There is much to digest in Michael Austin’s God and Guns in America. Austin carefully considers arguments made by those in defense of gun ownership and those critical of it. Although he finds merit in both sides, he ultimately concludes that the “status quo with respect to guns in America is unsustainable and unacceptable” (xvi).

I respectfully disagree. In what follows I will outline several problems with Austin’s arguments. These are divided into philosophical problems, empirical problems, and exegetical problems. My criticisms aren’t limited to the ones listed here, but space considerations preclude a detailed analysis.

Philosophical Problems

Austin grants the existence of a moral right to own a gun. However, he argues (following David DeGrazia) that this right must be balanced against other rights, such as the right not to be shot and the right to live in a reasonably safe environment.1

This is not the right way of framing the gun debate. To see why, it is helpful to focus on how the right to own a gun is derived. Elsewhere, I have argued (and Austin agrees: see pp. 24–25) that the right to own a gun can be derived from the right to life.2

Now the right to life has two faces: the positive right to life and the negative right to life. The former is the right to be given (by another person) the basic necessities of life, while the latter is simply the right to stay alive. Now in order to stay alive, you must have the right to keep yourself alive. This sometimes requires that we forcefully repel attempts at causing wrongful harm (i.e., self-defense). On that point, gun ownership is morally significant because it provides an individual with the ability to reliably and effectively resist attacks on his life. Hence, the right to own a gun is grounded in the right to resist wrongful harm (self-defense), which flows directly from the right to life.

This point is crucial, because it means that the moral right to own a gun is not justified on the basis that guns will increase our average safety (even if that is the case), but on the basis that we have a right to be our own last line of defense. This right cannot be discharged by any good or service, such as a police force. I may have the right to be kept safe, but I also have the right to keep myself safe, and I retain this right even if I live in an extremely safe environment where my chances of victimization are low. Any violation of right to life is irreversible and non-recoverable, and so the right to be our own last line of defense cannot be something that is contingent on statistical averages, nor can it be overridden by the (alleged) safety benefits provided to others by denying me this right.3 The right to live in a reasonably safe environment therefore cannot trump my right to a reasonable means of self-defense. Austin fails to distinguish between the right to be afforded a certain threshold of security (the positive right to life) and the right to resist when we come under attack (the negative right to life). These are distinct rights that are not in competition with each other.

Consider the right not to be shot: such a right places a requirement on others that they refrain from (wrongfully) shooting you. But this does not at all conflict with the right to forcefully resist with a gun when someone wrongfully threatens your life. These rights actually complement each other: we have a right against interference and a right to fight back when threatened.

Thus, as long as there is a non-zero probability of wrongful victimization, we retain our right to defend ourselves (and therefore our right to a reasonable means of defending ourselves). The question of whether there is a right to own a gun is therefore chiefly a matter of the intrinsic fitness of firearms for fighting back, and not whether firearms increase or decrease our average safety.4 And on that question, there is little room for doubt.5

Elsewhere, Austin argues that stand-your-ground laws should be repealed because they are prone to abuse (29–30, 131–32). This strikes me as a rather weak argument. The fact that such laws are sometimes abused does not mean they should be abolished, any more than the fact that self-defense pleas, insanity pleas, and duress pleas are sometimes abused means that we should abolish them. Stand-your-ground laws remove the duty to retreat, thereby enabling individuals to defend themselves (i.e., be their own last line of defense) wherever they are legally allowed to be. And for reasons just considered, the right to be our own last line of defense cannot be overridden simply by appealing to the right to a safe environment.

Empirical Problems

Austin describes his book as an “attempt to be fair” and his intention as being an “honest broker of information and arguments” (xvi). Unfortunately, his use of sources is anything but fair. I am not saying that Austin is writing in bad faith, only that his handling of the evidence shows a lack of engagement with sources critical of his position. Here are four examples:

First, Austin relies exclusively on Pamela Haag’s The Gunning of America as evidence that the “standard story” of American gun culture is wrong. However, Haag’s work (like Michael Bellesiles before her) can confidently be described as junk history.6 There is extensive evidence that guns were widespread and held an important place in early American culture. Many colonies required household gun ownership and even imposed duties to be well-armed in church and public meetings.7 The idea that American gun culture was the product of clever marketing by gun companies has been thoroughly discredited.

Second, Austin’s discussion of the meaning and background of the Second Amendment is one-sided. While Austin appears to favor the collective rights interpretation, he does not engage with or even mention any serious research put forth by those who defend the individual rights view, even though there is plenty of it!8 Despite claiming that his goal is not to critique the individual rights view, his framing of the constitutional issue stacks the deck in his favor.

Third, in discussing the number of annual defensive gun uses (DGUs), Austin cites a white paper by the pro-control Violence Policy Center (38, 50). According to this paper, there are 58,500 defensive gun uses each year, a number generated by using data from the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS). However, there are well-known problems with using the NCVS as a source for DGUs—one being that the NCVS doesn’t ask about DGUs at all!9 Respondents are merely given the opportunity to volunteer this information if they indicated that they were the victim of a crime. More than twenty surveys that are designed to measure DGUs indicate that DGUs are more common than criminal uses of guns.10 The NCVS is the only outlier.

