for his act of terrorism where he knew every bullet fired was guaranteed to penetrate the body of a black person.
Slaughtering African-American men, women and children was Root’s one and only goal.
None of the white people hosting the interview with Rev. Thompson bothered to connect the Charleston church shooting with the shocking rise in Right-Wing, conservative terrorism in this country.
No one bothered to point out that Root’s online manifesto, entitled The Last Rhodesian, was a white-supremacist screed calling for a race war against all people of color in America. Root confessed that he hoped his massacre would trigger that war.
No one mentioned that the Rev. Thompson’s Christ-like act of forgiveness is (or, at least, I assume it is) a very old, well-practiced act of Christian discipleship exercised within the African American church. A community that continues to confront the never-ending story of racism, discrimination, white violence, lynching and Jim Crow in this country.
I realize that my reader may object.
“Perhaps the radio producers wanted to keep politics out of it,’ you say. “They didn’t want Rev. Thompson’s story about the power of forgiveness to be overshadowed by a political message.”
My response, however, is baloney!
American Christian radio is one of THE most politically driven media outlets available today.
The problem is: Christian radio is driven by conservative, right-wing, Republican politics. A brand a politics that refuses to admit its heinous contribution to the rise of white supremacy in this country.
So, the producers at the right-wing, Christian radio station offer their obeisance to the toadies of the Religious Right political movement and reframe the heartbreaking story of an explicitly racist, white-on-black mass-murder as a heart-warming, tear-jerker testimony to “the power of forgiveness.”
This sin of omission tells us everything we need to know about the Right, including the so-called Christian Right.
Framing is everything.
By trying to avoid politics, a story becomes disgustingly political in the worst way possible.
The nine church shooting victims
For this particular framing of the Mother Emmanuel African Methodist-Episcopal church shooting is blatantly racist.
It’s silence shouts all too loudly, “We will not face the truth about who and what we are as white, American evangelicals.”
“We will support Donald Trump’s racist border policies. But we will not tell the truth about our implicit racism towards our black brothers and sisters in Christ, about whom we know so little. And for whom we care even less – unless, of course, we can turn your experience of pain and suffering in white America into a warm and fuzzy feel-good story for our largely white, evangelical, pro-Trump listening audience.”
I too am a white, American evangelical, and I continually feel ashamed of my community.
The report summarized a number of government intelligence assessments and warned that a growing movement of “right wing extremist movements” posed the greatest threat of political violence and domestic terrorism in the United States.
As soon as the report was made public (which was not its original purpose), Republican Congressional leaders, together with a litany of conservative commentators, raised a hue and cry condemning the report, lambasting the DHS, and screaming for the heads of anyone — especially “liberals” or Democrats — who tried to engage in a serious discussion of the report’s findings.
Sadly, none of this was the least bit surprising coming from the conservative-Republican establishment which remains anti-science, anti-evidence, anti-logic, and anti-anything-that-calls-for critical self-assessment.
Of course, the DHS report was immediately suppressed. You probably have never heard of it. As a result, the nation never had an open public conversation about the rising terrorist threat in this country, and why it was emanating from the right-wing.
It is impossible to have a productive conversation when one side can’t stop denying the facts, as Sarah Huckabee-Sanders continues to do almost every day.
“Right-wing extremists have been one of the largest and most consistent sources of domestic terror incidents in the United States for many years, a fact that has not gotten the attention it deserves.”
Facts cannot be ignored. They willeventually have their own way, whether we like it or not.
The rank cowardice displayed by the mainstream and the right-wing media guarantees that the public remains steeped in ignorance on this issue. Daily we hear the mindless, false equivalencies and bogus comparisons. Pundits insist that both sides are to blame; everyone needs to compromise; the right and the left must meet somewhere in the middle.
The Republican party moves in a more and more extremist direction, yet anyone who points this out is accused of polarizing the debate.
What absolute rubbish! It simply is not true.
The right-wing is to blame. It is a fact, plain and simple. No one benefits from a lie.
There is something about conservatism and its social, political rhetoric that, especially when taken to an extreme, becomes fertile soil for unstable people prone to violence.
