Hypocrisy on Life
Just days after four more high school students lay dead in their classrooms, the victims of yet another school shooting at the hands of another student whose parents legally purchased the murder weapon, Kentucky Republican Congressman Thomas Massie posted this “Christmas Greeting” on Twitter: 
Our country is in serious trouble. Our national culture is sick with violence borne of a deep selfishness that looks at other people as threats. Gun ownership is a national religion, more fervent than any other by count of the number of guns (more than 300 million at last count, the most in the world) in circulation. The high priests of the gun cult are lawmakers like Thomas Massie who venerate before the gun manufacturers and raise up their M-60’s and AR-15s when the bells ring and the people shout. The smell of gunpowder is their incense. The volume of guns and the consequent relentless gun violence encourages even more violence as leaders like Massie celebrate arming families to the teeth as a holiday tradition.
Massie is the kind of hypocrite in Congress who is responsible for the blood running down the corridors of our schools and blood-splattered walls of churches, movie theaters and shopping malls across the country. He claims to be ardently “pro-life” working hard to protect the unborn — but heedless and even mocking of the lives of the living. He is radically opposed to Covid-19 vaccines and vaccine mandates. He is exactly the kind of lawmaker who spouts platitudes while casting votes that undermine life and human dignity. His voting record, like his Christmas greeting on Twitter, is a mockery of what it really means to be “pro-life.”
I feel particularly outraged to see that young woman, I assume his daughter, sitting between the adults on the couch as she cradles what looks like a weapon not designed for deer or duck hunting. What is Massie teaching his daughter about protecting human life? Nothing. He is using her and the rest of his family as a prop to curry favor among the reliably right-wing voters in his district.
On a road trip just this week, I happened to stop by a relatively small gas station in western Maryland and inside the cluttered store the guns and ammo were stacked to the ceiling (alongside endless boxes of hard liquor) — it was hard to find M&M’s but I could have picked up an AR-15 easily. I understand that people want to own guns for recreational purposes, but I will never understand why this nation exalts gun ownership as some kind of human right. It’s not. Guns are a threat to human rights, not a manifestation of them.
(Above, one of many signs advertising guns I saw on a road trip across Kansas in September – a Sig Sauer is the brand of gun that Ethan Crumbley used to murder his classmates in Oxford, Michigan in December)
James and Jennifer Crumbley are people who probably found inspiration in a family photo such as the one Massie published. The parents of the Oxford High School shooter, Ethan Crumbley, bought the gun (a Sig Sauer) for him that he used to kill four classmates and injuring others. Some reports say that the parents purchased the gun as a Christmas present for Ethan, and that his mother took him to a shooting range to practice with it. Subsequent stories reveal that his parents and school authorities both knew that Ethan was contemplating violence based on drawings found at his desk, but he was allowed to remain at the school — an incomprehensible decision on the part of all of the adults involved. The Crumbleys are now in custody, charged with four counts each of involuntary manslaughter.
We mourn for the four beautiful young women and men murdered in this most recent example of our nation’s worship of guns. Madisyn Baldwin, Tate Myre, Hana St. Juliana, Justin Shilling. Their names join the lengthy list of young lives snuffed out by shooters who gained access to weapons of human destruction.
Congressman Massie should be ashamed of himself for posting that image, but I suspect he is reveling in the thousands of positive comments he received on Twitter from his constituents and others who think that such in-your-face despicable macho is an image of courage and conviction. It’s nothing of the kind. In fact, quite the opposite, it’s an image of cowardice, a distinctly amoral statement that encourages the worst kind of selfish, violent response and does nothing to help our nation get a grip on the sickness that has killed so many.
In a nation that truly believed in supporting life, a man like Thomas Massie would never reach Congress or any elected office. His statement mocks the true meaning of Christmas while encouraging the kind of violence that weakens our nation and destroys families.