Christians and Guns

[boatsnguitars]

Every day, 321 people are shot in the United States. Among those:
111 people are shot and killed
210 survive gunshot injuries
95 are intentionally shot by someone else and survive
42 are murdered
65 die from gun suicide
10 survive an attempted gun suicide
1 is killed unintentionally
90 are shot unintentionally and survive
1 is killed by legal intervention*
4 are shot by legal intervention and survive
1 died but the intent was unknown
12 are shot and survive but the intent was unknown

DAILY GUN VIOLENCE IMPACTING CHILDREN AND TEENS (1-17)
Every day, 22 children and teens (1-17) are shot in the United States. Among those:
5 die from gun violence
3 are murdered
17 children and teens survive gunshot injuries
8 are intentionally shot by someone else and survive
2 children and teens either die from gun suicide or survive an attempted gun suicide
8 children and teens are unintentionally shot in instances of family fire — a shooting involving an improperly stored or misused gun found in the home resulting in injury or death

ANNUAL GUN VIOLENCE IMPACTING PEOPLE OF ALL AGES IN THE U.S.
Every year, 117,345 people are shot. Among those:
40,620 people die from gun violence
15,343 are murdered
76,725 people survive gunshot injuries
34,566 are intentionally shot by someone else and survive
23,891 die from gun suicide
3,554 survive an attempted gun suicide
492 killed unintentionally
547 are killed by legal intervention
1,376 are shot by legal intervention and survive
347 die but the intent was unknown
4,471 are shot and survive but the intent is unknown
547 women are killed by their husband or male dating partner**

ANNUAL GUN VIOLENCE IMPACTING CHILDREN AND TEENS (AGES 1-17)
Every year, 7,957 children and teens are shot in the United States. Among those:
1839 children and teens die from gun violence
992 are murdered
6,294 children and teens survive gunshot injuries
2,788 are intentionally shot by someone else and survive
693 die from gun suicide
166 survive an attempted gun suicide
10 are killed by legal intervention
101 are shot by legal intervention and survive
99 are killed unintentionally
2,893 are shot unintentionally and survive
38 die but the intent was unknown
380 are and survive shot but the intent is unknown



WWJD? Nothing?

[boatsnguitars]

The Myth of the ‘Good Guy With a Gun’ Has Religious Roots
June 23, 2022
By Peter Manseau

Is our gun problem a God problem?

The AR-15-style rifle used in the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, last month was made by an arms manufacturer that regards selling weapons as part of its Christian mission. In a state where Gov. Greg Abbott declared, six months after an earlier massacre, “The problem is not guns; it’s hearts without God,” the gun’s provenance challenged pious suggestions that declining religiosity might bear some of the blame.

Daniel Defense, the Georgia company whose gun enabled the slaughter at Robb Elementary School, presents its corporate identity in explicitly religious terms. At the time of the shooting, the company’s social media presence included an image of a toddler with a rifle in his lap above the text of Proverbs 22:6 (“Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it”). For Easter, it posted a photograph of a gun and a cross resting on scriptural passages recounting the Resurrection.

Its weapons have now been found at the scenes of two mass shootings — Uvalde and Las Vegas — that left a total of 81 people dead.

While some might suggest a Christian firearms company is a contradiction in terms, Daniel Defense is hardly alone. According to a Public Religion Research Institute study, evangelicals have a higher rate of gun ownership than other religious groups. Across the country, they account for a significant share not only of the demand but of the supply.

In Florida, Spike’s Tactical (“the finest AR-15s on the planet”) makes a line of Crusader weapons adorned with a quote from the Psalms. Missouri-based CMMG (“the leading manufacturer of AR15 rifles, components and small parts”) advertises its employees’ “commitment to meet each and every morning to pray for God’s wisdom in managing the enormous responsibility that comes with this business.” And in Colorado, Cornerstone Arms explains that it is so named because “Jesus Christ is the cornerstone of our business, our family and our lives” and the “Second Amendment to our Constitution is the cornerstone of the freedom we enjoy as American citizens.”

For many American Christians, Jesus, guns and the Constitution are stitched together as durably as a Kevlar vest.