We all — but especially God’s people — must be more concerned with the truth than we are with partisan defensiveness. This means being open to correction. Being willing to learn. To admit when we have been wrong.
And most of all, we must be willing to change.
Tragically, evangelical Christianity persists in unapologetically identifying itself with a right-wing political movement that has blood on its hands.
Yes, that’s right.
Congressman Boehner, Fox News, and every other conservative spokesperson who helped to muzzled the DHS warning in 2009, who plugged their ears to the ADL report in 2017, who still refuses to admit the self-evident connection between Trump’s violent rhetoric — which has repeatedly embraced and advocated more violence — and the racist, homophobic, anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant terrorism dragging itself mercilessly across our country, all have blood on their hands.
Last week’s school shooting in Santa Fe, Texas brings the count to 22. That’s right. Five months into 2018 and there have already been 22 school shootings (slightly more than 1 mass shooting per week) in America.
Widen the circle beyond our schools and there have been 101 mass shootings in this country so far this year, leaving 202 dead and 473 injured (see MassShootingTracker). And these figures do not include the many additional causes of gun injuries and deaths such as suicide, police shootings and accidents. According to the research organization Gun Violence Archive, there have been 22,257 gun related incidents in 2018, including 5,511 deaths and 10,071 injuries. Those numbers include 1,000 teenagers, 238 preteen children and 646 accidental shootings.
Yet, many public officials continue to insist that guns have nothing to do with this problem. In fact, as they feed themselves at the NRA corruption-trough of gun manufacturer campaign contributions, discounts, pay-offs and lobbying efforts, these folks want us to believe that the solution to mass shootings and other gun deaths is to sell MORE guns to more people.
But this is not surprising. It is exactly what I expect lobbyists for the arms industry to say. (See me earlier post on guns, shootings and the NRA here).
American politicians and makers of public policy love guns, and all the cash that comes with it, more than they care about Americans. It is a pop culture form of idolatry.
In the March 14, 2018 edition of the Christian Century, Peter W. Marty penned an article entitled “Guns are Americans’ Golden Calf.” Below is an excerpt:
President Trump and his son being introduced at this year’s NRA convention, 2018.
“We’re in golden calf country here, elevating a loyalty to the gun over a fidelity to God’s desire for abundant life. More than a hunting or safety device, the gun has become an object of reverence. We bow in devotion at its altar. ‘Sacred stuff resides in that wooden stock and blued steel,’ onetime NRA president Charlton Heston said. And when a gun becomes an idol, it demands loyalty even if it regularly disappoints. Like other small g gods that offer false consolation, a gun’s guarantee of ultimate safety and security is a myth.”
Unfortunately, people calling themselves Christians are no more immune to idolatry than anyone else. If anything, church-goers have even more ways to express this human penchant for worshiping false gods than do atheists and other non-religious folk. Believers have to navigate the many run-of-the-mill secular temptations to idolatry as well as the many corrupting excesses of religious practice and aberrations of faith.
Vice-President Mike Pence speaking at the recent NRA convention, 2018.
When those two streams of temptation flow together and succeed in sweeping the church away in its turbulent currents (always with a heavy undertow), well, the resulting idolatry is especially repugnant.
Idolatrous, Fake Christianity, Exhibit A – Recently a friend of mine showed me the notes of a church council meeting approving its newly minted plan for well-armed, congregational security guards at its corporate gatherings. Church members were selected for the necessary training in order to become body guards for the Body of Christ. Can there be such a thing as a body guard of Christ? I don’t think so.
In how many different ways can you say apostasy?
Asking for church elders and deacons to arrive packing heat whenever the congregation gathers for corporate worship is one of the grossest expressions of anti-faith I can imagine.
Unless you are part of a church with an extremely high public profile for its incredibly effective, vocal, activist agitation uprooting America’s military-industrial-intelligence-surveillance-corporate media-war mongering empire, then arming your church members reflects an astonishing level of paranoia.
We are all more likely to be struck by lightning than we are to be shot in
This flier promises a free AR-15 giveway to people who attend the March 23 service at Grace Baptist on Fourth Avenue in Troy.
church by an anti-religious misanthrope – unless you are shot accidentally by one of the armed elders during an over wrought hymn-sing.
