Why Gun Control is a Necessary Step in Human Evolution

Let's jump right into this, starting with the more surface issues surrounding guns and arguments against gun control and moving into the deeper, more spiritual concerns over these issues.

An opening statement: so many people in the United States cling to their guns as if these "weapons of mass destruction" were their very lives. These hunks of metal become more precious to them than their good sense and even other human beings.

I don't know if any of you watched the Democratic Primary Presidential Debate that used a YouTube format for voters to ask candidates questions. Well, there was one obviously deranged man, masked on camera, holding up two assault rifles asking what the candidates would do to protect these his "babies." Joe Biden was the first candidate asked to respond, and his response touched my heart. Without missing a beat, he said, "If those are his babies, then that is just sad." The audience at the debate started to laugh along with the moderator, but Senator Biden's earnest eyes and mouth matched the sentiment he expressed. With a world-weary face and voice, he maintained the sad state of the world in which guns are more desperately protected than people.

This is the mentality we are dealing with here, and I want to explain why this mentality does not serve us (it should be obvious based on the fact that guns are made for the very act of destruction), and why it is, in my opinion, imperative for our physical and spiritual evolution to implement gun control laws until such time as our spiritual progress has caught up with the progress of our technologies (guns are a form of technology that make it more efficient to kill) of potential destruction.

Let's start with the cliche "Guns don't kill people; people kill people." That is correct that people kill people. Gun control advocates never argue that a gun just got up by itself and shot someone, so I find it strange that gun lovers use this quip to defend their passion for dangerous weapons.

However, while guns themselves do not have a mind of their own to premeditatedly kill people, the people who own and have easy access to guns do. And this mind, I'm sorry to say, is sadly undeveloped, unconscious, and uncontrollable in most people. Guns make it simpler to kill someone. They take much of the physical effort out of having to put one's hands on another and choke them or stab them or use some other horrendous method of murder against them. Furthermore, guns also provide one safe distance from the person one would kill, making the act of murder a bit less personal, helping to ensure that the killer does not have to watch the life fade from the eyes of his/her human prey. Make no mistake, this lessened physical effort and distance is a major reason why gun-weilding societies are also violent, murderous ones.

Look around, America. We are such a society.

Let's use an example to prove this. If I want to go to my friend's house who lives across town or even a few block away, I am much more likely to do so if I have that technology of more efficient transportation called an automobile than if I had to physically exert myself through walking. I did not say the car guaranteed I would go to my friend's house nor that the effort of walking would keep me from going, but that the presence of an automobile increases the likelihood that I would make the trip. Guns work in the same way. If my anger is in an exacerbated condition over being wronged, I am much more prone to take fatal action against that person if I am in possession of, or if I can easily obtain, a gun.

Taking the metaphor a step further, if I get in my car, I only have to drive a block or so to see just how much more distant, and thus rude and inconsiderate, people are capable of becoming on the road because they have the distance from the others on the road created by the metal box of the car itself. It would be rare that someone would dare cut in front of people waiting in a line at a store! Why? Because the persons whom one stepped in front of would immediately protest and demand that our line-breaker move to the back. Yet, many drivers who would not cause the inconvenience of cutting in a line in front of others who were already there do cut dangerously in and out of lines of cars on roads all over the world. Do you understand that? Their behavior in their cars is more dangerous than it would be to do something similar in person, but they are more prone to this dangerous action because of the relative sanctuary created by the distance of cars. If you cut in front of me in a car, I can only yell at you inside my car, but you do not have to deal with my frustration in any real personal manner.

Unless, of course, I have a gun.

We can see how this analogy applies to the relatively comfortable distance a gun allows a killer to remain from his victim.

I read letters to the editor from citizens asserting that the world is too violent and crazy to give up their rights to carry guns. Some have even confessed that, if they lived in a perfect world, they would have no need for their guns. There is much folly in this argument. First, I know a person who was born and resides in a country in which gun ownership is virtually nonexistent. This person has reported that the murder rate for this country is virtually nonexistent as well. (Ironically, this statistic also poses as a repudiation of the first argument that "guns don't kill people; people kill people.) The citizens of this country do not have to walk around in fear of getting shot, so their fearless shunning of guns is reinforced with less reasons to be afraid. Fearlessness beget fearlessness.

