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by Andrew Sandlin

Hamartiology is the study of the doctrine of sin. What does it have to do with gun control? Plenty. The rationale for gun control reduces to this: people use guns to commit violent, sometimes heinous, crimes. If we can regulate the sale and possession of guns, then we can reduce gun-related crime.

This argument is disputable on empirical grounds. It is even more disputable on theological grounds. Every argument favoring gun control represents a skewed harmartiology. It is a classic example of an environmentalist hamartiology: we reduce sin or its effects by altering man's environment.

The most crass example of this reasoning is the notion that poverty or ignorance causes crime: if we furnish poor criminals more money, better living conditions, or a college education, they won't commit crime. This notion is too inane to consider. But more complex samples of the same line of reasoning ensnare even ordinarily thoughtful people.

Socialists (by any name whatever) never tire of speaking of "unjust social structures" that lead to social disharmony, including crime. By "unjust social structures" they mean free markets, male-dominated corporations, all-white juries, and Christian virtues. If we can just replace them with state socialism, women CEO's, minority juries, and pagan vices, we can eliminate all (or most) injustice, and, therefore, social problems. They fail to realize that "social structures" don't cause social disharmony; people do. People do because they are sinners. But it's easier to blame "unjust social structures" than sinners. So something besides man must be imputed the culprit.

Like guns.

It is true that if we were to eliminate all guns (if that were possible), we would eliminate all gun-related deaths. But the fact that enterprising people, not the least being the ubiquitously benevolent civil government, would devise some new, perhaps more lethal weapons, indicates that elimination of guns does not guarantee the elimination of the problems gun control supposedly solves. The problem is not six-shooters; the problem is sinners. Eliminating guns won't solve that problem.

But gun control never means gun elimination. Proponents of gun control usually do not advocate depriving police officers and military personnel of guns, although it is not clear that police officers and military personnel do not misuse guns. The possibility of their owning guns while private citizens are not permitted to own them is infinitely more terrifying than the possibility that criminals may obtain guns. Criminal elements in the state are no less dangerous--and usually more dangerous--than criminal elements in the private sector. It is quite preferable for both criminals and law-abiding citizens to have access to guns than for the state to have a monopoly on guns.

The proximate (civil) solution to gun-related violence is stiffer (biblical) penalties for harming humans and property--whether by guns, knives, axes, spray paint, or computers. The ultimate solution to gun-related violence is the transformation of individuals by the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Guns don't commit crimes; people do. The ironic solution of liberals is to lock up the guns and liberate the criminals after a mere wrist-slap. Bleeding-heart liberals wail at the violence in which guns are employed, while it is specifically their lenient legal policies that permit or encourage much of the gun-related crime. If they legislated biblical penal sanctions, there would be dramatically less opportunity to whine about gun-related violence. They legalize injustice by eliminating or softening valid penalties for crimes, and then compound their injustice by denying law-abiding citizens possession of guns when their legislative leniency permits greater gun-related violence. They remind us of the teenager who killed his parents and begged leniency of the court because he was an orphan. Consequently, guns, rather than unjust legislators, become the culprit.

It's easier to blame big guns than foolish legislators.

After all, guns can't vote.

Positing gun control as the solution to the problem of gun-related violence relocates the source of sin from man to an aspect of his environment. There will be no viable solutions to the social problems (like gun-related violence) that plague us until we acknowledge the chief factor of biblical hamartiology: people sin.

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