I know that the church’s leadership team will undoubtedly defend itself by
pleading marriage and parenthood. That is, as leaders of their households, these men must remain vigilant in protecting their families against surprise attack in an increasingly violent America.
There is so much wrong with this picture that it would take a small book to address the overflow of theological, Biblical, pastoral and practical disasters revealed by any plan to arm the local church. I will touch on 3 issues but focus on only the last one.
First, the ancient, Christian justification for using violence in self-defense finds its roots in the Just War Tradition that arose after Christianity’s embrace by the Roman Empire. I discuss the many Biblical mistakes committed by that tradition in chapter 9 (“Does Kingdom Service Permit Military Service?”) of my new book, I Pledge Allegiance: A Believer’s Guide to Kingdom Citizenship in 21st Century America. Please take a look. You will find it as helpful as it is interesting.
I also encourage anyone interested in this topic to read John Howard Yoder’s classic little book, What Would You Do? If a Violent Person Threatened to Harm a Loved One…. A violent reaction to violent threats is the default position for fallen human nature. Yoder will help you to think more clearly, more practically and more Christ-like about non-violent ways (and thus more Christ-like ways) of responding.
Second, one of my seminary professors, who was also the pastor of a large city church, would regularly complain about Christianity’s “idolatry of the nuclear family.” Aided and abetted by popular ministries such as James Dobson’s “Focus on the Family” and similar programs, many people in the church have replaced obedience to Jesus with obligations to one’s family.
We excel at finding seemingly unimpeachable, family-friendly ways of abandoning Jesus. So we can conveniently ignore our Lord’s words when he says things like this:
“Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.” (Matthew 10:37-38)
“If any man come to me, and does not hate his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brothers, and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. And whosoever does not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple.” (Luke 14:26-27)
Regardless of the details, Jesus’ central point is clear: disciples must have greater devotion to Jesus than to the dearest members of their families, including spouses and children.
The third and final point is intimately connected to the last one above. Faithfulness to Jesus requires every disciple to follow in his footsteps, including his submissive acceptance of suffering and death, for him/herself as well as others, including parents, spouses and children.
“Anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.” (Luke 14:37)
“If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it.” (Mark 8:34-35)
Hear it again. Whoever wants to save his/her life will lose it, but whoever loses his/her life for me and for the gospel will save it. Affluent Christianity’s obsession with self-preservation and the avoidance of suffering arises from a false gospel. A ‘gospel’ that can never save anyone.
Carrying a gun into the body of Christ, for whatever reason, is a grotesque act of unbelief and idolatry. In fact, carrying a gun anywhere and thinking that you are ready, willing and able to use it against another human being, is the quintessential act of an anti-disciple.
Fortunately, Jesus still loves and can save even anti-disciples, just as he can save all of us faithless believers. But relying on firearms to protect members of the body of Christ remains a consummate act of faithless unbelief, all the same.
Jesus models faithful kingdom living when he goes to the cross without attempting to defend himself. He explicitly tells every would-be follower that we all must be as non-violent and ready to die as he was.
“If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it.” (Mark 8:34-35)
Not only did Jesus not try to defend himself, neither did he defend his disciples, knowing full well that they too might be subject to arrest and execution as his co-conspirators. In fact, Jesus quickly put a stop to Peter’s misguided efforts at defending both the Lord and himself, insisting that he wanted nothing to do with violence for any reason at all (reflect on Matthew 26:51-56).
Jesus praises his followers when/if they are ever killed or injured as a result of belonging to him. He promises that they will be blessed many times over in eternity. What sort of Christian is hell-bent-for-leather on making sure that Jesus’ promises can never be fulfilled, not for them, not for others, and especially not for a spouse or child?
The Answer: a fake Christian. An idolatrous Christian. An anti-disciple who has bowed the knee to America’s Golden Calf of guns.
As an avid outdoors-man and hunter, I own a few shotguns. Yet, every sensible citizen will recognize that America, and that includes the American church, has a serious problem not shared by any other country in the world – rampant gun violence.
