“Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them,” says the English Standard version of The Holy Bible in Ephesians 5:11. The King James version, which I mostly prefer for its poetic language, uses the word “reprove” instead of “expose.” Whatever the closest translation might be, I prefer “expose,” as reproving can be a quiet or loud thing, but exposing is always public.
Both exposing and reproving, of course, can only occur when we know what the works of darkness are. This is no fine point. None of us can completely know what is right and wrong in every moment and situation, as the context and outcomes of human decision-making are complicated—this is why not rushing to judgment is so key to getting or administering actual justice—but most can immediately recognize evil when we see it. And, yes, then we can follow the evil deed back into a person’s motives, intent and actions to find the missed opportunities to see the evil coming so that we might better prevent such a thing in the future.
The recent actions of a mass-murderer in Maine were clearly evil. One reason it is important to say this aloud is that gun-control advocates often refuse to apply the word “evil” to people and choices. Yet they apparently see evil in inanimate objects, beginning with guns.
This, again, is no small point. When these political actors are forced to explain how steel, wood and polymer are guilty of the vilest of crimes, they shift and imply that guns empower the worst in us.
That’s a semantic dodge designed to take the emphasis off the individual who is responsible, but I’ll let that slide for a moment as I agree to the obvious point that guns, as tools designed for self-defense and sport, can be used to do good or evil—or they can just be used to shoot skeet.
Indeed, as any armed citizen can attest, guns empower the vulnerable to live alone; they empower the elderly to retain some cherished independence; and they empower every other good and decent person to potentially protect their families and themselves until help arrives. According to the 2021 National Firearms Survey, conducted under the supervision of Georgetown professor William English, guns are used 1.67 million times per year by Americans to stop threats—and, in most cases, armed citizens do this without firing a shot.
But this dodge of the use of “evil” from gun-control advocates is revealing. And not only because they want all the blame to be on guns as a justification for bans and other gun-control laws, but also because a refusal to delineate these things in terms of good and evil is designed to diminish the individualistic nature of these decisions. Whether someone decides to follow the Golden Rule or whether a person decides, step by step, to follow a path to evil is, however you try to explain it away, a series of individual decisions. Stopping and redirecting a person on the path to evil begins with clearly articulating what is good and what is evil.
Given that they don’t see this critical distinction, it is easier to understand how gun-control advocates can get behind so-called “bail reform” to let caught violent criminals right back onto the streets. And it explains how a “woke,” often George Soros-backed, district attorney can feel justified in declining to prosecute violent offenders.
So, what do we do about those in public office who think there is no evil person, but that guns are nothing more than instruments of evil? In this democratic republic, we expose them and vote them out.
