The Logic of Violence
I remember the first time I held a gun. I was at Boy Scout camp, a line of boys standing shoulder to shoulder, each of us handed a .22 rifle—cool metal pressed into uncertain hands, the strange gravity of power resting between our fingers. I’ve never owned a gun, yet I still remember how it felt: the illusion that strength can be found in something harder, heavier, sharper, and the subtle way danger dresses itself as certainty.
But that promise is hollow. What we hold too long begins to hold us. When we clutch weapons against our chests, the logic of violence settles into our bones and seeps into our souls, reshaping our hearts in the very image of what we fear. There may be moments—tragic, unavoidable moments—when violence must be met with force. And yet every victory born of force of arms leaves a wound that never fully closes, not in the world, and not in us.
Across this country, those wounds have been opened wide. In Minnesota this month, communities have been grieving the deaths of Renée Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, and Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care nurse—two lives lost in the long, trembling shadow cast by fear, force, and confusion. Their names are spoken in vigils and carried on signs, not as symbols, but as reminders: real people, real families, real absences that will not be filled.
Even those who arrive in our streets wearing uniforms—ICE, Border Patrol, any instrument of force—often carry out tactics that are cruel, dehumanizing, and terrifying. Families are shattered. Communities are traumatized. Fear is used as a tool of governance. And yet, even here, we are not dealing with monsters. We are dealing with human beings caught inside systems that reward obedience over conscience, efficiency over mercy, and power over truth—systems that slowly train ordinary people to participate in what, on their own, they might once have recognized as unthinkable.
I understand those whose suffering led them to take up arms. History is full of such stories. Sometimes I feel that old gravity myself—the desire for clean lines and final answers. But I no longer believe the world is healed that way. The work of saving what is still human in us will not be won by weapons. It will be won by patience, by stubborn tenderness, by a loyalty to a wisdom deeper than our parties, our ideologies, our arguments about who is right and who is wrong.
And yes—there are times when love demands everything. Martin Luther King Jr., John Lewis, Fannie Lou Hamer, and so many others understood this. They taught us that some truths can only be carried by bodies willing to be broken rather than by hands trained to break others—and that this, too, is a form of courage deeper than violence will ever know.
Anger at injustice and tyranny is natural. It should be felt. But it must never be the guiding force of our actions. It must be taught to kneel. It must be refined into compassionate, focused action. This is how we resist without becoming what we oppose. This is how we stand firm without forgetting who we are. And perhaps, just perhaps, this is how we might repair a fragile democracy without shattering it in the process.