What's more, it is countries like this one that prove just how frightened this society that is mine really is. My God, brothers and sisters, what has you feeling so guilty, so alone, so ashamed, so sad, so greedy that you close yourself off from the rest of the world in your house or your car cradling your gun for safety? How is this idea of "survival of the fittest" working out for you? Because even when you have "survived" and proved yourself to be the "fittest," you are still afraid of the next perceived threat to your existence. Have you ever really reflected whether this is the life you would want to choose for yourself? Do you really want to be responsible for killing or destroying others in order to exist yourself?

This is where we move deeper into the discussion. Let me assure those of you that think you must have a gun to protect yourself from a dangerous world that it is your very belief that you have to protect yourself from the world that makes the world dangerous. You hoard possessions and shut out those in need to protect the pleasure you derive from these possessions, and then wonder why the poor and desolate would try to steal from you. Your need to protect yourself and what you would possess would even lead you to kill a thief even if the thief posed no fatal threat to your physical survival. This is just one example, but the point is that your fear is the underlying imminent threat that you claim to want protection from, but you use tools as useless as guns to protect you from it. If you shoot someone who wants to shoot you, are you now going to feel safe? Or do you have to live with the guilt and then the fear of that same fate becoming of you someday? Do your guns make you feel safe? Are you suddenly covered in some invisible shield of invincibility when your guns are in your hand? No. You are still in danger physically, and really the danger is more acute, when you have a gun. Moreover, you are in a dire and miserable condition mentally and spiritually with a gun.

This is because you are demonstrating your desperate belief in the lie that you bring safety through harm. If you own a gun for protection, you think that you can find relative security through the potential for violence that it can inflict on any unwanted intruder into your life. Many gun owners in America are Christians, so allow me to make a point using Jesus. Jesus was a man of inner peace because of his inner connection to God. Therefore, Jesus did not force violence onto any human being. His peace begat peace in the hearts of many men and women and still does so today. Yet, to those who believed in violence, his message of peace made them afraid. So they used the inner violence within them to concoct their scheme to kill him. Yet, even then, Jesus did them no harm. How was he able to transcend that desperate human desire to protect his physical existence? He knew, without hesitation or doubt, that his physical existence was the smallest part of who he really was, and he knew on a deeply personal level the indestructibility of the Soul that makes up the whole of who he really is (that's right, I went from past to present tense because Jesus is even if his body is not). He would thus not sell the whole for the smallest part of the whole by killing or harming those who would harm him. He said with his actions, "I will not bring forth anymore darkness into this world." Until each of us have the courage to do this, even in the face of those who would oppress us with murder, we are just contributing to the destructive cycle. Our violence will breed more violence and our destruction will breed more destruction.

A first step toward demonstrating that courage is to let go of this destructive possession to which we hold so sickeningly. We see the death these weapons have created all around us and on the news every single day in this country. Insanely, we grasp our guns all the tighter. This is the state of mind of people, and it informs just how ill-equipped we are mentally and spiritually at this point in our evolution to tote and wield such machines of murder. Yet, through this spiritually-motivated action, we step onto the path of proving to ourselves that we are indeed indestructible - not because of any weapon but because of the nature of the Soul itself. Our fearlessness will breed more fearlessness rather than our current state of fear overpopulating the planet with more of itself.

It is time for each of us to let go of this most destructive of possessions in order to begin walking the path toward letting go of all possession, because to possess is to fear being dispossessed. Who knows? Perhaps one day down the evolutionary line, when we have transcended this base lie of the ego that there is such a thing as "survival of the fittest," that there is such a thing as death or "the end of me," maybe then we will see some purposeful use for guns (I doubt it, but who knows). But until then, the first step toward getting us through this fear - that is the ONLY real threat in and to you and this world - is to take the action of someone who is fearless.

Create the perfect world - through your actions - that you say would give you no need to own a gun:

Lay down your guns, and pick up your broken hearts.