The United States has always been politically divided. The assassinations of presidents and members of congress go back to our earliest days, with 3 presidents killed between 1865 and 1901, and six attempts, 2 successful, on members of congress between 1905 and 1935.

This is not about a political divide (most certainly a political crisis) any longer, but a cultural divide. American culture, what this country stands for, has been slowly eroded away. The complexity of the problem stems from the source of erosion being plural, not singular, and these sources, while existing separately, have worked together to change the narrative in the United States.

These forces have changed the way traditional American culture is viewed, passing through the lens of race, oppression, and the sense that equality goes beyond our God-given, inalienable rights. This has led a large portion of our population and others around the globe to view American culture as rooted in white-supremacy; intolerant, racist, nationalist, and evil. Many of the same attacks on Charlie Kirk’s character and platform are applied to the United States of America.

America is a large country. Naturally, there are going to be different people groups with their own customs and traditions, regional differences within the country, and different historical impressions left on these people and their regions. However, the United States of America as a whole does stand for something. It is for this, no matter who you are, where you live, or where you came from, that we all must collectively buy into.

American culture values individualism and self-reliance, independence, entrepreneurship, equality, diversity, immigration, a free market, time and productivity, freedom to worship, and democracy. Our country’s creation was rooted in Christian principles, and like it or not, Christian values are a part of American culture. An attack on Christianity is an attack on the United States.

That is why gay marriage was a hard law to pass, and why gay marriage should not be a part of the Christian church. It is contrary to Christian principles and the Bible. Regardless of what you think about gay marriage, involving the Christian church goes against the Bible, Christian tradition, and Christian teaching. That doesn’t make our nation homophobic. It makes us a nation that is troubled when demands are made upon our values and they are disregarded.

Given the historical influence of immigration in our country, it has been said that American culture is always shifting based on these influences, but that is not true. We only become richer as we accept these cultural influences into our society, but they do not change our core culture.

Everyone in America has the right to embrace their ethnicity and the traditions of their cultural roots. We see it occurring everywhere, and many of us participate in these celebrations. That is what makes our country ethnically rich and beautifully diverse. But within our cultural background and celebrations, we must embrace what it means to be American and to live on American soil.

For example, Black Americans invented the greatest musical movement of our country’s history. Jazz and Blues did not change American culture, but they undeniably made it richer, more diverse, and more enjoyable.

Sub-cultures within the United States that attack American culture by making claims of white-supremacy and fascism against it are using weak and cowardly arguments to avoid the greater problems of their own culture. It is a disease rooted in blaming. The United States is the land of opportunity. It always has been. Individuals and groups of every creed, race, and sexual preference have found success here.

Basic assimilation to the culture, instead of attacking it, is critical to success anywhere one goes. Thousands of immigrants legally come into this country every year and begin building a life for themselves. They can do this because they want to be here, they appreciate what the United States stands for, and they are willing to work hard to provide for their families. These courageous individuals and families will learn English, will often modify their names for easier pronunciation and memorization, and will embrace the culture to some extent for survival and prosperity.

They don’t arrive in the US to put their hands out and ask, “what will the government do for me?”. Why? They didn’t come from a place where that is expected. As a nation, we are desensitized to the government providing for our needs. This is where conservative Americans break from liberal Americans.

But no matter where you stand on the debate between community action and social policy, American culture does not change. Social policies will always exist. Some people need help, and that’s OK, but to replace individual and community responsibility with government is not in step with American culture.

Charlie Kirk, a man who was shot by a coward without the emotional intelligence to deal with the toxicity of an invading culture, has been mocked posthumously for a sentence he said in a discourse that included 545 words.

Just before he made the statement that some gun deaths are worth the greater good, he said, “We should have a honest and clear reductionist view of gun violence, but we should not have a utopian one.”

Being a conservative American doesn’t mean you support every policy or opinion wholeheartedly. In fact, being American means you think for yourself on every issue and come to your own conclusion. In the age of social media and unaccountability in the news, we have lost that today. Too many Americans get their information from sound bites, social media memes, and the opinions of others who use the same insignificant information to form a reasonable opinion. This has led to the emergence of a society that is fueled by hate for those who disagree and an inability to have an intelligent dialogue about a topic.

It is clear that firearm ownership in America has influenced made its mark on our traditional culture. But it is also clear that as the world changes around us, and as weapons become more efficient and effective, America’s unchanging and unbending obsession with guns has now tainted our culture.

The argument for access to weapons consists of four bullet points, as far as I can tell:

Self-protection
Hunting
Defense from Tyrannical Government
God-given rights

I easily buy into the first 2 points. If one wants to have a gun in their home for protection, then they should be allowed to have that protection. Guns for hunting, which also crossover to protection, again, allowed.

But when we start talking about defending ourselves from an out-of-control government, I get a little skeptical. Weapons are highly advanced and very powerful. To protect ourselves against a government force would require military-grade weaponry. Each home would now need a shoulder-held rocket launcher to take out fighter jets.

And that brings to light a major problem with gun policy. Individuals don’t need arsenals in their basements, or military-grade weapons, or high-powered sniper rifles. These weapons are meant for one thing—to kill other people. Furthermore, an attack by a government force would be far superior to anything found in a home, no matter how well stocked.

In our social media age, where, based on a 2028 MIT study, false information appears on your media feed 6 times faster than true information (if you ever see the true). As our ability to connect with opposing opinions in a meaningful, to learn the full scope of an argument, and to be able to discern content diminishes, it too often leaves the gun as the only solution.

This is why Charlie Kirk was killed. And if you really meditate on it, it is unimaginable that a man lost his life because of false accusations against his character, when he made his true opinions completely transparent on the social stage.

My biggest beef with our unfettered and unquenchable obsession with guns is that outside of America’s founding documents, (I’m not going to give you a rundown of the US Constitution, or the Bill of Rights, or state charters, or what our founding fathers intended. But I will give you a reference and you can do your own study, because finding our for ourselves has become a lost motivation around the world. You can participate in constitutional studies for free through Hillsdale College. That’s right—for free. https://online.hillsdale.edu/), I don’t see Jesus telling us to arm ourselves to the hilt in preparation for what’s to come.

In fact, I see Jesus saying the opposite.

Conservative America makes high claims as being in line with biblical teachings, which would lead one to assume they know the Bible. That means Conservatives are intimately familiar with the condition of the human heart—that every heart carries evil intentions in it, and every heart has the ability to pull the trigger.

If Conservatives know this, then why do we insist on giving every person the opportunity to commit heinous crimes against their fellow man when they reach that breaking point of anger, frustration, bitterness, and embarrassment?

The Christian argument concerning guns should take this into consideration, and that means some form of gun control, or restriction, is necessary. If the gun goes beyond home protection or hunting (I don’t consider shooting an elk from 400 yards away as hunting, by the way), then that gun in the hand of a man or woman is a danger to society.