Fourth, Austin defends a number of policy proposals for more restrictive gun control. The justifications for these proposals are quite brief and lacking in substance, and at least two of them reflect a lack of awareness about firearms handling and self-defense dynamics. Austin speaks favorably of requiring RFID or “smart gun” technologies that require a fingerprint reader.11 There are a host of obvious practical problems with these technologies, including: lack of fine motor skills during a defensive encounter, poor grip/positioning, wet/gloved/bloody hands, battery issues, a simple failure to read (which happens with my smartphone’s fingerprint reader all the time), and the fact that one will not always be wearing an RFID watch. Austin also defends a ban on “high-capacity magazines,” which he defines as anything over ten rounds. But it is not uncommon to fire multiple rounds in defensive encounters (the human body is surprisingly resilient), and a ten-round limit imposes a major handicap on individuals who may face multiple aggressors.12

Exegetical Problems

A number of scholars have argued that Jesus’s injunction to sell one’s cloak and buy a sword in Luke 22:35–37 supports armed self-defense.13 Austin argues against this interpretation in favor of a prophetic interpretation (101–5). There are at least four problems with his rendering of this passage.

First, the suggestion that the prophecy of being “numbered with the transgressors” (Isa 53:12) was fulfilled by the two swords is directly contradicted by Mark 15:28, where the prophecy is stated to have been fulfilled when Jesus hung between two thieves. Now although Mark 15:28 is a textual variant that does not appear in the earliest manuscripts, it does provide valuable insight into how Luke 22:37 was historically interpreted by the church. In Luke 23:32–33, the two thieves are referred to as “criminals” and are placed between Jesus on each side of the cross. That Jesus is being numbered among transgressors is the most natural reading of this passage.

Second, the fulfilled prophecy interpretation does not make any sense of the reference to the moneybag and knapsack. If Jesus mentioned the sword strictly to refer to the fulfillment of prophecy, then why did he also mention the moneybag and knapsack? These two items had no relevance to being “numbered with the transgressors.” The more natural reading is that these three items are mentioned because Jesus is instructing the disciples to take appropriate measures to provide for themselves.

Third, the timing of the instruction to buy a sword does not fit well with the fulfilled prophecy interpretation. The events of Luke 22 take place during the last supper. If Jesus was saying that the disciples needed swords that very night in order that he should appear as a criminal, then it is strange why Jesus would tell them to go buy swords at supper time, with only a few hours’ notice before his arrest. Given the time of day, it would be very difficult to find a merchant still doing business. It is more plausible to suppose that Jesus’s advice to buy a sword was intended for a later context, not the events of that night.

Notice that Jesus is addressing those disciples who did not have swords (“let the one who has no sword buy one”) and telling them to obtain them. But if Jesus already knew that the two swords among the eleven disciples were enough to make him appear as a transgressor, then there was no point in instructing those who did not have swords to obtain them, especially when they couldn’t have done so given the time of day. Again, the more natural reading of the whole passage is that Jesus is encouraging each of the disciples to become self-reliant at a future time. The fact that the command to buy a sword is bundled with the command to buy a moneybag and knapsack lends additional support to this.

Fourth, at no point during the trial of Jesus are swords even mentioned. If the swords were supposed to facilitate Jesus’s appearance as a revolutionary criminal, then why didn’t the Sanhedrin use that charge against him? Indeed, when they were searching for false testimony against him, nobody mentioned the swords (Matt 26:59–61)! This silence is especially strange when we consider that Peter chopped off Malchus’s ear in front of a large audience.

But what about Jesus’ rebuke of Peter in Matt 26:52, where he says that “all who take the sword will perish by the sword”? Austin argues this rules out the self-defense interpretation. Not so. Jesus is rebuking Peter’s specific misuse of the sword to interfere with God’s plan (John 18:11: “Shall I not drink the cup that the Father has given me?”). In other words, Jesus is saying that we may not advance the kingdom of God by force (John 18:36).

Note that Jesus does not tell Peter to get rid of his sword. Instead, he commands him to put his sword “back in its sheath” (John 18:11; Matt 26:52). Indeed, John’s description of the rebuke completely omits any negative reference to the sword, reporting only the command to sheath it. Likewise, Luke (who is the only gospel writer who mentions the command to buy a sword) reports Jesus’s rebuke as simply him saying, “No more of this!” The sword is not mentioned. In separating the rebuke from the sword, John and Luke appear to be drawing a distinction between the sword itself and how it is being used in that particular situation.

Conclusion

While there is much to think about in God and Guns in America, I am not persuaded of Austin’s arguments against the status quo.

