Brady Vigil in Response to Gun Violence

You have called me to lead us in prayer today. But let me be honest. I don’t think we’re ready to pray.

Like many pastors, I get called to stand before shocked and broken hearted people Sunday after Sunday. We’re asked to recognize the endless stream of tragedies that stem from the damning and un-dam-able flood of gun violence. I am asked to speak at memorials and vigils – like this one – and offer witness to the teary-eyed and offer ‘thoughts and prayers’ for the victims.

It seems like people want me to comfort the afflicted and promise that change is coming. Meanwhile, we all watch a never ending stream of news coverage scanning neighborhoods which, if they are not our own, appear too close in appearance not to take very personally. And we are shown the latest taped off area where reporters stand and tell us about body counts. And everyone shakes their head and says it’s unbelievable.

I no longer think it’s unbelievable. I not only believe it, I have come to expect many parts as excruciatingly typical. The NRA’s failure to comment or outright denials… State and National Legislators who offer their‘thoughts and prayers while shrugging their shoulders saying there is nothing they can do… And our own inability as the general public to put the pieces together. It’s all become painfully too believable to me. Especially the part where families wind up spending college education funds and retirement funds on funeral expenses.

Doing this even ‘one more time’ feels like enabling a sick system avoid treatment.

No, I don’t think we’re ready to pray. Prayer requires soulful examination and appropriate confession for the ways we are complicit in our pain. Prayer requires a reckoning with the myriad of ways we obstruct our own path to liberation. Prayer requires contrition… getting on one’s knees, renouncing the ways we’ve benefitted from inaction. Prayer necessitates a summoning of sacrifice and sincere resolve to take the hard way leading to hope.

So, I will not pray. Not until we acknowledge some of the truth buried amidst the rhetoric of guns.

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The Second Amendment, of our US Constitution adopted in 1791, called for “a well regulated Militia,” citing it was “necessary to the security of a free State,” declaring, “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.”

But do you know why James Madison wrote those words?

The kind of militias he referenced in the 2^ndAmendment had long existed in the colonies. Indeed, back even before Madison was born, most colonies required - even subsidized – households to have on hand at least one gun and enough gun powder and bullets to patrol and keep the land safe. They were required to never go outside without a gun – even to church. Who do you think they were seeking to provide protection from? Bears? Nope. Indians! Indians whose land they stole. On whose land they settled. Whose already developed land they took to farm for themselves and fellow colonists. All this in the name of the Doctrine of Discovery which gave White Menauthority to declare the inhabitants living on the land prior to their arrival as ‘uncivilized’ and justifying they were doing ‘God’s work’ of bringing ‘civility’ to the ‘new’ world. That is the most elegant rephrasing of ‘robbery’ I’ve ever heard.

Year later, after slaves were brought to this country from Africa and the Caribbean, those same self organized militias served another purpose: they formed slave patrols. The first slaves, remember, came from freedom. They were stolen, taken from their country, subjugated and enslaved. As you’d expect, they rebelled. Those rebellions, according to the founding fathers – most of whom were slave owners – required a ‘well regulated militia. Free human labor allowed the US to grow incredibly wealthy in a short amount of time. The greatest commodity on the books of this early country was human beings. They were property with greater value than land, crops, textiles or gold.

All of this was provided for in the constitution. And all of this justifies how it continues today.

However, let me point out that we are the only country on earth who treats our constitution in such a sacrosanct manner. Other countries – especially those whose constitutions were written more than a century ago (for a different society facing different issues and employing different values) wind up writing and re-writing their constitutions with great regularity. Bolivia, not long ago, re-wrote their constitution to give the earth inalienable rights. In the US, we treat our constitution as though it is the perfect document written by a perfect country. That, by definition, makes us a Nationalist country. And if you ask who it’s all for, ask yourself why, when a white person wants to keep a gun it’s considered a right, but when a person of color wants to keep a gun it’s considered suspicious. Our constitution – and the 2^ndAmendment in particular – is about white nationalism.

It’s important to note that there were no congressional studies done or hearings held to change the second amendment as our culture and technology changed. Not until the 1930s when the Mob brought into use Thompson Machine Guns (Tommy Guns) and used them on police. Other than that, it was still legal to carry a loaded long gun in public in California until 1967. But when members of the Black Panther party started doing so to patrol Oakland streets it was mere months before Reagan passed the Mulford Act prohibiting open carry of firearms. The real reason the 2^ndAmendment has not been abridged or abolished is because it is still true to its original intent of providing power to white men over the rights of non-white people. The real reason nothing gets done in gun control is because, to address gun control honestly, we would have to talk about racism – and on that topic we’ve not yet had an honest conversation.

If we want to believe in the constitution, form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, we have to get really clear about the question, for whom.

It’s worth quoting rapper Ice T who, after the Aurora Movie House massacre was asked whether he thought the US government was going to regulate guns. He said, “Well, that (the shooting) isn’t going to change anything in the United States. The US government and constitution is based on guns.” He went on to quote Rapper KRS-One who when asked about peace and justice in the US said, – “We will never have [peace and] justice on stolen land.”

I hope that this reframing of our history from the perspective of the oppressed allows us all enough humility to bow our head and kneel before the awesome challenge before us, because it is time to pray.

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Lord,

We come before you, tired and afraid. Our eyes have seen too much pain. Our brothers and sisters keep dying around us. It is hard not to turn away.

Grant us strength to face what is before us. And look beyond this trail of tears leading us to the present moment. Give us the good will to agree with opponents of gun regulation that guns are not the problem. Nor is it a few bad apples… nor a few missing legislative phrases. The problem is a system handed down generation by generation granting white men such absolute dominion, they feel emboldened and empowered to end another’s life to maintain control. Grant us clarity and conviction to recognize that the impasse in gun regulation is due to a refusal to surrender their belief in that right.

It has been – and will be – a long fight. Help us be brave. And with that bravery, let us call for good company. Steer us in the path of righteousness – especially those of us who have privilege - that we may stand amidst the most vulnerable among us, even when if it places us in a line of fire. Remind us that taking such a stand places us in great company. For standing with the oppressed is standing with the people who built this country and made it great in the first place. And it shall not be made great again until their dream – and their sacrifice – is shared by all people.

Lord, call us into a solidarity built from love, not force. Echo to us of the immortal words of Jimi Hendrix who said, we will never understand justice until ‘the power of love overcomes the love of power.’ May a commitment to such principles spread from person to person, coast to coast until we stand together, a nation ofthe people, bythe people, forthe people. And may such solidarity animate the pledge of safety and freedom we make to our children – that such a noble quest for truth and virtue shall not perish from this earth.

Amen.

Much of the historical information for this prayer can be found in “Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment” by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz