Opinion | Some things are just stupid, and to call guns ‘God-given’ is one of them

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State Rep. Drew Roach, R-Farmington, recently told an acquaintance that he would never vote to ban assault weapons or high-capacity magazines. He claimed gun ownership is a “God-given right.” That is not just wrong — it is stupid.

God did not hand out AR-15s on Mount Sinai. Christians around the world manage to worship without military rifles in their pews. They aren’t slaughtered in church because their governments aren’t stupid enough to allow civilians to stockpile weapons of war. Here in America, we are not so lucky.

In August, a gunman opened fire during Mass at Annunciation Catholic Church and School in Minneapolis, killing two children and injuring 28 others, many of whom were our family friends. Annunciation is my church. Three of my children attended school there. Our congregation will never be the same. The shooter used an AR-15-style rifle.

More recently, in Grand Blanc, Mich., a man stormed into a church with an assault rifle, killed four people, wounded eight and set the building on fire. These massacres weren’t carried out with hunting rifles or handguns. They were made exponentially deadlier by the stupid availability of assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.

This is the central stupidity of America’s gun debate: We know that assault weapons and oversized magazines make mass shootings more lethal, and yet politicians like Rep. Roach pretend banning them would accomplish nothing. That is stupid denial in the face of dead children.

Now, let’s talk about kids. I am a pediatric oncologist who has spent the past 30 years trying to find new cures for children suffering from cancer. We have been successful, and the lives of many beautiful children have been saved. Now firearms are the leading cause of death in American children and teens. Not cancer, not car crashes, not playground accidents. Guns. More than 3,000 young people die each year from firearms.

By contrast, hardly any children in the U.S. die from measles or pertussis or polio, because we had the good sense to require vaccines. If we applied the same stupid logic used to defend assault rifles, we’d say: “Screw vaccines, let diseases rip through kids,” while defending AR-15s as sacred. That’s not just policy failure — that’s stupidity.

And, no, banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines does not mean banning all guns. That is another stupid lie, peddled by the NRA and repeated by politicians who care more about campaign contributions than about dead children. Millions of Americans, many of whom are my friends and family members, hunt with shotguns and deer rifles. Millions own handguns for self-defense. None of that changes if we eliminate battlefield weapons from our neighborhoods. What changes is the number of funerals after a single trigger pull.

So let’s call this what it is. It is stupid to call assault rifles “God-given.” It is stupid to insist that civilians need 30-round magazines to defend themselves. It is stupid to ignore the clear evidence that banning these weapons saves lives. And it is very, very stupid to keep sacrificing children on the altar of the AR-15.

Minnesota deserves better than stupid excuses from stupid politicians who put high-capacity magazines above human life. The choice is simple: Ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, or keep explaining to grieving parents why “freedom” mattered more than their child’s heartbeat.