Sunday Surprise

So there we were, sitting in our pew on Sunday morning dressed in casual tweed and ready to worship, as we have lately, like a layman.  Kindergartener Anonymous was beside us, practicing his name on a visitor's card, while the beautiful Mother A. was at another parish, filling in for a pneumonia-afflicted friend.  We looked at our watch, and waited for the music to start.

"Ohhh look," we heard one chorister say to another.  "There's Fr. Anonymous.  Do you think he could --?"

Turned out the scheduled presider had called in sick a few minutes earlier.  (She's okay, but had taken some medicine that made driving an irresponsible act.)  Were we, by any chance, willing to jump in?  To preach and preside on, literally, a minute's notice?

The funny thing is that when Mother A. was invited to fill in for our ailing buddy a few days earlier, she'd worried that she didn't have enough time to put a sermon together.  "Relax, honey," we'd said in a cavalier tone.  "Any preacher who can't pull a sermon on the Fourth Sunday in Advent out of his hat [confession:  we didn't say "hat"] should really be doing some thing else."

This morning, God gave us the opportunity to test that hypothesis.

It's one of those things you've always wondered about, isn't it?  Could I, if called upon to do so, simply step into the pulpit unprepared and preach on an assigned text, without doing a disservice to the assembly or to the Gospel?  Not merely preaching without notes, which most of us can do easily enough, but preaching without time to study, to think, to pray?  Who hasn't wondered that from time to time?

"Unprepared," is, to be sure, an overstatement when we are talking about texts as familiar as the Visitation and the Magnificat.  One preaches on them at least annually, and sometimes more often; one prays the Magnificat nightly, at least in theory.   This isn't like being plopped down in the middle of, say, Zephaniah and told to fend for oneself; there is a great tradition of preaching and teaching upon which to fall back.

And fall back upon it we did.  Our ex corde sermon may have rambled a bit; we remember going off both on the question of blue versus purple and on just why fonts and pulpits are so often octagonal.  (People seemed more interested in that stuff than one might imagine, by the way).  But recent events -- a storm here on Long Island, a shooting in Connecticut -- certainly helped to bring out the truth of the Magnificat, which is that the work of casting down the mighty and filling up the hungry, meaning the work begun in the Nativity of Christ, is by no means complete.  An eager, even desperate, world still waits for the completion of God's work -- waits, in the language of ancient symbols, for the Eighth Day, the New Creation which is begun in each of us by baptism, but which will be completed only when we share the Beatific Vision.

Meanwhile, the kid -- who had agreed to this change of plans only on the condition that he got to sit in the chancel -- played noisily and publicly with Power Rangers toys, before presenting himself at the altar and demanding the chalice in no uncertain terms.  This business of impromptu liturgics  is not without its challenges.

Still, it could have been worse.  Nobody left or, so far as we could tell, fell asleep.  Several people seemed quite energized by the explicit connection of symbols to theology.  Whether the people and the Word were treated fairly is, of course, a subjective matter; all we can say is that we did our best.  And that it was a bit of a cheap thrill.

We Are Beyond Thunderdome

Thunderdome's simple. Get to the weapons, use them any way you can. I know you won't break the rules, because there aren't any. 

--Dr. Dealgood, explaining things to Mad Max and Blaster

Earlier today, NRA executive and longtime spokesman Wayne LaPierre gave a press conference, laying out his team's talking points.  Basically, they blame the news media and video game industry, and think that the solution to gun violence in schools is to arm teachers and security guards.  He argued, in so many words, that "the only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun." ( Reuters has the story here.)

New York's Mayor Michael Bloomberg summed it up succinctly: "[LaPierre] offered a paranoid, dystopian vision of a more dangerous and violent America where everyone is armed and no place is safe."

This is not an extreme characterization of the NRA's vision.  Their central idea -- which is also the Supreme Court's idea in D.C. vs. Heller -- is that guns enhance personal security, so more of them will create a more secure nation.  This is a little like arguing that, since when a truck hits a sports car, the truck driver is more likely to survive, therefore the key to highway safety is for everybody to drive trucks.  Who needs traffic laws?  Just buy bigger trucks.

While LaPierre was talking, a man in Pennsylvania walked into the Juniata Valley Gospel Church and killed a woman who was putting up Christmas decorations. Then he shot three more civilians, and three state troopers.  The crime scene extends for several miles.  Yes, the good guys with guns did stop him -- eventually.  That won't be much comfort to any of the people he has harmed.

In related news, the store where Nancy Lanza bought her guns has been raided by police.  Not because Lanza shopped there, nor even because Omar Thornton went there to buy the handguns he would use in 2010 to kill eight people at a berr distributorship, but because a third man, Jordan Marsh, stole a Bushmaster rifle like Lanza's, apparently intending to use it much as Adam Lanza had used his.  The store has apparently had a lot of trouble with inventory control in the past; Marsh was still on probation after an earlier theft, and in 2007, the store's owners contacted ATF because they couldn't account for 33 different guns.

