They say that guns don't kill people.

Guns don't kill people . . . the children of paranoid bigots--misguided, emotionally ill but obscenely well-armed, coming of age in a country with 89 guns for every 100 civilians--kill people.  The citizens of a nation that cuts funding to the poor, the lost, the suffering, the mentally ill while spending billions to kill innocents overseas--they have proven to be--again and again--the ones who kill people.  We devour more resources than any society ever has, but we are bankrupt.  Rapacious greed dressed up as "economic growth" and "job creation."  Hatred passed off as "protecting traditional values."  Our most vocal "followers of Christ" advocating the opposite of what Christ preached--tossing aside Christ's call to serve the weak and the poor and replacing it with insular sub-literate nationalism and self-righteousness served up in churches that look like malls.  We are bankrupt.  We are all beggars.

The structure that creates beggars must be restructured.

I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. n the one hand we are called to play the good Samaritan on life's roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

MLK Jr.  from "A Time to Break Silence."  1967 speech at the Riverside Baptist Church

Matthew 25

The Judgment of the Nations
31	¶ When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, Mt. 16.27 then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory: Mt. 19.28
32	and before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats:
33	and he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.
34	Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:
35	for I was ahungered, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in:
36	naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.
37	Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee ahungered, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink?
38	When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothedthee?
39	Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?
40	And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
41	Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels:
42	for I was ahungered, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink:
43	I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not.
44	Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee ahungered, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee?
45	Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.