Which Gun Would Jesus Own?
I came across the writing of Doug Giles for the first time today, in the form of his article, God and Glocks: Why Churches Should Not be Gun Free Zones. Though I can’t say I agree with much of his assessment throughout the article, I can understand why his frustration would lead him to say,
I think if Jesus were placed in a similar situation as the New Life Church security guard, he would whip out his Glock and double tap the center mass of any wannabe killer who was attempting to put a bullet in one of his defenseless disciples.
I think one of his readers, who goes by “Born to Farm” has the Christian–and I think Humanist–message better. He responds by saying
I just can’t see Christ pulling out his Glock and filling the guy with lead. I could possibly see Christ taking the guy down with a body block while taking a bullet meant for someone else. Kinda like what he did on the cross.
Now I’m not a religious believer, so what would Jesus do isn’t the first thing I think of in my everyday life. But I am a bit curious to know, in Doug Giles’ little world, exactly how and why did Jesus–and the kid who turned into a deranged killer–get the Glocks? What purpose does giving anyone who wants a gun, guns whose sole purpose is killing people? Where are the laws that are supposed to protect the rights of gun owners but not allow this insane sort of tragedy happen?
Slate has a cartoon by Clay Jones showing the NRA view about places you shouldn’t go without a gun. Do we really want a society where everywhere you go, you need a gun? I think as Humanists we have to help draw the line about gun control and not give in to the hate filled message of ‘kill those who would kill you.’ Other countries have found ways to work to end gun violence, why aren’t we?
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I agree with you. I do not oppose gun ownership in principle, but I believe more stringent regulation is urgent. The unreasonable positions of the NRA are absolutely mind-boggling.
Nobody seems to be interested in discussing the fundamentalist upbringing and the anger it can cause. I understand that anger; I don’t understand the use of the gun on the people. Killing other people won’t solve the problem of not learning certain rational decision making skills that are needed to survive in our society. The person who talks about killing other people to avenge that kind of anger needs intervened with for their own good and the good of others. These situations keep happening and the people close to the perpetrator either don’t see a problem or don’t care to be involved. The fundamentalist churches don’t realize that there is a big world outside of their doors and their god doesn’t always provide the needed answers. I can remember a medical situation in my life when I needed some financial help and instead of being directed to an agency that was able to provide that help, the financial counselor said she would pray for me. Her prayers cost me six weeks of pain and suffering. That was at a public hospital with Catholic auspices. Knowledge is the key to survival in our modern world, not prayer.
I’ve been called cold hearted for taking the shooters side in a killing and I believe nothing justifies killing another. In the town I grew up in, a college town they made all freshmen stay in the dorms. Some of the “bigger kids” started tormenting a younger smaller student. He cracked and took a shotgun to his tormenters. The school admitted not doing anything when he reported his troubles to his RA.
I said what did you expect you let people torture someone, but all anyone in my town could see was a crazy degenerate who shot two fine boys.
I used the word degenerate above because I don’t think he went to kill people who were tormenting him. He was probably sick and there were probably signs. And I am wrong to call him a degenerate. He had family and was someone’s child. Someone is grieving for him as well as those people he killed.
So I must apologize for calling the killer in this story a degenerate and I agree with Kent that we need to do something to stop the continued cycle of killings. Just calling the killers crazies or degenerates will not solve this problem. We must all be part of the solution.
I am a gun owner, and I’m considering investing the $300 to get my conceal carry license. I have yet to understand how taking guns away from law abiding citizens will make us safer when criminals can still get illegal guns. (I used to be an NRA member until I saw how they spent my dues…sending me annual renewal “reminders” 9 out of the 12 months I was a member!).
But this is just my personal opinion and what makes sense to me…it is not the “official Christian view”! I do NOT believe Jesus would “double tap” the guy…I also believe he ‘may’ have tackled him while most likely taking a bullet meant for somebody else. As a Christian, I’m still trying to balance this with my current, personal belief that I would not hesitate to shoot somebody who is threating my family, friends or church.
