Salon Writer Talks Prayer, Gun Control in Wake of Minneapolis Shooting

I’m a Christian, but not a very good one. When it comes to being a Christian, I say I’m a good example of a bad example. I fall down all the time in living a Christian life, which is far from fine, but I’m not going to do anyone any favors by pretending I’m less flawed than I know myself to be.

What I have, though, is faith. I believe with every fiber of my being.

Which is why anti-gunners lashing out over prayer bothered me so much. I talked a bit about it already, of course, but it still irks me.

Over at Salon, an op-ed writer decided to take to his keyboard to talk a bit about prayer, gun control, and everything in the wake of Minneapolis, and I wanted to discuss his thoughts.

Writer Tony Ho Tran is a Catholic, which he apologizes for through a good chunk of this piece, and he seems to fall into a very familiar trap that many on the left seem to fall into.

Vice President J.D. Vance—who is a Catholic convert and visited Annunciation on Wednesday, with his wife Usha—pushed back on this. “Of all the weird left wing culture wars in the last few years, this is by far the most bizarre,” Vance posted on X. “‘How dare you pray for innocent people in the midst of tragedy?!’ What are you even talking about?”

He later appeared on Fox News to continue to defend prayer in response to the gun violence that prayers have regularly failed to prevent. “When I see far-left politicians say, ‘How dare you offer thoughts and prayers? You need action. I don’t care about your prayers. I care about what you are going to do to prevent this from happening.’ Why does it have to be one or the other?” he said. It reminds me of the time he called school shootings “the reality we live in” at a campaign rally in Phoenix, Arizona, nearly one year ago to the day.

…

I don’t like cynicism when it comes to prayer. I don’t like the way conservatives use it as an insincere, empty response to the uniquely and unquestionably American issue of gun violence—hollowing out something sacred into a mask to be worn to avoid the blood and grief and dead schoolchildren in front of them. I don’t like how I know that despite the fact that the parents of the victims of the Annunciation shooting are begging him to do something about gun safety, Vance is going to go back to Washington and do the opposite.

I don’t like cynicism when it comes to prayer, either. Nor do I like cynicism when it comes to believing that the people who talk about prayer secretly believe your preferred policies really are the solution to a given problem and that when they don’t follow the path you believe, it’s cowardice, indifference, or anything else.

The fact that parents of the victims are begging him to do a given thing doesn’t obligate Vance to do any such thing, especially if he believes that it not only won’t solve the problem, but potentially make things worse.

Yes, it’s difficult to see people not act on your desires, but that’s part of life.

To say that failure to act the way you think is some kind of cynical use of prayer is infuriating.

Luckily, our intrepid author doesn’t just lash out at the right. He also has an issue with the left and their attack on prayer.

I don’t like that the liberal response is nothing but performative outrage. They attack the hypocrisy of “thoughts and prayers,” using their offense as mealymouthed, ineffectual cover, without (Sen. Chris Murphy, President Joe Biden, and the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act aside) doing a single goddamn thing to change it themselves. They act as if the very act of prayer were the problem itself, as if grieving parents and scared kids have to defend their faith before burying their sons, their daughters, their friends. In the end, they leave us the same thing as the right: no safer schools, no fewer funerals, and no reason to believe next week will be any different.

More than anything, though, I hate that everyone makes me feel like an [jerk] when I pray, like I have to choose: faith or outrage, grief or change, silence or rage. I want space to pray and grieve, without my prayer and grief being drafted into someone else’s culture war.

I find it fascinating how the author spent so much time apologizing for being Catholic, and laments his side making him feel bad about being Catholic, but he engages in the exact same behavior as those he has an issue with.

He just uses his faith a bit as a shield when he criticizes the pro-gun side.

I’ll give him credit for bashing so many on his side for their attack on prayer as a general thing, but let’s be real here, that’s on him. He’s the guy who admits that he picks and chooses doctrine to fit his politics, thus diluting his own beliefs and encouraging his side to do more of that whenever they can. They don’t take Christians seriously because all of the ones on their side seem willing to compromise their church’s teachings whenever they’re told to.

Yet what about the claim that the right doesn’t make our schools safer?

Well, to that, I’ll point out some very real suggestions that would do just that, which the people he applauds outright oppose. For example, arming teachers in our schools. Sure, give them tons of training if you must, but allowing school staff–people who are on the scene when things happen–would allow a faster response. We know that mass killers may meticulously plan their attacks, but they’re not well-trained. They don’t know what to do when something throws a wrench in their plans, such as an armed response much earlier than they expected.

That will likely end the horror right then and there.

However, the Minneapolis killer was pretty explicit about how he was seeking out a gun-free zone for his attack. He knew armed resistance could end his attack before he was ready. Let’s address that, then.

No one on this side of the debate has any interest in just offering thoughts and prayers, then doing nothing. The problem is that the anti-gun side is so far up their own posterior that they can’t imagine anything but gun control as a response.

Kind of like how they make the author feel like an ass**** for praying.

Editor’s Note: The radical left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.

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