None of this means that hunters, collectors and other enthusiasts shouldn't be allowed to own guns.  But it most certainly does mean that we, as a nation, have to make a choice.  The Wayne LaPierres of our nation think that, in the interest of safety, everybody ought to be armed, including elementary school principals and ladies decorating churches.  We could choose that route if we want; but the alternative -- the only alternative, were it even politically feasible -- is to tighten up the system in a way that is common in other nations, but without precedent in America.  Gun dealerships need to be heavily regulated and supervised by law enforcement agencies, and gun owners need -- at the very least -- to meet education and licensing requirements comparable to automobile drivers.  There's also got to be a serious discussion about whether any automatic or semiautomatic weapons belong in the hands of civilians.

Absent that level of regulation -- at a minimum -- LaPierre is right.  We should all start packing heat and wearing body armor and standing our ground, because otherwise we are just targets for the crazy people who can get guns so easily.  That may sound like a paranoid, dystopian vision, but it's also where the country is right now.

Hawaii is Sinking

Slowly.

Still, it's an interesting story.  Apparently, the mountains in Hawaii are dissolving faster than the rate of soil erosion.  The culprit, according to some BYU scientists, is groundwater.  It's the enemy within, the hydrogeological fifth column.

So although the mountains will continue to grow for something like a million and a half years, after that it's all downhill, literally.

We'd evacuate now.

Did You Know? No, You Didn't.

If we Americans want to have a detailed, informed discussion of our gun laws, we need to have some details and information.  You know:  what kind of guns are used in mass killings, what kind are used in drug crimes, how many have been stolen from dealers, things like that.  Fortunately, that's all available to policy makers and think tanks alike, courtesy of the free-flowing information typical of a free society.

Oh, no, we're sorry.  It's not.

And why not?  Because of the so-called Tiarht Amendments, named for former Kansas congressman Todd Tiahrt, who has said, with admirable  and untypical frankness, that he sponsored them because "I wanted to make sure I was fulfilling the needs of my friends who are firearms dealers."

For years now, when American city officials (like those in Jersey City) have written to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, asking for critical trace information about the guns sold in their municipality and used in crimes, they have received a polite letter saying, in effect, "Yes, we have that data on record -- but Congress will not let us give it to you."

The irony is that, now that Republicans in Congress are eager to investigate the alleged misdeeds of ATF in the "Fast and Furious" affair, their progress is blocked by the same rules.  So too are investigators looking for the results of FBI background checks on gun purchasers, or asking dealers to actually make and report an inventory of their stock, to identify stolen weapons.

There has been some recent softening of the rules, allowing (for example) cities a little more access to ATF data, so long as they don't actually use it.  But, for the most part, the Tiarht Amendments provide a significant stumbling block both to coordinated law enforcement efforts and to any public policy or journalistic research into the details of gun-related crimes.

These are terrible laws, and they should be repealed at once.  We can't have a real discussion without facts, and the Tiarht Amendments are preventing the collection and dissemination of important facts.

The Tiahrt Amendments are opposed by mayors, police and the president.  They are supported, we imagine, by gun dealers and their friends in Congress.  Write your representative now to find out if he or she is one of them.

It's Not JUST Ownership

We at the Egg believe, as we wrote a few days ago, that only the most dramatic revision of America's laws will  serve to protect our citizens from death by gunfire.  The big picture is pretty clear:  Americans have the highest per-capita rate of gun ownership in the world.  Although our rate of firearms homicide pales beside those of many other nations, it is by far the highest in what is sometimes, and confusingly, called "the West" -- a cluster of generally prosperous nations with shared histories and cultures.

But it is important to see that reducing murders by gunfire is not as simple as reducing the number of guns.  Much as we might wish it were, the relationship of ownership to homicide is not simple and linear.

A few days ago, we linked to this chart from The Guardian.  It aggregates data on gun ownership and gun violence worldwide, along with the source of the information (which is not equally available for all nations).  The chart is fascinating to read, but even more interesting if -- as The Guardian permits -- you download it and manipulate the data a little bit.

We are not spreadsheet masters, so we haven't done very much.  We encourage readers more adept than ourselves to experiment.

One thing that comes out clearly, though, is that Latin America and the Caribbean are some of the most dangerous places in the world.  This is actually surprising to us; we have traveled a fair bit in those regions, and although you can't miss the signs of endemic violence (notably in Haiti, Colombia, and Peru during the Shining Path years), we didn't realize how outsized the rates are.  A few African countries are in this elite class, and again we are surprised to see that South Africa is more dangerous, by this measure, than Sierra Leone.

Here are the top 25 nations, ranked by homicide rates per 100,000 people.

