Since I started the Faith and Firearms Project, I can point to only a handful of instances where genuine, constructive exchange around guns occured, and all of those instances were in face to face scenarios, not over social media. This isn't to say that social media cannot facilitate meaningful, empathetic conversation, only that it typically (in my experience) does not. Perhaps there is something about seeing the human face or hearing the human voice of the other that contributes to a more fruitful exchange.
Let's be clear about one thing: respectful , meaningful, and authentic conversation does not preclude disagreement or even intense debate. In fact, the true measure of such conversations, as I see it, has almost nothing to do with the quality or quantity of words spoken. Rather, it has to do with the quality of listening that occurs.
And now we turn to the exception. I recently participated in a conversation about guns between two Christian men, Dr. Eric Barreto and Pete Carroll. Barreto is a professor of New Testament and Carroll is an Information Technology specialists. Both are friends. The conversation occured over lunch at a hunting lodge in MN, just after the three of us had spent a few hours shooting. These men have very different views on firearms. They know one another through work and church connections and are between 30-40 years old. Carroll, a hunter and sport shooter, came to the experience with significant firearms and hunting experience, while Barreto came with very little. Both men have firearms in their family histories, but they show up in very different ways.
I won't summarize the 33 minute conversation here, since it can be accessed through the project's YouTube channel (https://youtu.be/C4qIQvzmVr0). But I will leave you with just a few thoughts. This conversation, though somewhat short and limited in scope, demonstrates that it is in fact possible to have meaningful conversation around topics as contentious as guns, and to do so in a way that allows for listening, disagreement, and learning. Part of me thinks that we don't have more conversations like this, because in the current environment, our collective imaginative capacity is so impoverished by a lack of good examples. It's hard to engage in practices that are so rarely embodied and seen.
If you have had such conversations, or are interested in setting one up to be featured on this blog, contact me, Dr. Michael Chan, at faithandfirearms007@gmail.com.
