When I was the age of my grandson Sam, I was enamored with the song “Ya Got Trouble” from the musical The Music Man. I even memorized it and performed it once or twice for some gatherings.
It clearly did not propel me to the theatrical career I fancied. But it did leave me with this line, spoken about the common game of pool or billiards: “Oh, we got trouble, we’re in terrible, terrible trouble. That game with the 15 numbered balls is a devil’s tool.”
Dwight Moody
The whole premise of the film is comical today, perhaps then as well. The traveling music man was just trying to make a sale. That, plus winning the hand of a woman, will make a man say just about anything.
Seventy-five years earlier, a church of which I was later a pastor had a practice of removing people from membership for things like playing cards and buying stock in any bank that loaned money to the alcohol industry.
Those cards, and that shot of whiskey were also, they believed, the devil’s tools.
It is undoubtedly true that alcohol has cost many a person life, liberty and happiness. It might also be true that somewhere, some pool hall has had the same negative impact on somebody. But these “tools of the devil” pale in comparison to that instrument of death and destruction that is held in such high esteem by millions of American people.
I refer, of course, to those assault rifles known by initials AK and AR and by the numbers 13, 15, 47 and so forth. The AR15 version is the one used in the recent mass shootings in both Nashville and Louisville. In these two events, 13 people died and others were wounded.
The AK assault rifle was developed in Nazi Germany for their soldiers. It was adopted and perfected by the Russians, specifically by what is known as the Kalashnikov Group. Both the Germans and the Russians used it for their armed forces (while the Americans went with a weapon of their own design, the M1). American designers developed the AR version in the 1950s; it is now widely used in our military, police and civilian populations.
As estimated 16 million assault rifles are owned by citizens in the United States. If we postulate that one assault rifle is owned by a single person (highly unlikely), we can project that 16 million Americans are armed with assault rifles.
That is less than 5% of our population. In other words, less than 5% of the population is primarily responsible for the assault rifle mass shootings in the United States.
I will say it like this: 5% of the population are inflicting upon 95% of the population all the damage associated with mass shootings using AK/AR weapons. These 16 million assault weapon owners and users are being protected by another 25% of the population who own guns of some sort.
And this 30% of the population — some 100 million people — are defended by a few million others who think their right to own these weapons of human destruction is more important than protecting children in school (Nashville, Uvalde, Sandy Hook), the believers in church (Charleston) and synagogue (Pittsburgh), their neighbors attending a concert (Las Vegas) or watching a parade (Highland Park), or their friends simply going to work (Louisville).
“I think it’s worth it to have … some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment.”
One of their leaders put it this way a couple of weeks ago: “I think it’s worth it to have … some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment. … That is a prudent deal.”
I wonder how many mass shootings fit this equation.
So far this year, we have suffered through 146 mass shootings. How many is too many? How many killings are too many?
Does this 5% of Americans who own assault rifles have an equation for this, like: When we reach 200 mass killings a year, we need to do something.
Or: When we bury 1,000 innocent people a year, then we will be willing to pass laws, regulate assault weapons or work with everyone to make sure the “life” and “happiness” of those killed are as valued as the “liberty” of those who do the killing.
Or maybe we should ask the question this way: How many 9-year-old children must die before the assault rifle folk are willing to forgo their “right” to own and use an assault rifle?
Too often, way too often, the assault rifle is a tool of the devil.
Dwight A. Moody is an author, minister, scholar and host of the media site The Meeting House.
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