Are There Enough Guns in the World?

 

A letter published in the London Times on October 3, 2006 and signed by religious leaders such as Arch Bishop Tutu, the Dalai Lama; Norwegian Lutheran Bishop Gunnar Staalsett; Sheikh Musa Muhammad, the chief imam of the Abuja National Mosque in Nigeria, Rabbi David Saperstein of the Religious Action Center in Washington DC; and Swami Agnivesh, president of the World Council of Arya Samaj, India reports that "The world is awash with weapons, including an estimated 640 million firearms, or one gun for every 10 people on the planet." The letter goes on to call on the governments of the world to bring the international arms trade under control.

What if only a small miniscule portion of what the world spends on weapons was spent on poverty. What if poverty was eradicated? If poverty is eradicated at least one cause of war will be eliminated.

While it is a common mantra in America that “our guns keep us safe” we see every morning as we read the paper that there are many parts of the world that are made unsafe by the proliferation of arms.  This morning’s news tells of the lives devastated by armed violence in the Middle East, Darfur in the Sudan and countless other places.

Maybe there are to many guns and not enough prayers in the world. What if we really believed in the words of  peace we pray or in the words of the hymns we sing and what if we were willing to change, to conform our actions to our prayers?

This day I pray: Cure thy children’s warring madness, bend our pride to thy control. Amen.
Hymnal 1982 Hymn 594 vs. 3.