We are called to be peacemakers in a gun culture.

The absence of peace you Google “Peacemakers,” two major categories pop up. The first is Matthew 5:9 from the Beatitudes. The second is the popular name of a 45 caliber six-shooter originally manufactured by Colt for the U.S. Army in the 1800s. This article is intended to prevent your confusing the two.

This article is personal, theological, societal and both time sensitive and eternal. It’s also somewhat political. Let me start with the personal. Of our six grandchildren, one is a kindergartner, one is in first grade, one is in second grade and one is in third grade.

They have names. I don’t want their names on the news or on memorials or on tombstones. Sandy Hook invaded my numbness on gun-weapon-firearm-violence issues. I’m all in and I’m tenacious.

First, let me tell you about my shotgun. It’s a Winchester Model 12 (for 1912). It’s a pump shotgun and was designed and manufactured for the U.S. Army for trench warfare during World War I. That version is on display in the World War I Museum in Kansas City, Mo. Beginning nearly a century ago, that gun was a military weapon, also used by riot police, and was used for those purposes for more than 50 years. It was used through the Korean and the Vietnam wars. It is still carried by some domestic riot police.

The gun will hold six shells. It was also manufactured and sold for hunting. For hunting migratory waterfowl, such as ducks, by federal law you can have only three shells in the gun. More than 30 years ago, my NRA gun safety instructor taught me how to make and use a plug for the magazine of my shotgun. The magazine must be disassembled to insert the plug, essentially a smoothed wooden dowel that displaces what would be an illegal number of shells. The plug makes the gun legal for hunting ducks.

For hunting ducks you have three shells in the gun. Not 100. Not 30. Not 10. Not six. Three. Please don’t try to tell me that you can’t restrict the size of gun magazines. The hypocrisy is that we protect our ducks better than we protect our children.

Let me introduce you to a hand puppet. This hand puppet is designed as a fuzzy green bullfrog. I call him Wayne. Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president and CEO of the National Rifle Association (NRA).

Just to be sure you get it, this puppet is my bullfrog handgun puppet. You may arrange those nouns and modifiers in any order you wish: bull, frog, hand, gun, puppet. Wayne is nervous because he’s never been in a peace church context before. You can’t negotiate with a puppet. You can’t reason with a bullfrog.

Wayne’s real puppet masters are not visible. About half the income for the NRA comes from memberships. The other half comes from firearm, ammunition and “accessory” manufacturers. In addition, the Political Action Committees of the NRA have sources that our Congress in its wisdom has allowed to be hidden from public scrutiny. The NRA and its PACs are puppets for a whole other world of political pressure. How else could an organization with only 4 million members in a U.S. population of 314 million have so much control?

There are seven church denominations that have significantly more members than does the NRA. The Roman Catholic Church has 68 million members, then come the Southern Baptist Convention, the Mormon Church, the Church of God in Christ, the National Baptist Church, the United Methodist Church and the Evangelical Lutheran Church. With only 4 million members, how does the NRA control half the U.S. Senate, the majority of the U.S. Congress and majorities in the legislatures of the red states? How else could they raise that much money? Who else would profit from this massive domestic arms race? The answer is, the military industrial complex.

Dwight David Eisenhower warned us about the military industrial complex. Eisenhower warned us about political pressure from groups like the NRA and their puppet masters. That was half a century ago, in 1961, just as Eisenhower was turning the presidency over to John F. Kennedy, who became a victim of gun violence.

Here’s part of Eisenhower’s speech (1961): “Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, 3.5 million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all U.S. corporations.

“This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence—economic, political, even spiritual—is felt in every city, every statehouse, every office of the federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”

For me, this is also personal. I kick myself for being so numb to a half century of the rising power of the military industrial complex. Sandy Hook got to me in a way that all the other gun massacres did not. It was cumulative. I’m not the only one who’s been numbed and silent. Numb no more. In my grief, I will never forget Sandy Hook Elementary School. In my double grief, I also will not forget the intrusion of the military industrial complex into our domestic society here in the United States.
Being a peacemaker

Now let’s get creatively theological. The Beatitudes of Matthew 5 are among hundreds of beatitudes scattered through the Scriptures. A beatitude is an invocation of God’s blessing on a person or a thought or a belief or a behavior. “Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called children of God” (Matthew 5:9). That blessing is placed by Matthew on the lips of Jesus. What is it we don’t understand about being a child of God? What is it we don’t understand about being peacemakers? Not the Colt six-gun kind of Peacemakers, the Jesus kind of peacemakers.

1. In the April 5 issue of Mennonite World Review John E. Sharp, instructor in history at Hesston (Kan.) College, offers a perspective on the origins of the Second Amendment. He sees it as a compromise offered by James Madison to allow slave states to keep their slave suppression militias. Weapons and the Second Amendment and oppression linked? Yes. There’s a lot of talk abroad about the Second Amendment.

2. Get on the Internet and do your homework. Read the NRA’s material on your senator and congressman’s web page. Find out where they get their contributions.

3. On the Internet, tell your senators, representatives and state legislators what you think. Remember that you have company: 90 percent of us at least want to close the loopholes on background checks. Get with other peacemakers to brainstorm and organize.

4. There’s good news: In April 1999, the voters of Missouri (a red state) turned down a concealed carry referendum. Later, the legislature overrode a gubernatorial veto to pass it over the voters’ heads. The NRA doesn’t win referendums. They control legislators.

5. There’s good news: The recent gun-weapon legislation in the U.S. Senate did get a majority of the votes of the Senate (54 percent). The bullfrog puppet is losing its teeth.
6. When will peacemakers sponsor a gun buy-back program?

7. Historical peacemakers. In 1948 in Johnson County, Kan., the South Park School was built for white kids. It’s still there but now used for a church. Black kids were left in the old school, with outdoor privies and all the leftovers. Esther Brown, a 30-year-old Jewish white woman, led the black parents in forming a chapter of the NAACP. They brought attorney Elisha Scott and his sons from Topeka, Kan., and won in court—a precursor to Brown vs. Board of Education. One person like Esther Brown can do a great deal.

Peacemakers are neither silent nor passive. Peacemakers are creative and active and speak out. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.

Ronald Holland is interim pastor at Rainbow Mennonite Church in Kansas City, Kan.