Ross: Does a Good Samaritan with a gun solve gun violence?

Regarding the story of the young man who shot the attacker at the Greenwood Park Mall near Indianapolis. According to a Fox News report, there are some people who have taken issue with calling him a good Samaritan.

The Fox story cites a couple of tweets, one from a comedian, and one from a TV traffic reporter in the area, who argue that in the New Testament, the original Good Samaritan didn’t shoot anybody. So the name is inappropriate.

I realized this is only two tweets, but let’s run with this idea for just a moment. Because the tweeters have a point, the Good Samaritan of the parable housed and fed a robbery victim, but then continued on his way.

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He didn’t hunt down the robbers, and if he did, the Bible doesn’t mention it.

But suppose he did happen to encounter those robbers at the next Oasis and witness them preparing for their next robbery. Would he be justified in neutralizing them? Would he perhaps have a duty to do it, having seen what they were capable of?

I’d like to hear more preachers tackle this question because I think it’s gonna come up more and more. Americans don’t feel safe. Because we know we live in a country where anybody with a trigger finger can keep and bear not just weapons, but military weapons.

So as much as I respect the Bible, and its message of showing charity even towards outcasts, I can’t help but wonder what would have happened if the Samaritan had shown up a few hours earlier while the robbery was happening? Would he stand there just hoping the guy lived through it? But what do you have a duty to do something?

The parable avoids that question. And since faith abhors a vacuum, we’re seeing a new series of present-day parables.

Maybe the man who shot the Greenwood mall attacker doesn’t fit the Good Samaritan model, but he reminds us that if a no-gun rule, which was in effect at that mall, isn’t enforced on bad guys, it would be silly to enforce it on good guys.

I know there are people who want to see everybody disarmed, but no gun owners are going to accept that unless there’s an effective way to disarm the attackers first.

My breakthrough idea is to get serious about not selling them weapons, and in places with a no-gun rule, enforce that rule the way airports do, on everybody.

But until we figure out a way to do that, I’m hoping that self-defense stories like this, at least make the bad guys think twice.

Although since we know bad guys don’t follow laws. What makes us believe they’re going to think twice.

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