School Shootings Confirm That Guns Are the Religion of the Right
Sometimes calls for America to return to God are couched in the language of consolation. Especially after a mass shooting. When 19 children were killed at school in Uvalde, Texas on Tuesday, U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert, a Republican from Colorado, tweeted that “It is in times like these that we should, as individuals, communities, and as a nation, turn to God for comfort and healing.” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia followed deflection — “Our nation needs to take a serious look at the state of mental health today” – with denial: “We don’t need more gun control We need to return to God.”
There’s a reason we always hear calls for Christian nationalism rather than for common sense gun legislation from the right. As we have shown in our research, guns are practically an element of worship in the church of white Christian nationalism. Gun rights thus must be defended at all costs.
Along with “thoughts and prayers”—a response so hollow it has become a meme for contempt — Christian nationalist calls like Greene’s are often accompanied by warnings not to “politicize the deaths,” as worship leader and MAGA advocate Sean Feucht put it in his own tweet: “We need to call on God. We need him back in schools. We need him to heal our country. He is our only hope.” Evangelical Christian and Lieutenant Gov. of Texas Dan Patrick went on the Tucker Carlson show hours after the massacre to say “We gotta unify in prayer. We have to unify in faith…This was a country founded on faith, Tucker. And that’s why together we have to come together as a people. Don’t politicize it. Don’t point fingers.”
It’s a Christian nationalist mantra because political action after a mass shooting might well imperil unlimited access to guns. My colleague and I conducted a representative survey of over 1,600 Americans in February 2020. We found that among white Americans who strongly agreed that “The federal government should declare the United States a Christian nation,” over two-thirds rejected the idea that “The federal government should enact stricter gun laws.” Those laws had the support of over 55% of Americans in general.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/school-shootings-confirm-that-guns-are-the-religion-of-the-right/ar-AAXIFBL
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