Religious School---People Killed

[Gene Scarborough]

The news has been ablaze with the senseless killings in Oakland:

http://www.cnn.com/2012/04/02/us/california-shooting/index.html?hpt=hp_t3

The article on CNN came from Monday. By today the story is being clarified. The man gave up without a fight and is now under investigation. It is likely it will end in a mental illness defense, but much time is ahead.

The facts indicate he had been dismissed from the school run by very conservative religious people and available to Korean-Americans in Oakland. Nothing yet on exactly why he was dismissed. His intent was to kill the Administrator, but he ended up in a classroom and shot people execution style.

There are 2 important questions we might discuss:

(1) How do such things happen in a conservative Christian setting?
(2) Are guns too available these days?

We will all watch as the story unfolds, but why could it not have happened in the first place

Here is a description of the school and Korean Christian outlook:

"There is a saying that when Koreans get together in the United States, they establish churches first," says Park, who is Korean-American. "Some other Asians are more concerned with businesses or finances, but Koreans care about religion and about Christianity."

The school's focus on Oriental medicine, including classes on acupuncture and herbal medicine, speaks to the Koreans' holistic outlook on life, blending Eastern approaches to health and medicine with Western religion, even mixing Christianity with Korea's shamanistic traditions, Park says.

"Koreans are very much interested in healing, faith healing, medical healing, spiritual healing... there is a oneness," he says.

Oikos University, which takes its name from the Greek word for "house," espouses a literal view of the Bible, which the school's site describes as "infallibly and uniquely authoritative and free from error of any sort in all matters."

The site promotes "the literal existence of Adam and Eve as the progenitors of all people, the literal fall and resultant divine curse on the creation, the worldwide cataclysmic deluge, and the origin of nations and languages at the tower of Babel."

"We believe the realities of heaven and hell," the site says.

[Timothy Bonney]

(1) How do such things happen in a conservative Christian setting?
(2) Are guns too available these days?

Question 1 makes no sense to me. What does "a conservative Christian setting" have to do with a nut case?

As to question 2, Yes, guns are too available.

[ET]

Thank you, Tim, for your answer to Gene's first question.

As for question 2, I'll borrow a 2000 year old comment:

“Quemadmoeum gladuis neminem occidit, occidentis telum est.” (A sword is never a killer, it is a tool in the killer’s hands.) -- Lucius Annaeus Seneca, circa 45 AD

Such incidents with guns are a symptom of the moral rot in America and the failure of the Church and Christians to be salt and light and to transform the culture instead of being transformed by it.

Paul Craig Roberts pretty much nailed it when commenting about the liberal focus on guns instead of behavior:

"We need to ask ourselves why liberals have made gun confiscation such a priority. I think it is to distract us from the disastrous results of liberal social engineering. When high-school students shoot their classmates and workers open fire on their co-workers, the fault lies not in guns. It lies in the breakdown in self-control and moral integrity. The irrational shootings are due to the success of liberals in achieving their goals."

No, it is not an "availability of guns problem". It's a moral problem. Some older folks here can probably relate stories of taking hunting rifles to school in their cars and hitting the woods after class dismissed. Antonin Scalia relates a story of taking his .22 rifle on the NYC subway when he was growing up and people thinking nothing about it. Firearms used to be available through the Sears or Montgomery Ward catalog. I've even seen a catalog ad from the 1920s or 30s for a fully automatic, Thompson sub-machinegun. Ah, the good ole days!

The problem is not that guns are too available. It's that people are too willing to use them to settle arguments because they have been taught over the last 50 or so years that "God is dead" or that morals are relative or that human life is disposable and we Christians have not done much to effectively change that thinking. The moral constraints which previously regulated people's behavior have now been largely removed by those who wish to supplant Judeo-Christian values with those of their own origin.

God is not mocked. That which a man sows, he shall also reap and government is powerless to stop it.

[Gene Scarborough]

I like the reasonable discussion thus far!

I disagree with Timothy that the basis of a conservative Christian school is behaviour somewhat close to that of Christ. We can always have pretenders, but not as much as we seem to have them today----SO---why so much pretense???

For ET---I am a hunter and deadly shot. I do not want my guns restricted from me due to crazies using them for crazy. The problem, in my view, is military grade automatic weapons whose only purpose is to provide an arsinal to an individual.

The real problem is in towns and cities where drug gangs outgun the police. An Uzzie is hardly made for hunting and has no place in anyone's hands except the Military or Police.

What would you guys offer as a solution?