I didn’t really intend to argue gun control…I just could not let such a stupid statement go unchallenged. If Doug Giles chooses to express his personal opinion that is fine…I just wish he would state it as such instead of make Christians and the name of Christ look so silly. If that is how Jesus would respond, how would Mr. Giles explain Christian martyrs throughout history?
“I have yet to understand how taking guns away from law abiding citizens will make us safer when criminals can still get illegal guns.”
I certainly understand this sentiment, however, I believe it is (rationally) one-sided. For the sake of brevity, I will pose 3 ideas:
First, people are not born “criminals,” nor do most who end up killing another person spend hours planning their crime. Rather, “law abiding citizens,” like you and me, end up responding to what is deemed a significant threat with whatever means we have available. When that “means” is a gun, the typical outcome is the loss of a human life. I simply do not think it’s worth it.
At this point, I’m sure the following thought has grazed your mind: “what if the criminal has a gun?” My response to this will also address the latter part of the quoted statement (about criminals getting guns illegally). While there is certainly, and most likely always will be, an illegal flow of guns into America, the majority of people who possess guns “illegally” acquire them by purchasing them from thieves who stole the guns from legal owners. Thus, by eliminating (or at least reducing) “legal” gun ownership in the United States, it stands that “illegal” ownership would decrease, naturally.
Last, and most certainly not least… the act of acquiring a gun, particularly when done for the sake of “protection,” indicates a rather significant degree of fear, as well as the acceptance that, in some cases, violence is the answer. My dream is to live in a world where violence is not even considered, a “humanistic” world, if you will. It saddens me that “the right to bear arms” has come to mean, for many, “the right to take another’s life, even if they’re only stealing your neighbor’s shit.”
Hope my ideas were clear. Take good care!
On Law & Order: SVU one time, Benson confronted Stabler about his vengeful behavior in a particular case, asking him if it wasn’t in conflict with his Catholicism. Stabler’s response: “Jesus was perfect. I’m not.”
If more Christians would admit that their behaviors and predilections were their own, instead of twisting scripture around to fit their preconceived notions, I would have a lot more respect for the religion’s modern practitioners as a whole.
It’s the reason I enjoy listening to old gospel & classic country songs. In those days, people were much more honest about the Saturday night/Sunday morning relationship with God. They knew what Jesus would do, but they didn’t do it. And they felt bad about it and sang about it. They didn’t get it twisted so that suddenly God sanctioned their behavior.
Contrast that to Alan Jackson or any of these turdblossoms who find some way, any way to make mass killing the imperative of a righteous, Christian nation. It’s beyond disgusting.
I’m not inclined to lump all Christians in with the idiots, any more than I’d want to be lumped in with Madeline Murray O’Hair. But wingnut media is driving the Christer bus more than it should these days, and it makes me nervous.
Guns do have a purpose, and it is not to facilitate crime or to kill people. It is to allow the common people of a society to have some degree of defense from oppression by their rulers.
Evey tyrant in history has tried to maintain power by preventing the people from being armed while building up the power of the armed forces (whether police, the military, palace guard, CIA, FBI, etc.) under government control.
A society in which people live in freedom is a society in which the common people have the means to defend themselves, while the power of the state is relatively weak. When the reverse is the case, a strong government highly armed ruling over a weakened people with no power to resist their government, the usual outcome is government despotism in one form or another.
It is desirable therefore for the common people to be free to possess arms, and that the existence and whereabouts of these guns should not be known to the government. That government will then be less confident in attempting to assert illegal control over the people.
Widespread distribution of unregistered guns throughout the civilian population is a barrier to the ambitions of would-be-dictators.
General Gage of the British occupation forces understood full well that in order to subjugate the citizens of Massachusetts he would have to impose gun control on the colonists. His expedition to Concord Bridge was a gun control mission. The Americans understood full well and said “no” to that King George gun control effort.
