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Church shooting suspect previously arrested on drug charge Drugs, Guns And The Coming Storm
Don't worry, churchgoers in Tennessee and Georgia.
You'll be safe. You and everybody else who can walk and is not a convicted felon can bring your gun to worship. Lawmakers in the Volunteer and Peach states made certain of that just in the past several years after the National Rifle Association took up housekeeping in our legislative chambers.
That means that if someone like Dylann Storm Roof shows up to talk God's word with you on Sunday or Wednesday or at Vacation Bible School, then pulls his gun and starts shooting, you and your fellow worshippers can join in with your own weapons. It can be a church free-for-all.
What would Jesus do? Would he show your 8-year-old how to hold a weapon and pull the trigger? Would he, like the NRA and your state lawmakers, encourage you to buy and bring your gun to church because you need it in case you run into a devil?
We know the answer to this question. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus' message was clear: "Whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other also to him."
Yet, since we seem never listen much to the teachings of our religious leaders, here we are again - a nation in mourning after yet another mass shooting by someone who shouldn't have had a gun. Someone who was facing felony charges but whose case was not settled. Someone who was misguided, even demented.
How many times must we turn the other cheek to reason, yet not turn it to violence?
In South Carolina, when Roof killed nine at a Wednesday night Bible study in Charleston's historic Emmanuel AME Church, one of those he killed was the pastor, and the pastor was also a South Carolina state legislator. That tragedy compounds the question of loosening or tightening gun laws - at least for South Carolina lawmakers.
But as for Tennessee and Georgia? Well, Tennessee lawmakers have already made it clear where they stand. Several months ago and at the same time they big-footed city and county leaders by abolishing local laws that banned guns in municipal parks and ball fields, the lawmakers killed an amendment that also would have abolished the prohibition of guns in the statehouse - where they work and play.
So while they are quick to tout a need for guns in parks as "protection" for all of us, they didn't share a feeling of "protection" if guns were in their hallways, offices and chambers.
There's a reason for that, and the reason is that guns don't make anyone safer.
Yet here we are talking about it again, having our "conservation about gun violence in America" after another senseless and tragic mass shooting.