[Neil Heath]

The problem is not that guns are too available. It's that people are too willing to use them to settle arguments because they have been taught over the last 50 or so years that "God is dead" or that morals are relative or that human life is disposable and we Christians have not done much to effectively change that thinking. The moral constraints which previously regulated people's behavior have now been largely removed by those who wish to supplant Judeo-Christian values with those of their own origin.

God is not mocked. That which a man sows, he shall also reap and government is powerless to stop it.

Three comments:
- How often has there been a culture where Christian faith fully shaped people's thinking? Looking at the broad sweep of history, most of it is full of less-than-Christian behavior by most cultures.

- If something like 80% of people in this country claim to be people of the Christian faith, the chances are certainly in our favor to affect the culture. Perhaps there's a problem with our being willing to try...

- Perhaps ET is resorting to hyperbole in the paragraph above, or perhaps he's suggesting that Christians (by far the majority of our population) no longer have moral constraints, believe morals are relative, that God is dead, etc.

[Timothy Bonney]

I like the reasonable discussion thus far!

I disagree with Timothy that the basis of a conservative Christian school is behaviour somewhat close to that of Christ.

Really? As a progressive Christian I take umbrage to that. Jesus wasn't a conservative. Why should his follows be?

[Timothy Bonney]

What would you guys offer as a solution?

My solution is outlaw handguns and anything that is too similar to an assault weapon. And don't allow automatic weapons of any kind with a clip that can allow someone to fire over and over and over again without having to reload. You don't need semi-automatic weapons or hand guns to go deer hunting. They are made for killing people.

[ET]

Three comments:
- How often has there been a culture where Christian faith fully shaped people's thinking? Looking at the broad sweep of history, most of it is full of less-than-Christian behavior by most cultures.

- If something like 80% of people in this country claim to be people of the Christian faith, the chances are certainly in our favor to affect the culture. Perhaps there's a problem with our being willing to try...

- Perhaps ET is resorting to hyperbole in the paragraph above, or perhaps he's suggesting that Christians (by far the majority of our population) no longer have moral constraints, believe morals are relative, that God is dead, etc.

No, I am not suggesting that Christians no longer have moral constraints, but I do think those moral constraints are following the world's lead instead of being contrarian. I'm thinking here more along the terms of a "cultural Christianity" where the prevailing attitudes and mores of the population are generally guided by Christian values. No, there's probably never been a time in history when Christian faith fully shaped people's thinking, but at least since the Reformation it has had a large influence on Western culture, which can be seen to be lessening particularly over the last half century. Now I believe it is obvious that the Christian influence is waning and Christians are becoming more like the culture instead of standing out in contrast to it.

One of my favorite actresses, Ingrid Bergman, was run out of the country for over a decade due to an adulterous affair and a child by her lover. Society used to frown upon sin -- at least in public. Now it glorifies it and finds someone like Tim Tebow and his views about chastity and monogamy a novelty. Sadly, the more common theme is that I can easily come across articles or questions in the Christian world where young people are asking about "how far is too far" regarding sex, with all sorts of word games to justify almost anything up to intercourse as "not being sex".

Yes, America is still highly influenced in many areas by Christian attitudes about various things, but I do not see the overall trend in thinking being one that calls Christians to a higher standard than the world around them. However, now we seem to be moving more towards "In those days there was no king in Israel; every man did that which was right in his own eyes".

If anything, I would think it should be Christians that realize that mass shootings are indicative of a moral problem in society and not attempt to blame the availability of an inanimate object for such carnage. Those are just my observations and thoughts, as I perceive them.

[ET]

For ET---I am a hunter and deadly shot. I do not want my guns restricted from me due to crazies using them for crazy. The problem, in my view, is military grade automatic weapons whose only purpose is to provide an arsinal to an individual.

The real problem is in towns and cities where drug gangs outgun the police. An Uzzie is hardly made for hunting and has no place in anyone's hands except the Military or Police.

What would you guys offer as a solution?

Gene...you're showing your age, dude....an Uzi??? That's soooo 1980-ish. However, you are correct in your statement that the law-abiding should not have their rights and liberties determined by the lawless.

Also, automatic weapons, by which you probably mean full-auto, are highly regulated and it takes some serious effort and money to LEGALLY acquire the appropriate Class III firearms license to own ANY such weapons. I have zero concern for people who go through the bureaucratic rectal exam and months-long waiting period required to own them, but those are not the people in question.

With SWAT teams and such these days, there are few instances where gangs can outgun police. I really don't think that's an issue these days and never really was. More media hype than anything else.

Lastly, owning a firearm should have nothing to do with whether a firearm is suitable for hunting. Most handguns are not suitable, nor designed, for hunting, and the ones that are, well, the anti-gun folks get rather worked up over those due to their large caliber.

