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Posts Tagged ‘Gun Control’

Joe Biden presumes to lecture his political opponents at what is supposed to be a memorial service in Buffalo, NY, on 5/17/2022. Photo Andrew Harnik, AP.

Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man.

  • Genesis 9:6

No sooner had the terrible news of yesterday’s mass shooting in Buffalo, NY broken than the usual crowd was out on social and legacy media pushing the usual illogical arguments. 

 When I say illogical argument, allow me to provide a few examples.

First up on our list is the tweet from noted Jesuit James Martin (you know he’s a Jesuit by the “SJ” listed after his name, SJ standing for “Society of Jesus). Martin calls for prayers, “for the 10 victims of the racist, white nationalist, terrorist shootings.”  Christians, of course, are not called to pray for the dead.  But this is a teaching of the Roman Church-State. 

Martin then goes on to call, “for an end of gun violence, through stricter gun control laws.”  This an example of the erroneous approach to criminal justice known as “crime prevention.”  The idea is that you regulate – that is, you punish – everyone in advance in hopes of preventing some future criminal action.  An extreme form of this unbiblical approach to criminal justice was depicted in the dystopian science fiction movie Minority Report based on a short story by Philip K. Dick.  In that movie, a Department of PreCrime would arrest people for crimes that they supposedly were going to commit based upon visions of the future by individuals known as pre-cogs.

But Scripture does not countenance crime prevention.  The Scriptural approach to criminal justice is crime punishment, and idea which Martin, at least in part, rejects.  In a 2020 article in America Magazine (America is a publication of the Jesuits), Martin approvingly wrote of Pope Francis decision to change the Church’s teaching on capital punishment.  According to Martin, in his encyclical “Fratelli Tutti,” Jesuit Pope Francis “placed the full weight of his teaching authority behind this statement: The death penalty is inadmissible, and Catholics should work for its abolition.”  Put differently, Pope Francis, James Martin, and the Roman Catholic Church-State (RCCS) generally have committed themselves to subverting justice in all the nations of the world. 

Perhaps one motive for the Catholic Church’s desire to subvert criminal justice is the horrifying numbers of murders that historians have laid at the feet of Rome.  Scholars have attributed differing numbers of murders to Rome.  One of the more conservative figures this author has seen is found in John Dowling’s book The History of Romanism.  Writes Dowling, “From the birth of Popery in 606, to the present time, it is estimated by careful and credible historians, that more than Fifty Millions of the human family, have been slaughtered for the crime of heresy by popish persecutors, and average of more than forth thousand religious murders for every year of the existence of Popery” (541-42).

So while on one hand Martin attempts to short-circuit Biblical justice that calls for executing murders, on the other hand, he seeks to punish all Americans by taking away their God-given, Second Amendment guaranteed right to keep and bear arms.  That’s very Jesuitical of him indeed.  And Marin is hardly the only Jesuit of this opinion.  Podcaster Christopher Pinot has discussed on his podcast how the Jesuits have advocated banning even handguns such as 9mm pistols.  It seems that their goal is to strip Americans of all their firearms.  Now why would they want to do that. 

Martin denounces “the evils of white nationalism, white supremacy, and the sin of racism,” but does not tell us what he means by these terms.  Perhaps he defines them elsewhere.  I don’t know.  But given the sloppy way such terms as “white nationalism,” “white supremacy” and “racism” used, given the social justice bent of Martin’s tweet and of the Jesuits generally, and given the Jesuit practice of mental reservation, he may mean something very different by these terms than do his readers. 

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Ohio senatorial candidate J.D. Vance shared tweeted out this screen shot from a recent NBC News broadcast. It would seem that if you question the liberty destroying Covid protocols demanded by the Democrats or think the 2020 presidential election was stolen, the Department of Homeland Security thinks you just may be a terror threat.

I will call upon the LORD, who is worthy to be praised: so shall I be saved from mine enemies.

  • Psalm 18:3

“America is under sustained attack,” wrote Arizona Congressman Paul Gosar in a recent tweet.

In what way? you may ask. 

The Rep. Gosar went on to site a few examples.  “America is under sustained attack on its sovereignty with open borders, against its culture by race hustlers, against our public fisc [fisc meaning state treasury], and against our political/medical dissidents with a capricious legal system.”