Looking west, people fill Pennsylvania Avenue during the “March for Our Lives” rally in support of gun control, Saturday, March 24, 2018, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Hoping to build on the success of the #Black Lives Matter movement (and here), young people of all ethnicities across the country are marching today in the #Our Lives Matter Campaign (also here). Their commitment to speaking out, activism, demonstration, political engagement, non-violence and civil discourse is inspiring, convicting and hopeful.
Perhaps the need for gun reform in this country will not be pushed onto the
People take part in a march rally against gun violence Saturday, March 24, 2018, in New York. Tens of thousands of people poured into the nation’s capital and cities across America on Saturday to march for gun control and ignite political activism among the young. (AP Photo/Craig Ruttle)
back burners this time, as it always has been in the past.
As the principle advocates for non-violence in our world, Christians should support and participate in this important moment in our history, expanding the conversation beyond gun control.
Here are a few of my thoughts on the basic principles (in no particular order) that need to be understood for any civil conversation about gun control to move forward
Protestors carry placards and shout slogans during a demonstration calling for greater gun control, outside the US Embassy in south London on March 24, 2018. The London rally, in solidarity with the US movement ‘March For Our Lives’, is one of hundreds of gun control protests taking place globally. / AFP PHOTO / Tolga AKMEN (Photo credit should read TOLGA AKMEN/AFP/Getty Images)
positively.
We need to recognize that the NRA is not a citizens’ organization. It is not defending anyone’s civil rights. The NRA is a lobbying organization that works exclusively for the financial benefit of gun manufacturers.
2. Thus, the NRA will continue to do whatever it can to block new gun control measures. The NRA has changed considerably from the days when it worked with President Roosevelt to pass the first federal gun control laws (the 1934 National Firearms Act and the 1938 Gun Control Act). Those days are long gone.
3. A crucial element in any future success must involve cutting off NRA funding to our elected representatives. Or voting them out of office. This will require lots of effort and grassroots organizing.
4. No sensible person is arguing that there is a single “silver bullet” (pun intended) solution that can end all mass shootings or other violent gun-crimes.
5. But understanding that no “one thing” will solve all our gun violence problems is never a reason for doing nothing at all, as many seem to suggest.
6. Effective solutions will be multi-faceted. Tightening restrictions on gun ownership will be only one element of a much bigger picture. We need a national conversation with a wide range of expertise and experience at the table.
7. Whatever the original intent of the Second Amendment – some argue it was intended to allow citizens to protect themselves from oppressive government; others argue that it was to permit armed militias to defend the government against citizen revolt – the framers never envisioned the type of weaponry being used today.
8. I am sorry, but no civilian has “a right” to own and operate whatever type of lethal armaments they choose. Certainly not if such ownership is free of any and all government regulation or oversight. Remember, there was a time when people could drive cars without a license. Not anymore.
9. No “right” stands in splendid isolation, independent of social responsibility. The 1st amendment does not give me the right to recklessly cream “Fire!” in a crowded theater. Is irresponsible speech more dangerous than an AR-15 equipped with a bump-stock and a high capacity magazine?
10. Yes, all lives matter equally. We can rejoice that a nation-wide movement for gun control seems finally to have begun. Yet, let’s also recognize and confess the latent racism brought to the surface in American society when it requires multiple mass shooting of principally white victims before the issue becomes front page news.
on July 11, 2022.
Raymond Chang is a campus pastor at the evangelical Christian school, Wheaton College and a leader in the Asian American Christian Collaborative organization. His article at the Religion News Service is entitled “
in Right-Wing, conservative terrorism in this country.
and warned that a growing movement of “right wing extremist movements” posed the greatest threat of political violence and domestic terrorism 
in the United States.
assessment.
“Right-wing extremists have been one of the largest and most consistent sources of domestic terror incidents in the United States for many years, a fact that has not gotten the attention it deserves.”
Widen the circle beyond our schools and there have been 
excerpt:
Asking for church elders and deacons to arrive packing heat whenever the congregation gathers for corporate worship is one of the grossest expressions of anti-faith I can imagine.
committed by that tradition in chapter 9 (“Does Kingdom Service Permit Military Service?”) of my new book, 
save all of us faithless believers. But relying on firearms to protect members of the body of Christ remains a consummate act of faithless unbelief, all the same.