First, I want to thank Michael Austin for writing such an important and timely book. If there is one thing about which every American will agree, it is that something has to change when it comes to gun violence in America. We all know that children should not have to be subjected to active-shooter drills; that our churches, synagogues, mosques, schools, movie theaters, and shopping malls ought to be free from the threat of gun violence. The question, of course, is how? How do we effect this change? The moment we turn our attention to this crucial question, we lose all semblance of agreement. We should do better. We should aim for common ground, even if that means compromising on some of the details. We need more people to do as Austin has done, addressing the concerns on both sides of this issue—because nobody wants to see this violence continue.

To that end, I want to raise a few questions and concerns on behalf of the gun-advocates within our church community. In the interest of full disclosure, I am not a gun owner. I do not come from a family of gun owners, nor do I ever expect to be a gun owner. My goal is to play the role of the devil’s advocate—not merely for the fun of it, but because I think it is important that we reach as many members of the church as possible with this message. Imagine if the church could unite against gun violence and in favor of clear, attainable, and effective measures of gun control. What a witness that would be; what a great use of the body of Christ.

My first concern is the cursory dismissal of Christian nationalism. Again, I am not a Christian nationalist! And yet, I worry that this position has been too quickly dismissed, and without much by way of argument. Quite a lot of this book does a great job of considering both sides of the gun-control debate. (Chapter 3, “Guns, Lies, and Bad Arguments,” provides an excellent treatment of the bad arguments for and against gun control.) For that reason, I was surprised by the initial treatment of Christian nationalism. In chapter 1, Austin describes Christian nationalism as “an extreme form of right-wing American Christian ideology” and goes on to define it as follows:

Christian nationalism includes several core beliefs, such as (1) the Bible should be the only foundation for all of American life; (2) the United States must be returned to its status as a Christian nation; (3) conservative Christians are superior and have a right to rule over America; and (4) Christians must keep our nation from its continuing slide into the corruption wrought by secular humanism. (15–16)

This isn’t a strawman, exactly, for there are surely some who would affirm all four of these tenets. Still, there are far more people who would affirm only some, and who might nevertheless self-identify as Christian nationalists. I can think of people in my own life who believe that the United States has always been, and should still be, a Christian nation, and who absolutely believe that secular humanism has wreaked havoc on our society—yet these same people would reject the claim that the Bible should be the only foundation for American life and the claim that Christians are somehow superior and entitled to rule America. What should we say to these people? Are they Christian nationalists? Does it matter whether they take themselves to be Christian nationalists?

They certainly think that it matters. In 2019, the “Family Research Council” issued a statement on recent criticisms of Christian nationalism. In it, they charged “the Left” with the deliberate misrepresentation of Christian nationalism. The author, David Closson, writes: “Clearly, these left-leaning church leaders . . . are seeking to redefine nationalism in a way that implies something sinister about conservative Christians who love their country.” He concludes:

Christians ought to affirm God’s providential working in history. The material blessings of the United States are not unconnected from the Christian morality that has undergirded our country, and Christians should continue to exert their influence at all levels of government, while allowing a free marketplace of ideas that allows for open debate and religious freedom.1

Personally, I am uncomfortable with Closson’s politics, and in particular with what I view as a conflation of the Republican party with the Christian church. Still, we can learn this much from Closson: the moment we define Christian nationalism in such an extreme fashion, we have lost the ear of an enormous number of Christians who’s ear we really ought to aim to have.

The unfortunate truth is that anybody who affirms all four of the tenets listed above is not a person who is likely to be persuade by a careful biblical exegesis on the life of Christ and his views on power and violence—that is, by arguments like the ones in this book. The others, though—those who fall somewhere on what I would like to call the Christian nationalist spectrum—are far more likely to be interested in these kinds of reflections. They are, I think, the ideal target audience for a book like this, and I worry that they will be put off by Austin’s treatment of Christian nationalism as a whole. Austin writes:

There are many problems inherent in [Christian nationalism.] First, Christians should not seek to build a Christian state, but rather a just state. Second, Christian nationalism is both morally reprehensible and theologically unsound. The idea that conservative Christians are superior is ludicrous, as is the related Christian nationalist belief that they have a right to rule the United States because Genesis 1:28 gives them dominion over all the earth. (16)

Each of these claims requires an argument; each of these claims should be treated separately, for they are very different claims. Taking the time to address each of these tenets in detail might significantly increase the number of readers who make it past the first chapter of this book, and that would be a very good thing indeed.

My second concern is a minor suggestion, but I believe it could have significant implications. In chapter 4, Austin gives a brief overview of pacifism and just war theory, ultimately contrasting both with his own theory of peacebuilding. One thing that I found myself wondering throughout this chapter was whether it really made sense to draw the lines in this way. More specifically, I wonder: are just war theory and peacebuilding different ways of answering the same set of questions? Or are they instead addressing two different questions entirely? It seems to me that just war asks: “When is war permissible?” whereas peacebuilding asks, “When must we employ violence?” If I am correct, then one could—and, I would argue, even should—be both a just war theorist and a peace builder. After all, we need not invoke violence every time that it is morally permissible.

