Inside the context of what a church should do to benefit humanity in the here and now, in addition to creating a highway to heaven for God’s children, comes a controversial problem/matter that too often arises on both counts.

The question: What should The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints do about a most serious problem of our time? Should it speak out in specific ways, counseling the world to a better end, giving voice to a higher path to happiness, safety, peace and nonviolence? Should it “think celestial” on a hot topic or should church leaders avoid it because it is too contentious, instead letting it be, simply mourning and praying?

Should they do what they can to limit gun violence by throwing their weight behind laws that control guns?

The short answer: Yes, they should.

I figure a religion that cares enough about the good of individual souls and a whole society of souls to endorse strictures that bar behaviors such as use of tobacco and alcohol and illicit drugs, as well as coffee and tea, because they can harm body, mind and spirit might provide divine detailed guidance regarding firearms and the damage they do.

I’m not sure how many souls are lost or how much eternal progression is blocked annually on account of drinking too much Starbucks Iced Double Espresso Vanilla, but I do know that, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in the United States alone in 2023, nearly 47,000 people died of gun-related injuries. In 2024, the number was about 41,000.

It’s hard to figure how many tears were shed, how much extended hurt and heartache were felt over that span by family and friends at the bad end of a pointed gun, but it was far too many. Most of those fatalities came via murder or suicide. Gun laws vary from state to state, and what the church is to make of being headquartered in Utah, where gun laws are relaxed, allowing many people to buy and own AR-15 assault rifles and a majority of residents over 21 to pack loaded concealed handguns in public without requiring them to pass a background check, get training or a permit, is, well, not fully known since the church has no official policy on guns — other than to say firearms are banned from meetinghouses and temples unless they are carried by law enforcement officers.

There are other exceptions to lawfully carrying a gun openly or otherwise in some areas, such as airports, but those are exactly that — exceptions.

Do we live in the Wild West? In Dodge City or Deadwood? Should Utahns be legally walking around with rifles on the street? Residents can’t even lawfully walk the streets or the sidewalks with an open container of beer. A Colt Python, yes, but a Budweiser, no?

The Second Amendment debate

The intent here isn’t to go through all the details of every gun law, and, indeed, it’s understood that the Second Amendment reads: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”

Interpretations of that amendment have been scoured, hashed and rehashed, regarding what a well-regulated militia is and what kind of arms should be enabled to be kept and borne. Certainly the Founding Fathers had no idea about the destructive nature of some firearms that would be developed a couple of centuries past their time of black powder and musketry. Those interpretations, then, are varied, depending on the degree of one’s abhorrence at so much gun violence plaguing the United States, especially compared to other countries, and one’s allegiance to gun manufacturers and associations. Some people are all-in on one end, wanting to do away with guns completely, or all-in on the other, claiming it’s not the guns that kill people, it’s the sickos who pull the trigger. That is problematic, but so is the conflict for those who find themselves fogged over somewhere in the middle of the debate.

That’s why it would be useful for Latter-day Saint leaders who testify they are led by the hand and mind of God to pipe in on the topic. The country, the world, needs divine guidance on this subject, much more than it needs to know if it’s OK to skip church meetings on Sunday or permissible to pop the top on an adult beverage now and again.

What church leaders have said

Shortly after Russell Nelson was named president of the church in 2018, while speaking to a church gathering in Las Vegas, he criticized loose U.S. laws that “allow guns to go to people who shouldn’t have them.”

Nelson said he lamented the shooting deaths at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. “I know your hearts are heavy, as are [wife] Wendy’s and mine, as we contemplate those ruthless killings in Florida last week,” he said. “I think of Alaina Petty, a 14-year-old Latter-day Saint whose life was snuffed out by that sniper’s bullet. It’s natural for you and others to say: How could God allow things like that to happen? Well, God allows us to have our agency, and men have passed laws that allow guns to go to people who shouldn’t have them.”

Still, the church has taken no official public stance on gun legislation.

Apostle Jeffrey Holland some five years ago pleaded in a General Conference sermon for a better world to be built: “May we hope for schools where students are taught, not terrified that they will be shot.”

Still, no official statement came from the church after a 2022 school shooting in Uvalde, Texas.

Fellow apostle David Bednar did tell a group in Washington, “We mourn with those who mourn and pray for all those impacted by this senseless act of violence. My prayer and my blessing is that we will be guided, comforted and helped in our important work, and that victims, families and nations might be granted the peace that surpasses all understanding — the peace that comes from Jesus Christ.”

Question is: Is grieving with those who grieve and praying for them enough?

Granted, if top Latter-day Saint leaders forcefully weighed in on the issue, there would be a price to pay, there would be faithful followers who would rather a Book of Mormon be pried from their cold, dead fingers than their Glock 19 or their Mossberg 590.

Speak up, speak out

But, as they like to say in the church, truth is not relative. It’s there to be dispensed to the masses by the properly appointed and anointed. What is the celestial way to think about guns? We know what politicians think, especially those whose campaigns are greatly benefited by the National Rifle Association. But what does the church think? More importantly, what does God think?

That leadership isn’t shy or short on telling the devout members what kind of undergarments to wear. Tell the same, then, what they should think and do about the guns they and others bear.

From that point, it would be up to the faithful, if the greater church were told, to follow the Prince of Peace or, say, the peaceable Book of Mormon example of the Anti-Nephi-Lehies, who buried their weapons of war and never retrieved them because they didn’t want to shed blood and offend God, to decide whether they would tread the celestial path to high heaven with the family members they love, without their good friends, Smith & Wesson, at their side.

Maybe that sort of direction would be extreme, and few actually want the church to issue even more restrictions in their daily living. But it most certainly would do the poor souls here in the terrestrial realm some good to get guidance in finding a better, holier option on guns and gun control than the awful and too often deadly mess that reigns now.

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