c. 2000 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) The cover story of a recent issue of National Review intrigued me no end. Called “In Defense of Brother Heat,” it sets forth an argument for the use of firearms that reads like a rite of passage.

Indeed, for the author, Dave Shiflett, I suppose it was.

He contends, for example, that from his personal experience “there is no better way to teach a child that he is trusted than to present him with his own gun.”

Reared in a South “where guns were more commonplace than umbrellas, and where there were many more rifles than marlins hanging above fireplaces,” Shiflett wistfully describes a home in which “Dad, my older brother and myself” all owned shotguns. Of his mother, he writes, “I would like to think my mother packed a derringer, but that is probably wishful thinking.”

What I find most interesting about Shiflett’s testimony is his contention that his home was typical of the southern region of the country.

“Our homes,” he writes, “were very much like miniature states. The agriculture sector was found in the pantry … the education sector in the bookshelves; the population sector in the marriage bed; and the religious sector in the Bible. As for the defense sector, it was scattered all over the house. A father’s closet was likely to contain several shotguns.”

For Shiflett and his fellows, these features “reflected the spirit of the region, which maintained a high respect for self-sufficiency and individual freedom.” Within this largely rural context, firearms functioned rather like multipurpose tools, to be used for work, play or self-defense.

What Shiflett describes is an America depicted in Louis L’Amour novels and John Huston movies. For many of us other Americans, however, it does not reflect our experience.

Many of us live in an America where there is as much to fear from those who enforce the law as from those who habitually break it.

Witness, for example, the case of Amadou Diallo, the unarmed African immigrant who was gunned down by four of New York’s finest in February 1999. A briefing paper recently released by the Washington, D.C.-based Cato Institute concludes: “The killing of Amadou Diallo was neither an act of racist violence nor some fluke accident. It was the worst-case scenario of a dangerous and reckless style of policing.”

The report goes on to suggest such tragedies are likely to continue unless policymakers develop a more responsible, less confrontational approach to policing. Among the issues at stake here, for police and those who insist on exercising their right to bear arms, is the ability to discern when the use of deadly weapons is necessary.

To be sure, such intuition would require the wisdom of Solomon, but the Scriptures provide us with some useful insights.

For example, Old Testament law was developed within a culture that was at least as rugged and individualistic as that depicted by Shiflett. Given Israel’s makeup as a loose confederation of tribes and families, concerns about property protection, personal safety and national security were as legitimate then as now.

Yet this group of rugged individualists had a common belief in God, out of which was derived a common ethic governing the nation’s law and its enforcement. As long as the nation remained true to this ethic, obeying the Lord in the language of the Scriptures, the nation remained prosperous and at peace with little need to use deadly force.

Weapons, though common, were generally used for purposes other than accosting or subduing one’s fellow man.

Those who would smile condescendingly at the above scenario should consider the example of one whose life has been committed to these principles. Melvin Floyd was a beat cop in Philadelphia during the years when, with Frank Rizzo as police commissioner and then mayor, cries of police brutality were common among the city’s black citizens.

Floyd, however, was different. A committed Christian who went into the ministry while still on the police force, he became a trusted and much-beloved figure on the streets of North Philadelphia. At a time when neighborhood street gangs threatened the security of many of the city’s residents, Floyd often brokered peace agreements between warring factions, getting them to turn over their weapons in the process. At the same time, though legally authorized to carry a firearm, he never once drew his gun.

Through godly wisdom and a judicious approach to law enforcement, Melvin Floyd became a part of the solution without contributing to the gun control problem.

Maybe lobbyists on both sides of this issue should follow his example.

DEA END ATCHISON