This leads me to my third and final concern. I suspect that many gun advocates also take themselves to be peace builders. Austin acknowledges those Christians who believe that “the answer to gun violence is more guns” (85). I would go further—I suspect that many such Christians would agree with the basic tenets of peacebuilding, taking themselves to be peace builders with guns. Now, nobody can claim to be a “peace builder” while advocating actual gun violence—but what about those who argue that the mere presence of armed guards prevents gun violence? That the threat of violence is, in fact, what is needed in order to ensure peace? Could they not argue that peacebuilding is compatible with their commitment to increase the armed presence at churches, schools, and the like?

I don’t believe that they can. I don’t believe that peacebuilding, properly understood, is compatible with a peace secured by the threat of violence. I’m certain that Austin agrees, but I would have liked to have seen a more substantial defense of this incompatibility using the resources of peacebuilding. More specifically, I would like to hear more from Austin about why the preventative threat of violence is contrary to Christian peacebuilding ideal. I think I can summarize this last concern as follows: Austin gives excellent philosophical and theological evidence for the biblical call to be peace builders. He gives predominantly pragmatic reasons why more guns is not the right way forward. My worry throughout this book was that a reader who is inclined towards the good guys with guns approach might dismiss or reject the pragmatic worries and adopt, instead, an armed peace builder approach. Pragmatic concerns call for pragmatic solutions, and gun advocates have no shortage of those on hand.

To see what I mean, consider the following passage. When raising the question of “good guys with guns” in church, he writes:

Regardless of whether a church hires an off-duty police officer or private security, allows members to carry guns into its services, or does none of the above, there is one thing on which we should all be able to agree. Followers of Jesus should be working toward a world in which the risk of being a victim of a shooting anywhere, including a mass shooting at church, is minimized. (87)

I hope that Austin is correct, and that we can all agree that followers of Christ should be working towards a world with less gun violence. But Austin goes on:

If the primary response is to arm ourselves at church, then we are not being faithful to our calling as ambassadors for Christ (2 Cor 5:20) Our enemies are not flesh and blood, they are spiritual (Eph 6:10–20) I am concerned that we forget these and many other important truths in our impulse to answer gun violence merely with more guns, especially in our houses of worship. (87)

The crucial question here is why? What is it about armed security guards that undermines our calling as ambassadors for Christ?

If the answer is that “our enemies are not flesh and blood, they are spiritual,” this will not suffice. In a recent church shooting, a gunman was thwarted by an armed congregant. This volunteer security guard (Jack Wilson) absolutely took himself to be fighting more than mere flesh and blood. In an interview with NBC news, he was quoted as saying, “I don’t feel like I killed a human, I feel like I killed an evil. That is how I am coping with the situation.”2 So this, by itself, cannot be the answer.

Neither can the answer be purely pragmatic. Austin does an excellent job of pointing out the dangers of increased gun ownership. More guns mean more gun accidents; more stolen guns; more suicides. Still, there are two reasons why I believe the pragmatic answer cannot suffice. First, I worry it is possible that more guns could work—if we had enough of them, with the right sort of requisite training. After all, as we just saw, the good guy with a gun sometimes does prevent a greater catastrophe from unfolding. More importantly, I suspect that the would-be armed peace builder will not be convinced by the data on gun accidents. The safest airport in the world (Ben Gurion) is absolutely riddled with armed guards; it is something of a macabre joke that “gun free zones” are the ones most likely to be the scene of a mass shooting. Armed with these facts, a gun advocate could certainly aim to increase peace by increasing guns in public spaces while requiring various safety measures—fingerprint locks, liability laws, mandatory gun safety training in schools, etc. In such a world, we might find ourselves in churches, synagogues, mosques, and schools with visible, ever-present armed guards. It seems possible that we could do so without significantly increasing gun accidents. It even seems possible that doing so might reduce gun deaths. In a world in which armed guards are ubiquitous, it may well be that gun violence declines.

The second reason is, perhaps, more to the point: the world I’ve just described is not a world I want to live in. I want nothing to do with it. I do not believe that the body of Christ ought to work to bring this world into fruition, even if it would mean reducing gun deaths. That is, even if Austin were wrong about the pragmatic risks of gun ownership, he would still be right about the proper role of the body of Christ. Peace that is achieved and maintained only by the constant threat of violence is, I think, neither biblical nor Christlike—even if it obtains in a world with fewer acts of gun violence than the world in which we live.