“We are in business, we believe, to be a supporter of the Gospel,” Daniel Defense’s founder, Marty Daniel, told Breitbart News in 2017. “And, therefore, a supporter of the Second Amendment.”

Entwining faith and firearms this way has a long history. It encompasses the so-called muscular Christianity movement that began in England in the 19th century with a focus on physical fitness as a path to spiritual strength and that in America made exemplars of pastors roaming the frontier armed with Bibles and six-shooters.

More than a hundred years ago, this trope was already so well established that a popular silent western from 1912, “The Two Gun Sermon,” told the story of a minister assigned to a rough-and-tumble outpost; when ruffians menace him, he holds them at gunpoint until they listen to him preach. The film’s message is one with which 21st-century Christian gun enthusiasts would probably agree: Sometimes guns are necessary for the Lord’s work.

It is easy to miss, but this melding of evangelism and the right to bear arms is a step beyond the “natural rights” argument for gun ownership, which holds that self-defense is a law of nature required to protect life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. These rights are often said to be God-given in the sense of being taken for granted, and they are enshrined as such in the Declaration of Independence. As interpreted by many evangelicals, the distant deistic “creator” Thomas Jefferson credited with endowing such rights has become a specific, biblical deity who apparently takes an active interest in the availability of assault rifles.

Why does this subtle shift in the meaning of “God given” matter? It’s important to understand that for the manufacturer of the Uvalde killer’s rifle, and many others in the business, selling weapons is at once a patriotic and a religious act. For those who hold them to be sacred in this way, the meaning of firearms proceeds from their place at the intersection of American and Christian identities. Proposing limits on what kinds of guns they should be able to buy — or how, when, where and why they can carry them — is akin to proposing limits on who they are and what they should revere.

To be sure, there are gun owners for whom a gun is just a gun. But many of our fellow citizens don’t just own guns, they believe in them. They believe the stories told about guns’ power, their necessity, their righteousness.

We can see the implications of this even in ostensibly nonreligious aspects of our current gun debate, which are influenced by theological assumptions in surprising ways. The insistence that guns are used constantly and successfully for self-defense and protecting the community found its most infamous expression in the wake of the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, when the National Rifle Association’s Wayne LaPierre said, “The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”

Since then, despite being debunked by data showing that firearms are more likely to injure their owners or their owners’ families than safeguard them, the protection offered by good guys with guns has emerged as an article of faith, supported with anecdotal evidence passed around like legends of the saints.

One of the most repeated of these tales recounts the story of a man who truly did halt a mass shooting, albeit only after 26 people were dead. On Nov. 5, 2017, when a gunman attacked the First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs, Texas, a soft-spoken plumber and former firearms instructor named Stephen Willeford shot him with his AR-15. Contributing to the N.R.A.’s effort to spread the Gospel of the Good Guy With a Gun, Mr. Willeford spoke to the group’s Leadership Forum six months later.

“We are the people that stand between the people that would do evil to our neighbors,” he told the assembled gun owners. “I responded for what God told me to do. The Holy Spirit took care of me. … Each one of you would have done the same thing.” Invoking the name of Jesus, he added, “What happened in Sutherland Springs was all him and it’s his glory.”

As the thunderous applause that greeted this testimony made clear, gun culture is largely Christian culture. To imagine yourself as a Good Guy With a Gun, as Mr. Willeford invited N.R.A. members to do, may inspire action-movie day dreams, but it is ultimately a religious vision of a world in which good and evil are at war, where God and firepower make all the difference.

The Good Guy With a Gun is a religious myth so powerful it has begun to transform the tradition that bore it. When Representative Lauren Boebert recently quipped, “A lot of the little Twitter trolls, they like to say ‘Oh, Jesus didn’t need an AR-15. How many AR-15s do you think Jesus would have had?’ Well, he didn’t have enough to keep his government from killing him,” it was a joke meant to deride and dismiss charges of hypocrisy against followers of a man sometimes called the Prince of Peace arming themselves to the hilt. Yet it was also a view into a fascinating religious development currently underway, one shaped by an understanding that bullets could have prevented the sacrifice at the heart of the Christian faith.

