A plague is upon us! For some reason whether it is fear and or insecurity there is a nationwide movement to have open carry laws in each state. The idea that by carrying a gun you will be safer is just insane.

What are people afraid of to where they feel it is necessary to carry a gun. You would think the days of the wild, wild, west were over when the horseless carriage started replacing the horse as a means of transportation. Sorry, but the days of the lawlessness of towns in the territories of the western part of the country have long passed.

But here we are in the 21st Century buying guns as if someone will try to take them away. NO worries, the Russians aren’t coming. In South Carolina you can now have a Clint Eastwood moment, by bringing a gun into a bar. I can just see it now, a couple of gents after a few too many drinks get into it because one doesn’t like the way the other dude is looking at his gal. Okay punk do you feel lucky? Make my day! Maybe men have a masculine problem, and they feel that having that cold steel on them makes them a man. Perhaps this is all a plan by the gun merchants to just sell more guns. An enterprising young producer just might get the idea for a new reality television show. We can call it HIGH NOON!!! Each show would have a different real action drama. One show could be at a school where some state has gotten the idea that students should be armed. After all, then if some bully needs to be taken down, you can have the drama of a real life gun duel right on live, or at least live for the moment reality TV. Another show can have a real life policeman, a dedicated peace officer, a person sworn to obey the law shoot an unarmed suspect to death and then handcuff the person after he or she dies. OOPS, that is already happening. Or how about this, a policemen goes to a house where a domestic dispute is occurring and in order to settle the argument the police person hands each spouse a gun and videos the drama with their new video equipment. Imagine the ratings your show would get on television!!! After all humans are rather ghoulish. In history if you wanted to draw a crowd just have a public hanging and you were guaranteed to draw a big crowd.

As a Christian the one concept that I could never understand was and is the Guns and God duo. Jesus would most likely find the idea maddening that the two words would have anything to do with one another. After all, Jesus in his beatitudes seemed to suggest a different picture: “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth, blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy and blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called children of God.”

There was nothing violent about Christ’s message, but rather love and peace were clearly his intent.

It is ironic that in the old west we had a gun called the peacemaker. The cold steel of that weapon left you cold and dead. You would think and hope that the use of a gun would at some point in time be recognized as an instrument not of love and peace but of death, mourning and misery. But some people continue to preach about righteousness and about how they don’t want to be given rules and regulations for gun safety. They are against any rules that would restrict gun usage to those individuals who have a violent felony on their record. They see nothing wrong with allowing a crazy and dangerous person to buy and own a gun.

We still have far too many of our fellow citizens who aren’t worried about how violent our society is. They don’t seem to care that in family disputes most of the deaths by gun occur when someone in a family uses a gun to kill a family member in the heat of passion.

My goodness what a wonderful idea to have more open carry laws to give more opportunities for some angry or crazy person to shoot first and be sorry later. Jesus would really approve of the aggressive behavior that we display, NOT. Find your own manhood or womanhood by finding better ways to get along with your fellow man or neighbor without using a gun to prove your manhood. Instead of loving your neighbor, just shoot them if you have an argument. We live in an insane world when our fellow human beings justify the killings of our fellow citizens by saying that they are doing God’s work or using God’s name in vain. Murder is murder even when it is done in the name of God. But for you who are really gun nuts, carry on with your open carry gun laws and reap the consequences.