I suspect that Austin agrees with me. In the really excellent penultimate chapter, “Christ, Character and a Colt .45,” Austin raises the possibility that guns are being revered as idols, offering a false sense of security and source of identity to many Christians in the United States. This was, unsurprisingly, my favorite part of the book. Still, I believe Austin could go one step further. There are sincere, reflective Christians who fall somewhere on the Christian nationalist spectrum and who believe that good guys with guns are the answer to gun violence. Austin knows this, of course; they are surely part of his intended target audience. I worry that those readers could leave this book with the following impression: Christians are called to be peace builders, resorting to violence only when necessary; guns are dangerous, so proper training is essential. Thus, if the church would train its congregants in gun safety, then the pragmatic worries could be overcome and armed guards could safely ensure that our churches were safe havens from gun violence.

I think that Austin is right about the pragmatic risks of increased gun ownership. He also clearly demonstrates that the message of the gospel is a message of peace, not violence. So what more do I want? Only this—for the resources of peacebuilding to be expanded and applied in a way that clearly demonstrates the problems of using the threat of violence as a path towards peace. Austin does this for enacted violence, but those who advocate for armed guards in churches tend to agree that violence itself should be avoided. Where they disagree, I think, is on the question of preventative armed threats. It seems to me that Austin’s peacebuilding can and should confront us not only with the question “When must we use violence?” but also “When must we resort to threats of violence?” I believe this would be an immensely beneficial application of his theory.

In his book God and Guns in America, Michael W. Austin explores the topic of Christians owning and using firearms and defends, in chapter 4, a view he calls “peace building.” He contrasts this view with two other approaches in the chapter: pacifism and justified violence. Peacebuilding puts the emphasis on finding nonviolent solutions to conflict, allowing for the rare occasion when violence is justified in the name of protecting oneself and others. In this essay, I examine the foundation of peacebuilding and explore whether the idea precludes Christians from taking their guns to church.

According to Austin, Christian peacebuilding means taking the teachings of Jesus seriously, especially the Sermon on the Mount, which says “Blessed are the peacemakers” (Matt 5:9) and “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matt 5:44). Christians should be characterized by kind and loving actions, not violent ones, and peaceful actions should flow from a character that exemplifies Christlikeness. Austin writes, “Jesus’s example is one of faith, hope, love, compassion, mercy, humility, and peace . . . [meaning] that a follower of Jesus should use violence only as a truly last resort, in the most extreme of circumstances. It also means that even in such cases, there may be times in which nonviolent resistance and even accepting one’s own death are the right course of action” (112). It means loving our neighbors in ways that can require setting aside our own preferences and interests and laying down our lives for them just as Jesus laid down his life for us. Austin describes how Christians could sometimes use violence to resist violent crime for the sake of loving oneself and others but refuse to resist violence inflicted upon themselves and others when it is a form of persecution (75).

He distinguishes peacebuilding from both pacifism and justified violence. Christian pacifism is the view that violence is never the Christian way. Justified violence is the view that killing is sometimes a necessary response to evil. First, he says that in contrast to pacifism, there do seem to be occasions when violence is justified, such as coming home and finding an intruder attacking your wife and children (72). Stopping the attacker without violence is preferred if possible, but if not, killing this person is permissible because “nonviolence is not an absolute . . . and can be outweighed by the higher mandate to love one’s neighbor as oneself” (76). Second, Austin says that in contrast to the justified violence approach, Christians should only employ violence as a last resort. He criticizes the approaches of Robert Jeffress and Jerry Falwell Jr., who, he says, are too enthusiastic about the possibility of their followers using concealed weapons to take down shooters on their campuses (17, 72). This “trigger-happy” response to violent crime, albeit in the name of protecting others, is not the way of Jesus.

Austin’s moral reasoning depends on Scripture, but whether he is operating from a particular theoretical framework is unclear. He employs the language of rights, virtues, and moral principles at different times to address different aspects of the issue. He may have a good reason for this, but a single unifying framework would provide a stronger foundation for his peace-building thesis. Why should peacebuilding be understood as neither pacifism nor justified violence? The answer is that love takes priority. He says, “Jesus made it clear that love is central to following him: ‘By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another’ (John 13:35)” (136). A single moral framework grounded in love would also provide the tools to address the ambiguous passages raised by pro-gun Christians. For example, they may cite the image of Jesus as a warrior in Revelation 19:11–16 (110–12) in support of Christians being heavily armed, but this can be countered by understanding that whatever this obscure passage means,1 it has to be understood in a way that does not negate the obligation Christians have to be loving agents of peace, which the Bible clearly teaches.2

The moral framework of Christian love is known as agapic ethics (also called “agapism”).3 Agapic ethics emphasizes the primacy of love (agape) in biblical moral teachings. Jesus says that the greatest commandment is to love God, and the second greatest one is to love one’s neighbor as oneself. All other commands in the Bible depend on these two (Matt 22:37–40). For agapic ethics, this does not mean that love is the only moral principle but that it is the one that informs all the others. For example, the principle of justice is often construed as being in tension with the principle of love, but as Cornel West says, “justice is what love looks like in public.” Timothy P. Jackson writes, “Neither prudence, nor freedom, nor justice alone can do the work of agapic love, and in the absence of such love, all three of these other goods wither. When exponents of other virtues suggest . . . that they can supplant [love] in some quarter of life, they cut morality’s root in all quarters.”4 Nicholas Wolterstorff explains agapic ethics succinctly as follows: “One should seek to promote life-goods of everyone who is one’s neighbor as end in themselves, in the sense of ‘neighbor’ that Jesus gave to the term.”5

