Southern Baptists have long been held to be among the most politically conservative Christians in the nation. While many religious denominations seem to be rolling left, it looked like Southern Baptists weren’t interested in doing the same.

And yet, it now seems that the head of a commission within the organization and other Baptist leaders have come out in favor of gun control.

The head of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission and 12 other Baptist leaders and pastors in Tennessee have urged state lawmakers to take action to help prevent further gun violence after last month’s shooting at a Nashville Christian school.

In a letter earlier this month, as the legislative session wound down, ERLC President Brent Leatherwood, the father of three children who survived the Covenant School shooting, called the mass shooting the “worst school shooting” in the state’s history. Three students and three staff members were killed by a trans-identified shooter on March 27.

The letter, addressed to Lt. Gov. Randy McNally, House Speaker Cameron Sexton and members of the Tennessee legislature, urged lawmakers to back Gov. Bill Lee’s proposal to enact an “Order of Protection” law that would prevent unstable individuals who may hurt themselves or others from acquiring firearms. Lee says that should be done in a way that would require due process and a high burden of proof.

The Christian Post received a copy of Leatherwood’s letter by an ERLC press secretary.

“What he outlined is a thoughtful approach to ensure we respect the constitutional rights of citizens while also helping to protect potential victims from dangerous individuals,” Leatherwood, who began serving as the ERLC president in September 2021, wrote.

Now, let’s understand that Lee’s proposal is better than your typical red flag laws, but that’s kind of like saying a literal crap-flavored popsicle is better than one flavored just the same but covered in COVID.

Better is relative.

One key point is that while Lee’s proposal is better on the due process front, it still doesn’t address the fact that a dangerous person is still walking around free as day with no effort to get them any psychological help. While they might not be able to carry out a mass shooting–and I’m not convinced that’s necessarily true–there are still a ton of awful ways they can kill a lot of people.

Oklahoma City and Nice, France both saw horrendous tragedies and neither involved the use of a firearm.

And Lee’s proposal won’t address that.

What both these church leaders and Gov. Lee have to understand is that they’ve fallen into the trap that guns are the problem and if you remove those, you remove the threat. That’s not exactly true, as I’ve already noted.

I’m sorry, but this is just gun control no matter how you slice it. Just because it’s a slightly more palatable form of gun control doesn’t mean it’s not still a bad idea.

We have procedures and laws in place that could get dangerous people the help they need and prevent them from killing innocent people. The problem is too many people pretend they don’t exist and blame guns for the issue when the common denominator isn’t firearms, but people.