Conversations in the age of Trump:
Cousin:
Guns make us safer.
Cities in which many people are armed have lower crime rates than cities where fewer people are armed.
Houston (read: white-dominated) is so much safer than Chicago (read: black-dominated).
In Texas, we force people to be polite. When they know we'll shoot them otherwise, they mind their manners.
Guns are the salvation of a good society.
Me:
If guns saved people and widespread availability of guns made a society safer, then the U.S. would be the very model of a saved, crime-free society.
We are not that.
Guns are an idol.
Like the idols described in the bible, guns are a bloody idol. They demand blood sacrifice.
Give me Jesus.
Cousin in response:
Same old tired talking points outlined above, repeated again.
Me in response:
Silence.
Because what sense does it make to bandy words with someone whose alternative facts come from an alternative universe not even tangentially related to the real world in which the rest of us live?
Someone who has these alternative facts reinforced for him every Sunday at the Southern Baptist church he faithfully attends, which now bows gladly before the blood-thirsty idol of the guns that save us and not before Christ and him crucified. . . .
Give me Jesus instead.
The graphic was a campaign add for Texas governor Greg Abbott in 2013, which he posted on his Facebook page — by way of Dallas Morning News.
