Beating Guns

Beating Guns: Hope for People Who Are Weary of Violence is not just a book; it’s a movement. Authors Shane Claiborne and Michael Martin recently conducted a thirty-seven-city Beating Guns Tour, literally hammering guns into garden tools at each stop, alluding to Isaiah 2:4: “They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.”

I had a chance to look through the book when I received a review copy from the publisher, Brazos Press, and it is interesting visually, with color illustrations and photos sprinkled through its pages. More important, of course, is the content, which is meant to bring hope to those with gun-violence fatigue. There is information about our history with guns and references to the many mass shootings which have left some of us numb, as well as statistics such as:

The United States is the most dangerous industrialized country in the world. When all the murders of civilians in all the developed countries of the world are tabulated, 86 percent occur in the United States. Of all the children killed in the world’s twenty-three developed countries, 87 percent are American children.

One chapter of the book is devoted to mythbusting, exposing the fallacy of such statements as “Guns Keep Us Safe” and “The Answer to a Bad Guy with a Gun is a Good Guy with a Gun.” Another chapter called “Another Dark Secret” reveals that “Of the thirty-eight thousand gun deaths each year, nearly two-thirds are suicides.”

The authors’ response to those who say gun violence is a heart problem or gun violence is a gun problem is to say that it is both and Christians need to be concerned with both. Without vilifying gun owners, they call for common-sense gun laws. They note, however, that we cannot rely on the government for change; radical love and healing is needed to change the hearts of those responsible for gun violence.

The book concludes with some hopeful words:

     The prophet spoke of beating guns into plows. And we are committed to building the world the prophets dreamed of…it begins with us. It is not the kings and presidents and politicians who lead the way to peace. It is the people who rise up, refuse to kill, and begin beating their weapons into garden tools. We are the people we are waiting for.

May we be the midwives of a better world – through our prayers, by our lives, and with our hammers.

A review copy of this book was provided by the publisher.