It would be a mistake to paint the connection between firearms and religiosity with too broad a brush. The evangelical influence on the sale, use and marketing of firearms in the United States does not mean Christianity is at fault for the recent spate of shootings. After all, in Buffalo, in Uvalde, in Tulsa, and this month at a church supper in Vestavia Hills, Ala., Christians have been among the victims. Christian clergy members have rushed to every scene to comfort the survivors. Friends and families have gathered at Christian funerals to mourn the dead.

As the historian Daniel K. Williams has noted, “Gun rights advocacy is not an intrinsic feature of every brand of evangelicalism.” While recent surveys find that four in 10 white evangelicals own guns, the majority do not, and other denominational affiliations offer examples of religious participation discouraging a fixation on firearms. It is possible that the less one sees oneself as an itinerant loner in a hostile world, like the armed preacher in a silent western, the less one is likely to look to guns as a source of salvation.

Nonetheless, the ways Christian ideas may be contributing to a gun culture that abets our epidemic of mass shootings by helping to keep the nation well armed should inspire reflection. None of the recent mass shootings had explicitly religious motivations, but the religious contexts of our seemingly eternal problem with gun violence — its history, its theology, its myths — are too important to ignore.

Mass shootings are, in a way, assaults on the idea of community itself. They occur where there are people gathered — for entertainment, for learning, for shopping, for worship — in the spaces we create together. Some believe that such attacks are the fault of armed individuals alone and can be addressed only through armed individual response. Others believe they occur within the framework of what we collectively allow and must have communal solutions.

That these two positions each have beliefs at their core is one reason our disagreements over guns remain so intractable. We are arguing not just over policy or public health, bans or background checks. Without quite realizing it, we are also arguing over the theologian Paul Tillich’s definition of faith: a matter of “ultimate concern.”

But, as the article points out - it's mostly Christians killing Christians, so maybe I shouldn't care as much?

[boatsnguitars]

School Shootings Confirm That Guns Are the Religion of the Right
BY SAMUEL L. PERRY MAY 25, 2022 12:05 PM EDT

Perry (@profsamperry) is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Oklahoma. He is among the nation’s leading experts on conservative Christianity in American politics, race, sexuality, and families. His most recent books include the award-winning Taking America Back for God (with Andrew Whitehead) and The Flag and the Cross (with Philip Gorski).

Sometimes calls for America to return to God are couched in the language of consolation. Especially after a mass shooting. When 19 children were killed at school in Uvalde, Texas on Tuesday, U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert, a Republican from Colorado, tweeted that “It is in times like these that we should, as individuals, communities, and as a nation, turn to God for comfort and healing.” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia followed deflection — “Our nation needs to take a serious look at the state of mental health today” – with denial: “We don’t need more gun control We need to return to God.”

There’s a reason we always hear calls for Christian nationalism rather than for common sense gun legislation from the right. As we have shown in our research, guns are practically an element of worship in the church of white Christian nationalism. Gun rights thus must be defended at all costs.

Along with “thoughts and prayers”—a response so hollow it has become a meme for contempt — Christian nationalist calls like Greene’s are often accompanied by warnings not to “politicize the deaths,” as worship leader and MAGA advocate Sean Feucht put it in his own tweet: “We need to call on God. We need him back in schools. We need him to heal our country. He is our only hope.” Evangelical Christian and Lieutenant Gov. of Texas Dan Patrick went on the Tucker Carlson show hours after the massacre to say “We gotta unify in prayer. We have to unify in faith…This was a country founded on faith, Tucker. And that’s why together we have to come together as a people. Don’t politicize it. Don’t point fingers.”

It’s a Christian nationalist mantra because political action after a mass shooting might well imperil unlimited access to guns. My colleague and I conducted a representative survey of over 1,600 Americans in February 2020. We found that among white Americans who strongly agreed that “The federal government should declare the United States a Christian nation,” over two-thirds rejected the idea that “The federal government should enact stricter gun laws.” Those laws had the support of over 55% of Americans in general.

Why is Christian nationalism opposed to stricter gun laws? Religions generally regard sacred objects as untouchable. And within the religion of white Christian nationalism, guns are as much a part of our identity as Christianity. Wednesday morning, Rep. Brian Babin, a Texas Republican, told a Newsmax interviewer “The United States of America has always had guns. It’s our history. We were built on the Judeo-Christian foundation and with guns.”

