Some religious thing

I do not intend the following to be mere nostalgia, but rather a description of a safer world in which a teenaged boy would not likely be shot by a police officer.
When I grew up in Napa we played guns or war; my brother Bill and I, John and Carl Lund, Cliff and Rick Travis, Mike Donahue. We had some toy guns, my brother and I both eventually got our Daisy Pump BB guns. But we, especially the younger brothers, also used broom sticks and sometimes simply our hand with the thumb pointing up, the index finger pointing out, and the other three fingers curled back into the palm. Sound effects consisted of “bang, bang, I got you,” often followed by “No Way!” If you had been “got,” in spite of your protests, you were out of the game, that is you were “dead” for five minutes before you could get back into the action.
I mentioned that my brother and I got Daisy Pump BB guns. My brother once shot me. We had both taken cover behind wooden orange crates and were shooting at the orange crates, not really at each other. One of my brother’s shots came through the little half inch space in the crate and hit me in the shoulder. It didn’t break the skin but it stung. I took off toward the house with my brother running behind me saying, “Don’t tell Dad, please, don’t tell Dad.” As we got closer to the house he said, “If you tell Dad I’ll beat the —- out of you.” I didn’t tell Dad, knowing full well that I would have gotten in as much trouble as my brother and that the Daisy Pumps would have been confiscated.
Any adult could say, “knock it off” or “behave yourself” or “Young man you go home right now” and we would outwardly comply. I don’t remember hearing any kid, including 16, 17 year olds, outwardly defying an adult. What some of us may have done behind their backs was another matter. 
As I said above, it was a world in which a teenage boy was not likely to be shot by a police officer. The toy guns looked like toy guns. Teenagers armed with real guns were not invading schools and movie theaters and other public places. Our entertainment at movies and on the radio and early days of TV included the Long Ranger, Cisco Kid, Roger Rogers and Dale Evans, all of whom could shoot the gun out of a bad guys hand without drawing blood.
Could we go back to a safer, less violent world? Yes we could, if we wanted to. If we wanted to we could make the sale of real assault weapons and toys that look like real assault weapons illegal. But even without changes in the laws, if we wanted to we could exercise parental control over what movies and videos our kids watch and what kinds of toys they could buy and play with.  Do we want to? Some of us do. Like the Prophet Isaiah we want to beat our swords into plow shares and our spear into pruning hooks. Some of us don’t. Perhaps, like H Rap Brown, we feel that violence is as American as apple pie, that citizens have a right to be armed and defend themselves. Some of us feel too weak or downhearted to do anything. I think of William Butler Yeats’ poem “The Second Coming,” in which he writes, “The best lack all conviction while the worst/are full of passionate intensity.”
When I was in high school I was influenced by a minister, the Rev Andrew Juvinall, who was deeply committed to non-violence. His non-violence was not based on a political theory but on religious doctrine, a close reading of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount (St. Matthew 5 – 7), and Jesus’ choice to put into practice what he preached by taking the Way of the Cross rather than the way of the sword. I came to think that Jesus was the bravest man in the world because he refused to fight back. During my university and seminary years the understanding of non-violence as an intrinsic part of the Christian religion grew.  I, like countless others, was convicted and changed by the preaching and non-violent resistance to evil of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
One result of this was that my wife Bonnie and I did not allow our children to play with toy guns and watch violent movies or TV programs. One day when our son Arthur was 10 or 11 years old, he and a friend were coming into our yard. The other boy had a toy gun. Arthur told him to put it under a bush because he couldn’t bring it into our house. The boy said, “Why?” Arthur said, “I don’t know. It’s some religious thing with my Dad.” Arthur was right. It was and is some religious thing. If enough of us, citizens, parents, grandparent, especially those of us for whom this is “some religious thing” were to put into practice our commitment to non-violence, we could create homes, streets, and communities as safe as the one I grew up in, safer for the kids and safer for the cops.
Canon Marvin Bowers is a retired clergyman and may be reached at fr************@gm***.com.