Country/Territory	% of homicides by firearm	Number of homicides by firearm	Homicide by firearm rate per 100,000 pop	Rank by rate of ownership	Average firearms per 100 people
Honduras	83.4	5201	68.43	88	6.2
El Salvador	76.9	2446	39.9	92	5.8
Jamaica	75.6	1080	39.4	74	8.1
Venezuela	79.5	11115	38.97	59	10.7
Guatemala	84	5009	34.81	49	13.1
Saint Kitts and Nevis	85	17	32.44
Trinidad and Tobago	72.1	365	27.31	129	1.6
Colombia	81.1	12539	27.09	91	5.9
Belize	52.3	68	21.82	62	10
Puerto Rico	94.8	692	18.3
Brazil	70.8	34678	18.1	75	8
South Africa	45	8319	17.03	50	12.7
Dominican Republic	65.5	1618	16.3	99	5.1
Panama	75	569	16.18	26	21.7
Bahamas	61.2	52	15.37	98	5.3
Ecuador	68.7	1790	12.73	142	1.3
Guyana	61.3	85	11.46	45	14.6
Mexico	54.9	11309	9.97	42	15
Philippines	49.9	7349	8.93	105	4.7
Paraguay	56.1	466	7.35	37	17
Anguilla	24	1	7.14
Nicaragua	42.1	338	5.92	77	7.7
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines	30	6	5.49
Zimbabwe	65.6	598	4.78	106	4.4

These are not, generally speaking, places which one naturally associates with the rule of law.  On the other hand, only a few -- Colombia, Mexico, the Philippines -- are engaged in sustained battle with

Likely more shocking is the place of the United States, which -- were we to continue this chart -- would come in at #29, between Barbados and the West Bank.  Of "developed" nations -- let's define them as "places where you might choose t have surgery" -- only South Africa exceeds our rate of gun murder.  Most of us do not think of ourselves as living in a nation as lawless and violent as those in the Third World, but the numbers suggest strongly that we do.

Here's our immediate geographical neighborhood, three large and economically complex North American nations.

Country/Territory	% of homicides by firearm	Number of homicides by firearm	Homicide by firearm rate per 100,000 pop	Rank by rate of ownership	Average firearms per 100 people
Mexico	54.9	11309	9.97	42	15
U. S. A.	60	9146	2.97	1	88.8
Canada	32	173	0.51	13	30.8

This chart should give some comfort to the NRA.  Of the three amigos, Mexico has the lowest rate of gun ownership and the highest rate of gun homicides.  On the other hand, Mexico is in the midst of a long drug war characterized by over-the-top violence, which probably skews the numbers.

The contrast between the U.S. and Canada is interesting, though.  We have almost three times as many civilian guns per person as our polite neighbor -- but they are used to commit murder six times as often. We are, in other words, twice as violent as a very similar nation on our borders.  Why?  Perhaps is is a function of our higher population density, perhaps of our greater proximity to the violence of Latin America.  Or perhaps the greater concentration of guns in our nation creates some sort of geometric multiplier effect.

Here are the nations that many Americans think of, rightly or wrongly, as our cultural peer group -- the large European nations, Canada and ANZUS.

Country/Territory	% of homicides by firearm	Number of homicides by firearm	Homicide by firearm rate per 100,000 pop	Rank by rate of ownership	Average firearms per 100 people
U. S.	60	9146	2.97	1	88.8
Switzerland	72.2	57	0.77	3	45.7
Italy	66.7	417	0.71	55	11.9
Belgium	39.5	70	0.68	34	17.2
Luxembourg	42.9	3	0.62	41	15.3
Canada	32	173	0.51	13	30.8
Ireland	42	21	0.48	70	8.6
Finland	19.8	24	0.45	4	45.3
Portugal	33.8	44	0.41	72	8.5
Sweden	33.9	37	0.41	10	31.6
Netherlands	30.7	55	0.33	112	3.9
Northern Ireland	4.5	5	0.28	25	21.9
Denmark	31.9	15	0.27	54	12
Austria	29.5	18	0.22	14	30.4
Spain	21.8	90	0.2	61	10.4
Germany	26.3	158	0.19	15	30.3
New Zealand	13.5	7	0.16	22	22.6
Australia	11.5	30	0.14	42	15
England and Wales	6.6	41	0.07	88	6.2
France	9.6	35	0.06	12	31.2
Norway	8.1	2	0.05	11	31.3

It raises any number of questions.  Why are Finns, with the same rate of gun ownership, so much less likely to shoot each other than the Swiss?  What are the non-gun weapons used by the English and Northern Irish to commit their murders?  (And yes, we do see that Britain's severe restrictions on ownership support the argument that, deprived of their guns, people will continue to murder each other by slower and less efficient means.)

But the biggest questions are these:  (1) What are the French and Norwegians, with relatively high rates of gun ownership doing that so effectively prevents those guns from being used to kill people?  And (2) what, apart from its colossal world-beating rates of gun ownership, is the United States doing wrong?