And because guns are essential to America’s core identity for the right, gun rights are held sacred above every other right. That’s not hyperbole. We conducted another representative survey of over 1,000 Americans in August 2021, giving respondents a list of rights provided in the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution – the Bill of Rights. Among whites who said America should be a Christian nation, more than 4 in 10 named the right to keep and bear arms as the most important right. Not freedom of speech. Not even freedom of religion. Gun rights.

In fact, some on the Christian Right would enthusiastically put gun rights over the right to vote itself. Christian right provocateur Matt Walsh tweeted just after a mass shooting in Boulder, Colorado that killed 10 people in March of last year, “Gun ownership is a more important right than voting. Voting is not really a human right at all but a privilege that should be reserved for those who are qualified to do it properly. It should be easier to buy a gun than vote.”

There is a logic at work here. As we show in our recent book The Flag and the Cross, white Christian nationalism is ultimately about controlling who gets access to cultural and political power, and thus is fundamentally anti-democratic. Access to guns is about protecting the freedoms of white conservatives to suppress disorder. This is why, among white Americans who believe the United States should be a Christian nation, 82% believe “The best way to stop bad guys with guns is to have good guys with guns.” The goal isn’t to rid the world of gun violence. The goal is to suppress “bad guy violence” with righteous violence—our violence. And that requires guns.

In the wake devastating school shootings like Uvalde, research shows politicians have a window of about three days to act. The efforts of President Biden and Congressional Democrats to pass common sense gun legislation—which is supported by the majority of Americans—will face dogged opposition not only in the form of Republican obstinacy. Beneath that, opposition will come from the religious zeal of the right that hallows guns and holds as sacred white Americans’ unfettered access to them.

What’s needed is a coalition of American politicians and citizens—secular and religious—who value the protection of innocent human life above power. Without that, the ritual will continue: Horrific deaths, followed by thoughts and prayers, calls to return to God, and no change.

Note the part in red. That's exactly what Wootah tried to do: politicize the tragedy by telling people not to politicize the tragedy.

[Wootah]

I literally sarcastically showed how you were committing a fallacy and you doubled down on it.

To be fair everyone can only see the speck in their brothers eye and not the log in their own eye.

[oldbadger]

This has been America's record year for mass shootings, we hear in the UK.

But I don't think that there will be any changes in gun laws across the USA,.

[Wootah]

This has been America's record year for mass shootings, we hear in the UK.

But I don't think that there will be any changes in gun laws across the USA,.

Give it 200 years and watch what happens to at least 3 countries where the population don't have guns.

[oldbadger]

This has been America's record year for mass shootings, we hear in the UK.

But I don't think that there will be any changes in gun laws across the USA,.

Give it 200 years and watch what happens to at least 3 countries where the population don't have guns.

You'll need to look back, no chance for you to look forward.

Why do some people dream about killing their own country's soldiers or citizens? That seems to be the case in parts of America.

But gun laws will not change on the USA.

[Clownboat]

You'll need to look back, no chance for you to look forward.

Would this count?:
"Mao's first act after gaining complete control of China in 1949 was to take away all guns from the population. It was a policy he began in 1935 as he took over each rural province. Anyone found with a gun post-confiscation was executed."

Why do some people dream about killing their own country's soldiers or citizens? That seems to be the case in parts of America.

Is there any chance that you are the one dreaming about why gun owners choose to be gun owners? You're too intelligent (I think) to actually think that normal Americans dream about killing their own soldiers and citizens. So I'm left wondering why you make this illogical emotional argument about why gun owners are gun owners in parts of America.

But gun laws will not change on the USA.

What is going to stop the changes that are happening?
These are the gun control laws passed in 2022
https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/30/us/gun-c ... index.html

Why do you think that your first sentence about looking back was the only correct one in this reply? Surely your outlook on humans that live in America is not as bad as you make it seem, or is it? I understand that you likely don't follow gun control laws passed in America, so I can understand that slip, but dreaming of killing their own soldiers and citizens... Surely you don't actually think this?!?

[oldbadger]

You'll need to look back, no chance for you to look forward.

