Why Ted Cruz Is Wrong About Guns

If a depraved culture is shaping Americans, why would we want them to have guns?

Texas senator Ted Cruz put on quite the performance last weekend at the annual meeting of the National Rifle Association in Houston. Speaking only days after a gunman entered a school and killed nineteen elementary school children and three teachers in Uvalde, Texas, Cruz used his keynote speech to talk about “the problem of evil.”

Cruz suggested that the tragedy at Uvalde and other mass shootings, including the one that occurred the previous week at a Buffalo supermarket, had very little if anything to do with guns. These shootings were the product of what he called a “cultural sickness” brought on by psychological despair, isolation, broken families, absent fathers, declining church attendance, social media bullying, drugs, video games, and violent online content. The shooters in Uvalde and Buffalo were “sick souls.” They were the victims of a morally decrepit culture brought on by elites living in gated communities, Hollywood actors, social media, and “radical” district attorneys who fail to punish gun-related crimes.

Cruz does not seem surprised by such mass shootings. While the shooters are certainly responsible for their actions, he implies that we should expect this kind of deviant behavior from people raised in such a decadent and ever declining culture. According to Cruz, mass shootings are the result of larger and deeply systemic problems facing American society. (Interestingly enough, when it comes to gun violence the problem is embedded in the culture, but when it comes to racism, Cruz and his ilk put the blame on individual racists and not the systemic racial injustice that has defined American culture since the time of the founding.)

I am sympathetic to much of Cruz’s diagnosis of our cultural moment. We need strong and healthy families. The moral beliefs stemming from Christianity and other religious faiths have the potential of contributing to a more just society. I am disgusted by many of the things that pass for entertainment these days, especially those targeted at young people. I am concerned about the role social media plays in making us more isolated and uncivil. I am no fan of elitism, whether it is nurtured by cultural power or monetary wealth. And though I am not a sociologist, I am sure that plenty of evidence can be mustered to connect gun violence to some of the markers of cultural decline Cruz spelled-out in his NRA speech.

So let’s give Cruz the benefit of the doubt. Let’s say that the United States is indeed on the road to perdition. Let’s say that this cultural decline is shaping the lives and world view of our young people. If all this is true, and the culture is conditioning our kids in this way, why would we want to make it easy for them to get access to guns? Wouldn’t we want to keep guns as far away from them as possible, at least until we can somehow fix the culture?

Or let’s consider the Christian Right’s common response to gun violence. Whenever a massive shooting like Uvalde or Buffalo happens, conservative evangelicals are quick to tell us that the only way to avoid such atrocities is to Christianize the culture through spiritual revival. (Of course when it comes to abortion, they want to Christianize the culture through laws and Supreme Court decision, but that is a discussion for another time.) For example, earlier this week Franklin Graham tweeted, “We are a nation addicted to violence–& they call it entertainment. Until we get a handle on this problem, we will see more & more tragic incidents across our nation. We have taken God out of schools & most are leaving God out of the rearing of their children. He is the solution. The more we turn our backs on God & His word, the more problems we have as individuals & as a nation.” 

Similarly, California megachurch pastor Jack Hibbs recently told Newsmax that mass shootings are related to the teaching of evolution in public schools: “We teach kids in school, ‘God’s dead.’ He’s not real. Evolution is true. You’re nothing but an animal . . . And this young [Ulvade shooter] conducted himself like an animal.”

If our nation is “addicted to violence,” or if our culture is indeed producing “animals,” why wouldn’t conservative evangelicals be marching to Washington D.C. and their state houses to demand that their  legislators pass laws preventing these culturally-conditioned miscreants from getting their hands on assault weapons? 

Moreover, evangelicals such as Graham and Hibbs have a very high view of human sin. Men and women are sinful, depraved, and in need of redemption. They have built their entire careers around this message. Since the number of redeemed or born-again Christians in the United States hovers around the 20% percent mark, that means that the overwhelming majority of Americans are still indulging their depravity. And conservative evangelicals want them to have guns?

Of course, folks like Cruz, Graham and Hibbs are committed to changing, or “reclaiming” (as they like to say) the culture. If conservatives can win back America, we would no longer need to worry about rampant gun violence. But what these culture warriors do not realize is that cultural change happens over the course of generations. As sociologist James Davison Hunter writes in his landmark book To Change the World, “changed hearts and minds, changed laws, and changed social behaviors” often do very little to “change the DNA of a civilization.” He adds, “Invitations by Christian leaders to fast and pray are most worthy, but their main effect will be to renew the church rather than keep America from ‘losing its soul.’ All such engagement may be worthy, but if the end is to ‘save civilization,’ it most certainly is naive.”

This does not mean that the cultural change the Christian Right wants is impossible. But it does mean that while these cultural warriors engage in this decades-long, multigenerational struggle it makes sense to limit access to guns.

John Fea is Executive Editor of Current