Denver Shootings-arm the Christians!

Two shootings at religious institutions yesterday in Colorado took five lives and wounded five more. A gunman opened fire at a mega-church in Colorado Springs, and at a Youth Missionary Training Center in Arvada. Police believe the two shootings were connected. Prayers go out to the family and friends of those killed, and to the wounded for a speedy recovery-though such traumas resonate in the soul far longer than in the body. Ask a wounded veteran, a war refugee or a rape victim.

The shooting only underscore the spiral of gun violence in the United States. Michael Medved likes to call this the greatest country on Earth. That has become the mantra for many on the Right. Truth is they advocate policies that only take us farther from that ideal, not closer. Indeed, packing a weapon everywhere because you are afraid of everyone-or wish everyone to be afraid of you- only separates Americans, but it is in line with the Republican agenda of fear and paranoia. If we are battling one another we can hardly come together for the necessary peaceful revolution to bring real reform and salvation to the country, and by example, humanity.

Perhaps if all those good churchgoers, praying for the peace and salvation of Jesus Christ, reciting the Lord's prayer and espousing the eternal nature of the Ten Commandments had all been locked and loaded they might have blasted that gun wielding scum right there on the alter, leaving his bullet riddled corpse beneath the loving gaze of the crucified Jesus! Then again, maybe there would have been a bloodbath.

GOD INTERVIEWS WRITER/ARTIST W.C. TURCK

GOD: Your brother is a police officer. Any incites into conceal carry there?

WC: Let me just say, good to talk to you again. Don't get to speak to you as much as I would like. Back to the question. My brother is a Texas cop. As a matter of fact, his first day on the job a gunman drove into a Luby's Restaurant in Killeen Texas killing nearly two dozen before being killed by police. The attack was so sudden that few had little or no opportunity to react. Besides, what are the odds in a huge country with 300 million people. Witnesses describes complete pandemonium in a dark restaurant, filled with panicked people, children and employees, filled with dust. Few saw the shooter at all, and several could do little more than clasp their hands in prayer before dying. The killer was loaded and prepared not only for a battle, but was willing to die-a decided advantage over his victims. A gun battle would only have worsened an already horrific crime.

GOD: You have some experience with battle.

WC As a matter of fact I visited the former-Yugoslavia a number of times during the war. I was in Sarajevo twice in 1994 during the height of the siege. In October 1994 I lived on the front lines in Mostar with a Bosnian Muslim unit then smuggled into besieged Sarajevo with a Bosnian unit in the midst of a battle.

GOD Obviously well-armed?

WC: the most lethal weapon I carried was a pocket knife. Folks there were pretty nervous about spies and saboteurs. Besides, surviving in those situations is compromised by carrying a weapon. It severely limits your options.

GOD: How so?

WC: Emotional and intellectual crutch. A body needs to think in the complex nature of a war zone. You have to be clear, constantly figuring and analyzing. Besides with sixty+ pounds of gear on my back, trudging through the Bosnian wilderness waisted weight. I needed folks to trust me, to know that I had come to their country in search of truth, and being prepare die for that ideal was the ultimate show of sincerity.

GOD: But you were never really in trouble, right?

WC: Arrested and interrogated by the Serbs, the Bosnians, confronted by a warlord in Mostar, shot at constantly, pinned down by mortar fire, trapped in Sarajevo for a time with out food or contact to the outside, and living in a freezing cold room overlooking sniper alley? Yeah, I suppose I was in trouble once or twice.

GOD: Far different from this country, huh?

WC: I could never quite figure what gun advocates are so afraid of. Someone told me once that church is dangerous if you have your head up your ass-excuse the French, God. I have been in the toughest neighborhoods of Chicago, and I stand out in many places as a neon-white guy, and never carried a gun.

GOD:
Why is that?

WC: I give people respect. Everybody, from the gangibanger on the corner to homeless guy on the bench. More than that I pay attention and anticipate issues before they become issues. My sense is no one is evil. There is no evil- only selfish intention, and sometimes that selfish intention takes us over, erases the humanity of those around us. But that quality betrays itself in the eyes and in other ways. It is the quality that connects the obfuscation of truth by government officials regarding torture and the war with men who gun down innocents at Colorado churches