Would this count?:
"Mao's first act after gaining complete control of China in 1949 was to take away all guns from the population. It was a policy he began in 1935 as he took over each rural province. Anyone found with a gun post-confiscation was executed."
[/q
uote]
So just as I have also written Mao was looking forwards, not backwards. You need to look forwards.

Why do some people dream about killing their own country's soldiers or citizens? That seems to be the case in parts of America.

Is there any chance that you are the one dreaming about why gun owners choose to be gun owners? You're too intelligent (I think) to actually think that normal Americans dream about killing their own soldiers and citizens. So I'm left wondering why you make this illogical emotional argument about why gun owners are gun owners in parts of America.

You need to take more notice of your media, which often reports situations where US citizens insist that their guns are necessary in case they should need to make a stand against their authorities, government etc.

But gun laws will not change on the USA.

What is going to stop the changes that are happening?
These are the gun control laws passed in 2022
https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/30/us/gun-c ... index.html [/quote]
Nothing there..... Not one law which could could and actually show in print on s post.

Why do you think that your first sentence about looking back was the only correct one in this reply? Surely your outlook on humans that live in America is not as bad as you make it seem, or is it? I understand that you likely don't follow gun control laws passed in America, so I can understand that slip, but dreaming of killing their own soldiers and citizens... Surely you don't actually think this?!?

So you didn't know that there is talk about civil war if the next election doesn't suit some people?

I have seen a report on BBC that some church pastors have been handing out body armour to excited congregations.

There are more guns in the USA than humans, and mostly anybody can obtain a gun, and before you try to tell me about criminal conviction bars etc may I remind you that there are some gun fairs and many districts which really don't bother with such laws.

Even machine guns are available of you've got enough cash .........

[Clownboat]

You need to take more notice of your media, which often reports situations where US citizens insist that their guns are necessary in case they should need to make a stand against their authorities, government etc.

You have moved the goal posts and perhaps should watch less media.
First your claim was that some Americans dream about killing their own countries soldiers and citizens. You have now changed your claim to be one of having the ability to stand against authorities.
Surely care about being credible?

Nothing there..... Not one law which could could and actually show in print on s post.

Perhaps you will try this sentence again? It's nonsensical currently.

So you didn't know that there is talk about civil war if the next election doesn't suit some people?

You think you can impress me with 'talk'? Talk is cheap. Surely you know this, but I believe your agenda is anti gun and you have shown that you will move the goal posts and make emotional arguments (dream of killing) to fit your anti gun narrative. So if the talk fits, like there will be civil war, I expect you to take it as fact because it's something you want to believe.

I have seen a report on BBC that some church pastors have been handing out body armour to excited congregations.

Do you honestly think this is a common occurrence worth discussing? That churches are handing out body armor? Or is it just talk that fits your narrative? I ask because no Christians I know have been offered any body armor nor are they talking about killing their fellow citizens nor having a civil war.

There are more guns in the USA than humans, and mostly anybody can obtain a gun, and before you try to tell me about criminal conviction bars etc may I remind you that there are some gun fairs and many districts which really don't bother with such laws.

This sentence is accurate. What is your point besides that you really hate guns?

Even machine guns are available of you've got enough cash .........

Thank you for making another accurate statement. Is there a question for me?

[oldbadger]

You have moved the goal posts and perhaps should watch less media.
First your claim was that some Americans dream about killing their own countries soldiers and citizens. You have now changed your claim to be one of having the ability to stand against authorities.
Surely care about being credible?

Ha ha! Now which nationality do you think all your authorities might have?
Italian? Greek?
Oh dear........they are Americans!

You think you can impress me with 'talk'?

Well I sure can't impress you with facts.

Do you honestly think this is a common occurrence worth discussing? That churches are handing out body armor? Or is it just talk that fits your narrative? I ask because no Christians I know have been offered any body armor nor are they talking about killing their fellow citizens nor having a civil war.

Well you can't be impressed with talk, you tell is. Maybe you should take more interest in what's being reported?

This sentence is accurate. What is your point besides that you really hate guns?

Comprehension much?
Now where have I said that I hate guns?
I may know more about them than you think, as well.

Thank you for making another accurate statement. Is there a question for me?

No need. You have already shown me that you know very little about the situation on the USA about guns.