The Congressman is right on all counts. 

Worth noting is that Rep. Gosar’s tweet was in response to a tweet by Ronna McDaniel, Chairwoman of the Republican National Committee who had tweeted out “The Republican Party stands with the people of Cuba fighting for freedom!” 

Rep. Gosar finished his tweet writing, “For the love of everything holy Cuba can wait.  Help America First.

Again, Paul Gosar is right on target. 

The Democrats have openly become the party of treason and tyranny, while the Republicans uselessly tweet out about the goings on in other countries while ignoring the fire in our own house.

To borrow a turn of phrase from Isaiah, our cites are burned with fire (Antifa and BLM riots) while strangers devour our land before our face (Biden’s treasonous open borders polity, what some migrants call “la invitación”), yet all the Republican leadership can do is tweet out about demonstrations in Cuba.  Apart from a few individuals – Sen. Rand Paul, Rep. Thomas Massie, the afore mentioned Rep. Paul Gosar and some others – very few Republicans have taken any kind of public stand against the deliberate destruction of the United States of America by the treasonous, lying, illegitimate Biden regime, the Democratic Party, and Deep State technocrats such as the Jesuit Anthony Fauci. 

America is under sustained attack to a degree and in a way that I personally have never witnessed.  And I’d be less than honest with you were I to say that I’ve been unfazed by it.  I’ve found myself alternately furious, despairing, and even scared.

In mid-August 2021, Americans are faced, not only with some of the items already mentioned, but by vaccine mandates, vaccine passports, renewed mask requirements and possible lockdowns, not to mention a War On Domestic Terror which is threatening to criminalize political opinions at odds with the ruling elite’s preferred narrative

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El Paso

A couple console each other near an El Paso Walmart where a mass shooting occurred Saturday.  Photo: Ivan Pierre Aguirre for The Texas Tribune

Mass shootings. What are Christians to make of them? But before we answer this question, perhaps we should sharpen the question a bit, asking instead, What are American Christians to make of them?

The obvious motive for my writing on this subject is the report from El Paso, TX, where another mass shooting has left many dead and injured, not to mention many other traumatized by the sinful violence of the event.

If that weren’t enough, I woke up this morning to hear of another mass shooting, this time in nearby Dayton, OH which reportedly has left 9 dead.

Oddly enough, both these shootings in far apart places – Dayton and El Paso are over 1,500 miles apart – both have a personal connection to me. El Paso is the home of several friends of mine from ThornCrown Ministries, while I personally know a man who currently serves as an officer on the Dayton police force. My friends are all safe, but clearly there are many people in both places who have suffered great loss.

The response from the news media and other Second Amendment foes is predictable: Guns are the problem and must be more strictly regulated. The ultimate goal of these people seems to be the complete disarmament of the American people.

As Christians, what are we to say to this? Certainly, in the wake of such tragedies it is tempting to go along with the anti-gun rhetoric. But we must ask, What does the Bible say about the right of private citizens to bear arms? Does Scripture prohibit private citizens from owning weapons, or does it support their doing so?

Another question related to this is what does the Bible say about criminal justice? Does the Bible call for crime punishment or crime prevention? How we answer these questions will serve to guide us as we evaluate the statements we see in the news concerning the El Paso and Dayton shootings.

The short answer to the first question is, yes, the Bible allows for private citizens to own weapons. To the second question, we answer that the Bible calls, not for crime prevention, but for crime punishment.

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MFOL_Hogg

Student leader David Hogg speaks at the March For Our Lives rally in Washington D.C., March 24, 2018.

They came, the saw, they marched. On Saturday, March 24 2018 approximately 200,000 people filled the streets of Washington D.C. to call on Congress to pass anti-gun legislation which the marchers claim is the only solution to solving the problem of school shootings / mass shootings in the US.

On their website, the marchers list three demands: 1) A ban on the sale of assault weapons, 2) A prohibition on the sale of high-capacity magazines, and 3) Requiring background checks to ensure dangerous people can’t buy guns. Let’s look at them.