So, what does agapic ethics say about using lethal force? Christians are supposed to love their enemies, and this seems incompatible with shooting them. Christian pacifists contend that defending one’s family by killing an attacker is not permissible, but Austin argues that we can lovingly defend the lives of others, using lethal force, if it is the case that we foresee but do not intend the death of the attacker (72). The idea of foreseeing but not intending someone’s death is called the doctrine of double effect, which can be traced back to Thomas Aquinas. The purpose of the doctrine of double effect is to justify acting for a good end even if there are unavoidable negative side effects.6 The key element of the doctrine is in not intending the death of the attacker but intending only to stop the attacker from causing further harm. If there were a less violent way to stop the attacker, then it would be preferred. Another way lethal force could be justified in agapic ethics is if killing someone is itself an act of love. For example, Jackson writes, “Is it not likely that assassinating Hitler would have been a more agapic act toward Hitler himself, as well as toward his potential victims, than letting him become a successful mass murderer? Is it not possible, for instance, that Dietrich Bonhoeffer was loving ‘der Führer’ as a neighbor even in plotting to kill him?”7 The idea of loving others by killing them may be too much for some to accept, and perhaps Bonhoeffer’s extreme situation only occurs rarely in human history. Nevertheless, agapic ethics does seem to permit the use of lethal force, although agapists of the pacifist variety would disagree. What agapic ethics does not condone is the cavalier taking of human life. The main lesson for Christian peacebuilding is that violence, while sometimes permissible, is always tragic. Agapic ethics affirms Austin’s conclusion: “If that person has good character, is empathic, compassionate, and loving, he will ‘feel regret at having been the agent of killing.’ The loss of life, even if necessary to protect other life, will be a source of pain and regret” (115).

Austin draws three lessons from his discussion of Christian peacebuilding, with which agapists can agree: (1) that peace builders should not be “trigger-happy,” (2) that peace builders should not idolize guns, and (3) that peace builders should support making guns more difficult to acquire for people with a history of mental illness, substance abuse, or domestic violence (83). Being “trigger-happy” is inconsistent with being a follower of Jesus. One can be prepared to pull the trigger to save a life if necessary without having the enthusiasm of Jeffrees and Falwell. In other words, it may sometimes be permissible to kill, but it is never okay to be anything but sad about it. Regarding idolatry, Austin says, “Idols offer a promise of power. . . . The power of prayer can seem impotent against the barrel of a gun. . . . In such circumstances, guns can become idols. They become our rock, our shield, our protector. Guns give us a sense of power. They make us feel safe from those we fear. But these are lies” (109). As 1 John 4:18 says, there is no place for fear in a life of love, and if fear is why someone buys a gun, then this represents a failure to trust in God first and foremost. Finally, keeping guns out of the hands of unstable individuals can help keep our families and neighbors safe, so love seems to demand smart legislation that allows only careful law-abiding citizens to own guns. Austin supports universal background checks, red flag laws, gun safety courses, etc. (129–35).

In spite of arguing against pacifism and for responsible gun ownership, Austin makes the curious claim that Christians should leave their weapons at home when they go to church. He considers three options for keeping congregations safe from the rising threat of mass shootings at churches: (1) allowing concealed-carry guns, (2) hiring paid security officers, and (3) not permitting any guns. He argues that only options 2 and 3 are acceptable on the basis that allowing concealed carry in churches makes accidents more likely, and he lists a couple of examples of gun accidents in churches (86–87). Also, he thinks concealed weapons represent a betrayal of our witness. He says, “If the primary response is to arm ourselves at church, then we are not being faithful to our calling as ambassadors for Christ (2 Cor. 5:20)” (87), but why is this the case?

His call for keeping guns out of church seems more consistent with pacifism than the peace-building position he defends. He thinks that lethal force can be justified in most any other location, so why not in a church? With church shootings like Charleston, South Carolina, (2015) and Sutherland Springs, Texas, (2017) becoming more common, bringing guns to church, if done legally and carefully, seems prudent and responsible. Again, guns should not be brought to church out of fear or bravado but out of concern for protecting innocent lives in response to the growing threat of mass shootings. This said, Christians should still be known for their love and not for how well-armed they are, but if Austin is right, then Christians can be armed and loving. In fact, if they follow current concealed-carry laws, then the fact that they are armed will not be known by others, and they can get about the business of loving others for all to see.

In short, if an armed Christian could be morally justified in killing a shooter at an elementary school, for example, then the same Christian could be justified in taking down the same shooter at a church. Perhaps Austin is simply concerned that the presence of guns in church will sully the image of the sanctuary. As important as houses of worship are, the same moral principles should govern Christians inside and outside them. Christians should be peace builders everywhere.