Who knows what the future holds? We are more likely to maintain our freedoms when all governments tempted to try to take them away, know that there is at least some degree of resistance possible.
I oppose gun control because I have faith in the common people more than in the institution of government.
You don’t need to own a gun. You don’t need to use a gun. What matters is that the political leaders of your society must never know what ability you may have to resist them.
“I oppose gun control because I have faith in the common people more than in the institution of government.”
America is so bloddy violent, your pointed is muted by the facts.
“America is so bloddy violent, your pointed is muted by the facts.”
Really?
I have lived and worked for extended periods in England, Canada and Australia as well as in the United States. I have not observed that America is any more violent than other societies.
Of course, America has more use of guns. But England is where I learned about what criminals can do with knives and razor blades.
Each society has its own problems. The US is just the powerful sibling that makes a visible easy target for criticism. And of all societies it is arguably the most open in disclosing and discussing its defects.
Here in California there is a lethal threat of drownings in backyard swimming pools, a hazard noticeably absent from the pages of the Fleet Street tabloids.
But how many children die in California from contact with the third rail on train tracks? Ah. It’s zero. We don’t have any third rail train systems. In England, it seems to happen a lot, and I don’t just mean reports in the papers - I have been on trains delayed because of a fatality on the route. Shall we criticize England for its railway violence?
Australia has deadly wildlife unknown to Europeans and Americans. In Sydney, they warn you to be careful if you sit on the lawn at home. “Funnel web” spiders live underground and are attracted to the surface by the heat of your body. They will bite you and their bite can kill. As for the beaches, at Bondi I saw the police patrol overhead in helicopters watching for sharks. On the Great Barrier Reef, Steve Irwin was killed when he stepped on a fish with a dagger-like tail that sweeps inward to stab you.
I have greatly enjoyed travel in Mexico’s deserts and mountains, in spite of hearing the coyotes howl at night, chasing scorpions out of my tent, killing rattlesnakes, and knowing that there really are murderous *banditos* out there in the *cañons*. Fear of violence could have deprived me of immense pleasure. I prefer to live warily but not in fear.
America is a vast sprawling country, and indeed there is risk in your vulnerability when you roam far from protection of law and remote from medical aid. The same is true in Russia, Mexico, and Australia. This isn’t Sussex, folks. But I doubt whether America is any more or less violent than other societies with comparable conditions. Or more violent than the densely populated ones like England, either. And nobody in Mexico or California was forced to endure the Blitz.
People who risk life in a wilderness often seem to love it - read Jack London’s “Call of the Wild.” I don’t think he would have found England as attractive as Alaska and Canada’s Northwest Territories, dangerous though they may be. Life is a “thin soup” indeed when you evaluate unknown others in terms of their violence as perceived by outsiders.
Does it strike anyone as alarming that a church would feel driven to employ armed security in the first place? What has been going on at that place to make them so nervous (as well as drive someone to kill people there)?
I don’t blame them for hiring security. There’ve been fairly regular church shootings all over the country for a number of years now, including one not far from me. Sadly, the churches often unleash their own Frankensteins upon themselves. Sometimes the shooter is someone who was already messed up, then got the Jebus, and got even more messed up, and then took it out on those they perceived as messing them up.
In school, malls, churches, wherever, you never really know which person’s gonna snap and when. If I ran a church, you bet I’d have security in house. Same as a bar, just different spirits.
I am surprised no one commented on the idea that Jesus Christ, the son of god and supposedly bestowed by his father with the ability to perform miracles. Would Jesus, who walked on water, turned water into wine, raised Lazarus from the dead and fed the multitudes with three fish and a loaf of bread really need a gun to do his work? If jesus were bestowed with the powers to perform miracles wouldn’t he be more likely to turn the bullets into dust or something harmless like that?
Seems to me that this example of WWJD is outright ridiculous…as usual.