Another crazy person has bought a gun and taken out his rage and frustration on innocent people. I read that Jim Adkisson bought his shotgun about a month ago and began planning his rampage at that time.

Gun ownership. It is a divisive issue in our country. How should guns be used? Who should own them? How shall we regulate their use and purchase?

I am not a hunter, but I come from a family of hunters. One of my grandfathers grew up in a poor family of sharecroppers. When he was a boy, his family hunted animals, killed them, and ate them. They didn’t buy much food from a store. They grew food or hunted for food. They were not picky about this; they couldn’t afford to be. I once asked my grandfather what kind of animals they used to eat. He said, “Whatever we could shoot.” That meant birds, possums, squirrels, rabbits, and whatever else was available.

My grandfather went to work for Exxon when the oil boom was big in Texas. After that he could buy food in stores, but he always preferred to grow his own food in his garden and hunt or fish for his meat.

My uncles and father hunted with my grandfather, but by that time hunting was no longer a necessity. It was something that they enjoyed. There were old rituals involved that reminded them of their roots and of the land and of our close ties to it. They chose to hunt and eat what they killed instead of buying all of their food from a store.

My father moved to the city, and I grew up in that environment. I went hunting with my grandfather, father, and uncles when we were visiting East Texas. It was something that men did together in our part of the world. I enjoyed being with the men, and I certainly wanted them to be proud of me. I wanted to be included in manly things. But I never liked hunting very much. It wasn’t that I had anything against it. But I would rather have played baseball or watched television. I stopped hunting about the time I left home.

My children know nothing of hunting, and they don't like the idea of killing animals. The oldest two are vegetarians, so you can’t catch them in the hypocrisy of eating animals that other people have killed for them. They've opted out of the whole eating animals thing, and I greatly respect their passion and commitment. I suppose my brother and I will be the last connection in our family to something that is old and honorable. Honest and careful hunting of the type that leads to frugal living, care for the land, and respect for what it means to take the life of an animal is a good thing. It’s a natural thing. It’s much better than dropping into a fast-food restaurant and eating meat that doesn’t cost much or cost you anything in time and trouble. The meat industry treats animals as things. They grow up in pens and cages, do not live decent animal lives, and are killed with no sense of compassion, stewardship, or conservation.

It seems ironic to me that city people who eat meat bought in stores would think that men like my father and grandfathers are cruel. The reality is, an animal that lives a natural life and then is killed cleanly and quickly by a hunter who eats what he kills and kills no more than he eats becomes a natural part of the great cycle of life.

It’s not the gentle vegetarians or the careful hunters who are the problem. The vegetarians have made their choice not to eat other creatures. And the careful hunter understands what taking a life means. He knows what it costs. And it costs him greatly in time and money to obtain meat in this old and classic way.

The problem lies with two other groups of people. The redneck fools who grow up in cities, drive huge pickup trucks for show, drink too much, then run around in the woods shooting anything that moves and eating nothing they have killed. (At least I’m assuming that Dick Cheney didn’t eat the last person he shot while hunting) They are a problem. And sentimental city people who dine in fine restaurants, delicately eating animals that were ground up in the meat industry, all the while looking down their noses at simple people in the country who hunt for food. They are a problem too.

The classic hunters and vegetarians are doing just fine. Their lives are good for the planet, good for their souls, and good for animals. And neither group cares much for what rednecks and fancy city people think anyway.

Unfortunately, most of the fighting over guns and about how guns should be regulated is done by the problem groups. Pseudo-hunters who think they need an assault rifle to hunt deer, militant survivalists who want to accumulate vast stores of weapons because they are afraid of the government, and city people who can’t seem to distinguish between honest hunters and rednecks. And as long as those two groups are making all the noise, fighting each other using fear as leverage, and making insane accusations, we will never have an appropriate level of gun control.

And we need gun control. Anyone who has ever fired a gun and watched an animal die knows that using a gun requires great care and wisdom. In the old days, a father taught his son or daughter about shooting. There were rituals involved. It was a big deal when my grandfather gave my father a gun. It was an event that was years in the making. And it was followed by years of careful training. These people don’t need or want to go to a gun show to buy a weapon they can shoot the same day. They are likely using a treasured gun handed down by their grandfather. People who know about guns understand that it is INSANE to allow people to buy them quickly and with no regulations.

The crazy people have drawn crazy lines and put us on opposite sides. And we’ve let them get away with it. They have drawn lines between gun owners and gun control supporters, as though those groups were mutually exclusive. They have drawn lines between meat eaters and vegetarians and claimed that one group cares for the planet and the other does not.

The lines should be drawn between people who think carefully, take the health of our planet and environment seriously, and are trying to be wise with those things, and people who do not. One wonders what would happen if classic hunters, simple country people who live close to the land, vegetarians, environmental activists, and smart city people who are paying attention to where their food and clothing come from were to get together in a big room. They might find they have a lot in common.

And their collective voice might finally drown out the insanity of the problem people. That would be so sweet. But it probably won’t happen because of another problem that I don’t have time to deal with here. It’s a thorny problem, and it lies at the very heart of the Christian spiritual tradition. And we can’t talk about it easily because we’ve allowed fundamentalists and militant atheists to draw lines between you and me as well.

Which is a shame. Maybe we’ll talk about that some other time.

rlp