I’m honored to be a part of this dialogue. Mike Austin is a brother in the Lord. I guess that’s relevant because the book pretty clearly says “God” and other Christian stuff. Austin is also a classically and analytically trained philosopher who has gone for a romp in the discipline of American politics. I teach in five departments on campus in three disciplines, and in my view, it is very difficult to do what Mike is trying to do successfully—apply philosophy to American politics. Those are two very different disciplines, and I commend Mike for his good effort.

I believe not only that philosophy is useful in politics, but that politics is useful in philosophy. Many philosophers I know seem to just assume that politics boils down to Intro to Ethics or something. Donald Trump equals bad man, end of analysis (with premises and non-fallacious inferences, of course), or something like that, as if politics just is philosophy done badly; here, watch us do better. Mike doesn’t come off like that. In any case, it’s wonderful to see this effort.

In particular, I commend Mike for his good effort in the section of his book called “Guns, Lies, and Bad Arguments.”1 In that chapter, he takes ten slogans and analyzes them with standard Intro to Logic informal fallacy analysis. It looks like something that he might have done in critical thinking or logic classes that he himself has taught over the years. I have done similar things in the past, too. I find that this is difficult to do well. Mike is careful to phrase the slogan and its intended support in such a way to make sure the fallacy he wants to illustrate is represented in the material.

By way of constructive critique, if the book had a soul, I came away with the feeling and the thought that the book’s soul was inured to the suffering of a particular kind of innocent victim of gun violence. I can only comment on the book’s soul and not the author’s since I haven’t had a chance to speak to Mike directly and at length about it. (I don’t believe books have souls—I’m avoiding ad hominem. It’s ad-bookinem.) The book seems to me to be inured to the moral harm of criminalizing innocent conduct. When the state brandishes its guns against innocent people for innocent conduct, this is its own kind of gun violence against the innocent. When innocent conduct is criminalized because the legislature says so, the gun violence of police and the state is brought to bear on innocent people. The tendency is all too human. The Federalist Papers argued, based on extensive experience, that the legislature “is everywhere extending the sphere of its activity and drawing all power into its impetuous vortex. . . . It is against the enterprising ambition of this department that the people ought to indulge all their jealousy and exhaust all their precautions.”2 Every one of Mike’s legislative proposals would draw more power into that vortex at the expense of people, as each one involves the moral harm of criminalizing innocent conduct.

The book begins by recounting victims of statutorily defenseless murder as if we needed to hear their stories for the first time. Mike references “status quo” many times, and there always seems to be a problem with the status quo on Mike’s view, but nowhere does Mike mention the status quo as a problem where it criminalizes self-defense or otherwise innocent conduct, which the status quo does, such as possessing a magazine that holds eleven bullets instead of ten for lawful purposes, or borrowing ammunition from a friend, such as is the case in California. “Status quo” for Mike is radically incomplete.

In the spring of 2018, I was teaching Constitutional Law: Civil Liberties at a large Cal State. The Florida high school murders had just occurred as we finished the First Amendment and were now on the Second. My students asked me, what’s the solution to “gun violence”? I said, I think you mean, what’s the solution to murder, right? What happened was murder, and attempted murder. The law against murder is older than Cain and Abel. Is there a law against gun violence? I mean in the moral law?

I pointed out to my students that anyone could walk onto this campus and into this classroom. There’s not even Disneyland security with walkie-talkies or furrowed brows at pocketknives. In Spring of 2017 at LMU in Lost Angeles—and I captured this on video—class was disrupted by the intercom asking us to do a drill. Barricade the door, it said. Don’t fight. The door opened to the outside, I pointed out to the students on video—the class lost it. I pointed out the utter frivolity of campus security, and my own training and criminalization of self-defense. In 2015 after the Oregon campus murders, the NEA sent out a mailer instructing us to use staplers to fight back. Anything but effective self-defense—which is criminal. That is the status quo Mike somehow missed.

The police are not 24/7 bodyguards. I’m trained by Navy SEALs in small arms. I’ve been training in firearms responsibly since I was a kid. Not since I was a baby or a fetus, as Mike boasted in his book (xv, gentle humor, Mike). But most of my life. And I am a felon—California law regards me as equally bad as a murderer in that regard—if I effectively meet that threat or am prepared to with a small, easily concealable firearm for the protection of innocent human life from murder. That’s the status quo.

That was the status quo in Texas at the church in Sutherland Springs in 2017. A neighbor to the church ended the murders there after a deadly delay from running to the church. Had that NRA instructor there had that firearm in the church and stopped those murders before that tremendous loss of innocent life, he would have been a criminal under Texas law at that time. Texas Republicans changed that law, and last year, a similar murder attempt there in Texas was lawfully stopped within five seconds, again by a firearms instructor present in the church at the time. Florida Republicans likewise changed the law criminalizing effective self-defense on school grounds last year after their high school murders in 2018. They changed the status quo to relieve the victims of criminalized innocent conduct, lifting that moral harm from the gun-wielding police power of the state.