According to March For Our Lives (MFOL), “Our elected officials MUST ACT by,” in the first place, “Passing a law to ban the sale of assault weapons like the ones used in Las Vegas, Orlando, Sutherland Springs, Aurora, Sandy Hook and, most recently, to kill 17 innocent people and injure more than a dozen others at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.” We are told that “No civilian should be able to access these weapons or war.”

This statement is propaganda. The problem is its central term, “assault rifle,” is never defined, yet we’re told they are “weapons of war” to which civilians should not have access.

But the rifles that were used in the various mass shooting are not “weapons of war.” That is to say, they are not machine guns or the sort used by soldiers in combat. Here, I’m talking about guns such as the Vietnam era M16 or the more recent M4. These are fully automatic rifles, what are often referred to as “machine guns,” which are designed to fire multiple rounds with a single trigger pull.

The AR-15s used in the mass shootings listed on the MFOL website were semi-automatic rifles, not fully automatic. This is not to say that the AR-15 – and just to be clear the “AR” in AR-15 does not stand for “assault rifle,” it stands for Armalite Rifle, the name of the company that developed the particular style of rifle in the 1950s – but they are not “weapons of war” as the MFOL website claims. By calling the AR-15 a “weapon of war,” MFOL is attempting to confuse the public to advance their political agenda. In other words, they’re propagandists.

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Parkland_02

Mourners look at a memorial for the victims of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, in a park in Parkland, Florida on February 16, 2018. A former student, Nikolas Cruz, opened fire at the Florida high school leaving 17 people dead and 15 injured. / AFP PHOTO / RHONA WISE

In light of the well-organized, well-funded, and unprecedented attacks on the Second Amendment and on its supporters in recent days, it seemed good to me to set down a few inconvenient truths relating to the right to bear arms and the causes of mass shootings

First, as the old saying goes, “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” An article in the Huffington Post from last fall called this argument tired, logic-deficient, obvious and irrelevant, but it is nothing of the sort.

True, the argument has been around for a while. I remember it being used back in the day when I was a kid, but that doesn’t make it tired. In fact, it may be one of the most important truths to bring up in any discussion about the Second Amendment.

Guns are inanimate objects. They have now will of their own, no moral agency. In themselves, they are neither good nor evil. Guns are tools as are hammers, baseball bats and pickup trucks. And just as hammers, baseball bats and pickup trucks can be used for both good and evil, so too can guns.

Neither good nor evil reside in the gun, they reside in the heart of the person using the gun.

The Huffpo calls this point obvious. But is it? It’s fair to say that it should be obvious, but given the rush to restrict or outright ban gun ownership by certain groups following the school shooting in Parkland, FL, I’m not so sure it is.

If it were obvious, it should be equally obvious that stripping citizens of their right to bear arms is not the proper response to mass shootings. Yet the gun grabbers have never been more shrill in their demands to limit, or completely eliminate, Americans’ Constitutionally guaranteed right to own guns.

“There ought to be a law to banning ‘X’ to ensure that ‘Y’ never happens again,” on the other hand, really is a tired response to tragedy, but that doesn’t stop people from making the argument.

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Ever notice that when something really bad happens, let’s call it “X,” the first reflex of many politicians is to demand new legislation “to prevent X from even happening again!”

Our gal Hillary C. is among the greatest champions of this hustle. Just yesterday she tweeted,

Sigh. I do grow weary of this nonsense. In the first place, she actually has the breathtaking gall to call for everyone to put aside politics, while in the very same sentence making a patently political call to action. Does she really think no one notices this?

Second, at bottom her call for further gun regulation is really an expression of an unbiblical view of criminal justice.

You see, there are really only two basic approaches to criminal justice: crime punishment and crime prevention.

Crime punishment, the biblical approach, punishes the criminal, and the criminal only, for his wrongdoing. On the other hand, crime prevention seeks to regulate – that is to say, seeks to punish – everyone in the hope of preventing future wrong doing by a few.

Crime prevention is inherently unfair. Not only does it punish the innocent along with the guilty, but it also requires an enormous, expensive, and freedom crushing regulatory state to implement.

Ought there to be more gun laws? No. Such laws do little or nothing to prevent crime, but they do make it harder for deplorables everywhere to purchase and use firearms. But then, that’s really been Hillary’s agenda all along, has it not?


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