National Rifle Association

Cassidy Klein 5-01-2023

Metal railing with sign of a gun pointing at viewer. The sign reads, "Never mind the dog beware of the owner!" Placencia Peninsula, Belize. Credit: Reuters/Keith Levit/Alamy.

In a nation built on white nationalism, keeping people fearful of the “other” is useful because it keeps up the illusion of law, order, and control — the foundations of white supremacy. Crime protection is now the dominant reason people own guns. Samuel Perry and Andrew Whitehead write in their book Taking America Back for God, that White Christian nationalists tend to want a strong military, capital punishment, and oppose gun control.

Yet again and again, Christians are commanded to welcome the stranger and be not afraid. “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers,” the author writes in Hebrews 13:2. “For by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.”

Ruth Nasrullah 5-27-2022

Rev. Teresa Kim Pecinovsky, holding the megaphone, gives instructions to the interfaith protest outside the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston on May 27, 2022. Ruth Nasrullah/Sojourners

The protesters gathered to raise their voices for gun control and lament gun violence three days after a gunmen killed 21 people in a mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.

Kelley Burd-Huss 2-15-2018

Tyra Hemans, a 19-year-old senior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, sobs as she holds signs honoring slain teachers and friends in Parkland, Fla. Feb. 15, 2018. REUTERS/Zachary Fagenson

The National Rifle Association, the conversation leader in our country's debate on gun violence, is an organization founded and operated as a trade association for the firearms industry. In short? Their chief reason for existence is to sell more guns and gun accessories. And the money reflects this reality. 

Hundreds of protesters marched 17 miles on Friday in protest to NRA ads. Photo by Fatemeh Jamalpour / Medill News Service

“The NRA feed gun lobbies, gun manufacturers, they feed the funeral industry more than any other industry,” said Tamika Mallory, co-president of the Women March, which organized the protest along with other activist groups, including those representing victims of gun violence.

the Web Editors 6-22-2016

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Image via Gage Skidmore / Wikimedia.org

After a filibuster and four failed bills trying to deal with gun violence, the Senate may have found a way forward, reports The Hill.

Senate Republicans, led by Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), plan to bring forward a bipartisan bill that would block people on two different terrorist watch lists from buying guns.

the Web Editors 6-14-2016

Screenshot via Full Frontal with Samantha Bee / Youtube.com

Samantha Bee, host of Full Frontal on TBS and former correspondent on the Daily Show, unleashed a biblical tirade against gun violence and those offering prayers with no accompanying action.

“After a massacre, the standard operating procedure is that you stand on stage and deliver some well-meaning words about how we will get through this together, how love wins, how love conquers hate,” Bee said in the anguished opening of her show June 14.

Photo by Brandon Hook / Sojourners

3,300 crosses & religious symbols staked on the National Mall. Photo by Brandon Hook / Sojourners

Last week, the Senate began a floor debate on gun control that brought to mind an earlier “floor debate” several months ago in Chaska, Minn.

Ever since our Community Dialogue on “Gun Violence in America,” I’ve searched for answers to what happened.

A crowd of 138 people came out on a Tuesday night to chime in following the tragedy at Sandy Hook in Newtown, Conn.

As the night wore on, it became clear that there would be no real dialogue, no moderated discussion. No give-and-take. A series of monologues, without interruption and with a time limit, was the best we could expect.

Fear, anger, hostility, and suspicion were in the room. The room was hot.

The months following have been a personal search for understanding of what happened that night, and how we in America move forward together on such a divisive issue.

Aaron Schrank 4-10-2013
Catholic Church, CURAphotography / Shutterstock.com

Catholic Church, CURAphotography / Shutterstock.com

As the Senate takes up a heated debate over gun control and background checks, Catholic bishops have used the months since the Newtown school massacre to push gun control in email blasts and Senate Judiciary Committee testimony. But among the Catholic faithful, not everyone supports gun control measures.

Call them the NRA Catholics.

Janelle Tupper 1-29-2013
Chardchanin / Shutterstock.com

Hand holding smart phone. Chardchanin / Shutterstock.com

The pressure from the faith community on Congress to address gun violence is building. There have been vigils, marches, and press conferences. Faith leaders have visited the White House and lobbied on the Hill. Now, an interfaith call-in day is being organized on Feb. 4 to ensure Congress hears directly from people of faith demanding change. This is a chance for your voice to ring through the halls of Congress.

While the debate on sensible gun restrictions has continued, local  evening newscasts continue to run stories highlighting yet more tragic deaths from gun violence. We need more than a conversation. We need Congress to find the courage to lead.

Shane Claiborne 12-24-2012
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

A demonstrator from CodePink holds up a banner as the NRA's Wayne LaPierre delivers remarks. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

What does the birth of the baby Jesus 2,000 years ago have to offer the violent, troubled world we live in? Or what would Jesus say to the NRA?

I want to suggest — a lot.  A whole lot.

Jesus entered the world from a posture of absolute vulnerability — as an unarmed, innocent child during a time of tremendous violence. The Bible speaks of a terrible massacre as Jesus was born, an unspeakable act of violence as King Herod slaughters children throughout the land hoping to kill Jesus (which the church remembers annually as the massacre of the Holy Innocents).  

Perhaps the original Christmas was marked more with agony and grief like that in Connecticut than with the glitz and glamour of the shopping malls and Christmas parades. For just as Mary and Joseph celebrated their newborn baby, there were plenty of other moms and dads in utter agony because their kids had just been killed.    

From his birth in the manger as a homeless refugee until his brutal execution on the Roman cross, Jesus was very familiar with violence.  Emmanuel means “God with us.” Jesus’s coming to earth is all about a God who leaves the comfort of heaven to join the suffering on earth. The fact that Christians throughout the world regularly identify with a victim of violence — and a nonviolent, grace-filled, forgiving victim — is perhaps one of the most fundamentally life-altering and world-changing assumptions of the Christian faith. Or it should be. 

So what does that have to do with the NRA? Underneath the rhetoric of the gun-control debate this Christmas is a nagging question: are more guns the solution to our gun problem?  

Rose Marie Berger 12-19-2012
PAUL J. RICHARDS/AFP/Getty Images

Protesters marching with the social activist group CREDO for stronger gun laws. PAUL J. RICHARDS/AFP/Getty Images

President Obama addressed the nation on Wednesday morning to establish a commission led by Vice President Biden on stronger gun safety laws. Gone was the passion of his address at the interfaith service in Newtown and in place we have back the above-the-fray politician.

However, one point was clear. “If we are going to change things,” he said, “it is going to take a wave of Americans … standing up and saying ‘enough’ on behalf of our kids.”

Will Obama’s address beat the National Rife Association’s messaging strategy?  

On Friday, Dec. 21, the NRA will hold its first a press conference after the Newtown, Conn., massacre—and America’s first reasonable conversation on stronger gun laws will come to an end.

Ed Spivey Jr. 4-01-2011

As the United States prepares for its inevitable takeover by special interests, Sojourners recently sat down with the godfather of them all, the National Rifle Association.

LaVonne Neff 1-11-2011
A public figure is shot. School children are shot. A building explodes. A package explodes. And immediately we look for someone or something to blame: Republicans?

National Rifle AssociationThis week, The New York Times ran an editorial about H.R. 6691, follow-up legislation to the June Supreme Court decision on D.C.'s gun ban. After reading the editorial, I made a resolution: [...]