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Deborah Samuel was stoned to death by her classmates. The solution is not to ban guns or knives or stones. The solution is to fix what has gone wrong to make a person think they should kill. The school shootings have so little to do with guns. The people who decide to act out of such evil hatred will find tools of violence.

How would this story have been any different with a less powerful weapon? Do we really think that the possessed person in this shooting would not have made a bomb or used a car or fire or any number of other weapons? Or are we saying that next time when such a person barricades themself in a classroom and starts killing children it will matter if they have a pistol instead, or even a machete? What matters is why a person would want to do such a thing in the first place.

It does not matter whether the laws are pro-gun or anti-gun. Perhaps a person should be 21 to buy a gun but we know that a shooter can still get a gun in many ways. What is the solution for the nihilistic hate? The focus on guns misses the point.

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I don't disagree with anything that Bishop Flores says, but once again I still find myself frustrated with the tendency of Catholic Social Teaching to presume a certain state of societal affairs and then articulate principles of action.

For instance, the bishop talks about politics as rightly being an exercise in coming together and crafting laws and policy through consensus. This presumes both a broad mutual trust in society and a common understanding of the Good. However, in the present day United States, we possess neither. It's fine to say that we ought to have these things, but the Church is silent on the question of "And if these things are lacking, where can Catholic citizens and politicians at least start?" Sadly, we don't receive that kind of pertinent guidance from our shepherds, just exhortations that we ought to have a different sort of civil society than the one in which we live.

We're not able to address this issue, or many other pressing ones, because 35% of the country hates and fears another 35%, and vice versa. Probably 70% of the citizenry is convicted, deep down, that half of their fellow citizens are not just wrong or misguided, but dangerous and duplicitous, and need to be kept from power at all costs. You can't build off of consensus or even articulate a shared vision of a common good in such a situation. It's a fool's errand.

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How about this: trade the 2nd Amendment for any and all abortion.

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The nub of the issue is where the bishop says, “there is a legitimate right of the state to exercise a vigilant and reasonable stewardship and control over the access to weapons or things which could potentially cause great damage to the good of the whole.”

What if the state *is* (or becomes in the future) the threat to the good of the whole? What if the exercise of second amendment rights is not about the idolatry of individualism but taken in the context of militias mentioned in the Constitution? Violent defense against gov’t state tyranny is either legitimate or not in the Catholic view — if it is not he should say so plainly. Ambiguity doesn’t work in this case because you can’t have it both ways.

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We cannot claim to be Pro-life and refuse to recognize the fascination with death this country has in all its forms. No regular citizen needs an AR-15 with .556 ammo. That gun and that ammo are meant for one thing.... killing people. Anyone retort with hunting arguments.... I say this... if you need it for hunting, you need to learn to hunt better.

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If you think certain guns are deadly and others aren't, or that you can own a hand grenade, or that guns are easier to get than aspirin, you don't understand the law, or how guns work.

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Good Bishop, guns are not easier to obtain than aspirin. People are part of the issue. These killers come from extremely broken homes. It appears in most of these murders, authorities are failing to do their duty. We should all be called to speak the truth, and not use hyperbole.

We have a problem with sin in this world, and Jesus is the only answer to it. Everything else doesn’t address the root cause, and ultimately becomes a bandaid to the larger problem.

I don’t disagree that we need to help the young, but this is problem with the entire culture, and not just young people.

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I would like to ask everyone who is writing comments, anytime this entire month, about how the laws we have right now are just fine (and that people need to change) to ask themselves "are my personal opinions about easy-access-to-abortion laws consistent with my personal opinions about easy-access-to-firearms laws?" If they are not consistent, then take an hour for prayer sometime to ask God "what is going on in my heart and what would You like me to do." If they are consistent I would actually still advise the same course of action.

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May 27, 2022·edited May 27, 2022

I am somewhat surprised not to hear Bishop Flores explicitly note the breakdown of the family as a major cause of these problems. It seems like the norm for many of these psychopaths is to come from a family where they are separated from one of their birth parents (most often the father). Look at how little concern and responsibility the boyfriend of the Uvalde shooter's mom apparently had for him.

https://www.insider.com/texas-school-gunman-was-kind-of-weird-one-mothers-boyfriend-2022-5

I am not saying you can't have good outcomes from separated families, but that the normalization and permissiveness we have toward divorce is greatest single factor in childhood and youth trauma.

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Point blank: the debate on gun control preventing mass murder is, in its current form, perverse. It’s not perverse because the debate over gun control is unnecessary: it’s perverse because it has now become a cultural war built around a dichotomous response to a hideously complex problem. And that war is not one sided.

Bishop Flores is right that single-issue gun-rights supporters sacralizes the gun ownership. But, he misses the point that single-issue gun control supporters scapegoat it. Last I checked, our faith was not too keen on false idols or scapegoats (outside of Christ). No one likes it when people worship false idols, but no one (or no thing) should be a scapegoat. Idols misplace our love. Scapegoats misplace our fear.

With rare exceptions, we all want kids to be safer. We want the world to be safer. Start from there. From that perspective, there is no “divide” or “debate.” The debate is on the how and the why to achieve that. And, as is sadly typical for human beings, we use this as an excuse to find new and creative ways to resent each other. We start with “if you don’t agree with my solution you’re immoral.” We say, if you disagree with me, “I’m tired of hearing” from you. Both sides do it, so compromise is impossible, and people continue to die from needless violence.

I’d offer a suggestion: find someone you know who disagrees with you on this debate. Tell yourself, and them, that you love them, respect them, and care about them. Maybe, if you’re both in a praying mood, pray together about the subject. Do that a few times before you start taking policy. And when you do start talking policy, if you ask them for a sacrifice, offer an equally meaningful sacrifice yourself. Then, maybe, just maybe we might get somewhere. It isn’t a quick and easy solution. But, solving problems from a position of love and trust is a heck of a lot easier than than forcing compromise among people who resent one another.

It won’t fix things right away, but neither has this pitched battle. And, in addition to coming up with some good solutions, we might actually end up caring more about each other. Which is probably part of the solution.

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May 27, 2022·edited May 27, 2022

"the Church[ expects to form] her own people to be active and participatory in the political process that comes to a kind of consensus as to how we order things in a way that protects our children, protects our elderly protects, protects people who are vulnerable, especially when it comes to the potential of violence."

Why, then, Bishop Flores, would you think that we should take away the very instruments by which we can protect our children, the elderly, and other vulnerable people against the potential of violence? We know that evil people will continue to inflict evil; must we make ourselves defenseless against them?

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Maybe we should think about barring manufacturers of AR15s from communion if they are Catholic.

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The problem with increasing gun control laws is that they won't be enforced, just as they aren't enforced now. It is illegal for a person with a mental illness to own a gun. Yet this provision of the law goes unenforced. Something like 35% of gun deaths are suicides, which wouldn't be the case if mentally ill people couldn't get guns.

People do need to have the right to own weapons to protect themselves from those who would still have weapons even if they were illegal. I have a relative doing time right now for being a felon in possession of 12 guns, so it's pretty obvious that the only people who would give up their guns if they were illegal are the law abiding. We do need to have the option of gun ownership.

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I find many of the comments on this thread absolutely frightening. Where is your faith in God?

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