Which brings me to Mike’s treatment of the Second Amendment and the Constitution (see 9–14). Part of what contributed to my feeling that the book’s character and soul was inured to unique moral harm of criminalized self-defense and other innocent conduct was the fact that we never hear about precisely those victims in the cases he discusses. Who were the plaintiffs in those major cases? What was their injury by the gun-wielding police state?

Despite his professed racial sensitivity, Austin is silent about Otis McDonald, or exactly just how much taxpayer money the Democratic Party that runs Chicago (entirely) was willing to spend to ensure McDonald would be a morally innocent criminal himself if he protected himself with a gun absent the police. And they were absent. In Chicago, the police are complained about whether absent or present. Take your pick. They were absent as he was victimized, but present in case he defended himself and broke the status quo law which criminalized his right to defend himself. This was no bipartisan effort. Wait for the police, they instructed. When I tell my LA students that Democrats tell you that you must use the police as bodyguards, you should see their faces.

The book isn’t sympathetic with McDonald’s fears—very reasonable fears—or the moral harm done to him by the city. Austin is silent about both. The Supreme Court had strong words about the Klan in footnote 20 of that case, where we find out “kuklux” was a verb for disarming blacks.3 The careful opinion by the only black man on the court raised in the Democratic, segregated South had unsurprisingly not overlooked that aspect of criminalized self-defense.4 There the Supreme Court ruled that the verb kuklux meant to disarm a black man—exactly what Chicago did as a matter of policy. This is all relevant material, but it was ignored in favor of space dedicated to rehashed and sensationalized headlines.

Austin is also silent about both Tom Palmer and Dick Heller, plaintiffs in an earlier case, also in a jurisdiction run entirely by the Democratic Party—the same partisan side that advocates Mike’s legislative agenda. I’ve met Tom Palmer. He has a PhD in philosophy and is one of the most level-headed, virtue-minded, thoughtful people I have ever met. He was a victim of a violent crime, and he saved himself and his friend using gun violence. This was documented in the Washington Post.5 Gun violence saves lives. (Something I remind my students every Veteran’s Day—it’s a celebration of gun violence.) Palmer may have ended up a real-life Matthew Shepard had he lacked a gun with him that night, and had he not stuck the gun in the face of his attackers that night. The thanks he got? His attackers, enabled by the status quo which criminalized the innocent conduct of Palmer, threatened to bring the police power of the state against Palmer for his innocent conduct, compounding the moral harm done to Palmer that night. The state regarded Palmer as criminal for protecting himself against gay-bashers in public. But the gun violence Palmer brought to bear for self-defense saved multiple lives that night. This kind of sick, multilayered moral harm, revictimizing victims like Palmer, would be exacerbated by Austin’s legislative proposals, each expanding the administrative state and the police power to inquire about such things that are not morally criminal and that further traumatize innocent victims for and deter them from effective self-defense.

Every time a gun goes off, it is violent. Most gun violence is not only legal, but moral. Recreation, training, and self-defense are lawful (in both senses) examples of gun violence. Moral gun violence occurs every day all over the country. The law against murder is very old, indeed. Cain and Abel.6 By contrast there is no moral law against gun violence. If there was, that would mean Palmer’s self-defense was morally unlawful. His self-defense was a paradigm example—what Roderick Chisholm might have called a particular example—of known criminalized innocent conduct, innocent, criminalized gun violence.

To Austin’s credit, he understands at least partially that much. Which is why it was odd that Mike implied that Heller overturned two-hundred-year-old precedent when Dick Heller, a police officer,7 was decriminalized for having his service weapon at home for self-defense (9). Police officers can’t have a gun in the home for self-defense for two hundred years in American history? Really? We’ve made some mistakes in America, but that’s not one of them. That’s certainly not the American history most are rightly familiar with. It was five Republicans that made sure police officers, gay philosophers like Palmer, and black men like McDonald could have guns in the home for self-defense without relying on the police as bodyguards 24/7. This was despite enormous sums of public and private money spent by Democrats fighting those efforts to decriminalize innocent conduct. In one case, that Democratic tax money went to the NRA, which got attorney’s fees for defending Otis McDonald so that he would be able to effectively fight those Democratic policies.8 He could not have afforded to have his innocent conduct decriminalized, otherwise.

These are what Al Gore might have called inconvenient truths. But Mike is a thoughtful and highly trained guy, and so I’m interested in seeing how, in dialogue, he would defend each legislative proposal as I attempt to pick them apart. I wish that I had had more room to discuss the spiritual aspects of the book, but we leave that to another time. Maybe over a few rounds at the range, and then the pub. God bless ya brother. Again, I’m grateful to be in dialogue on these important topics.