But even without firearms, this guy could have found another way to create the destruction he sought if he had not had access to a firearm. The gun was just the delivery method for his anger. His lack of respect for human life has nothing to do with guns.

What would you guys offer as a solution?

My solution is outlaw handguns and anything that is too similar to an assault weapon. And don't allow automatic weapons of any kind with a clip that can allow someone to fire over and over and over again without having to reload. You don't need semi-automatic weapons or hand guns to go deer hunting. They are made for killing people.

Your "solution", Tim, comes with a mighty high price tag. When things go bump in the night, your handgun ban would leave us all largely defenseless to cower in the corner, fiddle with our phones, and subject everyone to the good graces of those who might do us harm. As the saying goes, "When seconds count, the police are only minutes away." No thank you. (For a number of reasons, hunting firearms do not make practical home defense weapons, although that's not to say they can't be implemented for such purposes.)

Besides the fact that semi-automatic deer rifles have been around for 70 something years and people do use handguns for deer hunting (check your state's deer hunting regulations...Tennessee allows handgun deer hunting), your statement on "automatic weapons of any kind with a clip that can allow someone to fire over and over and over" is more geared for an emotional argument than one based in the real-world. Walk into a Bass Pro or other outdoor shop looking for a deer rifle and you'll readily find ones out there that look like the M4 some G.I. in Iraq or Afghanistan used. It's probably camo instead of black and most likely will be available in a range of calibers and probably will come with a 5 round magazine instead of a 20 or 30, but in almost every other aspect it looks like an "assualt weapon", even though it is not one. Remington offers two such examples (R15 and R25) right along with their traditional semi-auto 750 and famous bolt action 700 rifles.

Then there's the issue of one person or group of persons becoming the arbiter of deciding what another person needs. Each of us could probably come up with a nice list of what we think others do not "need" and therefore could be regulated in some manner and we would think society better off if we could force everyone else to live within those limits.

But all of this is like taking issue with GM and Ford for 40,000 deaths a year from driving, with half of those being alcohol-related. Yet no one calls for restricting the law-abiding from possessing automobiles or alcohol.

[Timothy Bonney]

Your "solution", Tim, comes with a mighty high price tag. When things go bump in the night, your handgun ban would leave us all largely defenseless to cower in the corner, fiddle with our phones, and subject everyone to the good graces of those who might do us harm. As the saying goes, "When seconds count, the police are only minutes away." No thank you. (For a number of reasons, hunting firearms do not make practical home defense weapons, although that's not to say they can't be implemented for such purposes.)

The the last stats I saw show that people are more likely to get injured with their own gun or injure a loved one than they are to keep out an intruder with a hand gun. I don't see how a shotgun in your hand makes for an impractical defense weapon unless you are wanting to be Rambo.

We make it far to easy in this country for nut jobs to buy very dangerous weapons which allow for the killing of dozens of people. No one needs the capability to gun down a campus to protect their own home.

[Haruo]

The the last stats I saw show that people are more likely to get injured with their own gun or injure a loved one than they are to keep out an intruder with a hand gun. I don't see how a shotgun in your hand makes for an impractical defense weapon unless you are wanting to be Rambo.

I saw a sign on the side of a bus yesterday stating if you have a gun in your home it is 22x more likely to kill a member of the household than an intruder (at least I think that's how it was worded). Anybody know the source of such a stat? If true I would think it would be a strong deterrent to gun possession. There may have been fine print I didn't read (maybe a footnote about "unlocked", and maybe it really said "shoot" or "injure" rather than "kill". But anyhow...

[Gene Scarborough]

Guns have been a part of American society from the frontier days. It was important when we were camping in the woods, but in urban areas the wild animals seem to be drug and crime addicts---which makes them important again.

It's not the gun that kills, but the one who is holding it.

I taught my son the importance of being careful and realizing that anything that gun points toward is a target. Our first real adventure in shooting involved me taking a water-filled milk jug and setting it on a stump. We stepped 10 steps back and I let go of my shotgun on that jug. It splattered!

Then I told my son that if it was someone's head they would be dead and it would be a mess and the one holding the gun was responsible. Nuff said!!!!!

[ET]

The the last stats I saw show that people are more likely to get injured with their own gun or injure a loved one than they are to keep out an intruder with a hand gun.

I saw a sign on the side of a bus yesterday stating if you have a gun in your home it is 22x more likely to kill a member of the household than an intruder (at least I think that's how it was worded). Anybody know the source of such a stat? If true I would think it would be a strong deterrent to gun possession. There may have been fine print I didn't read (maybe a footnote about "unlocked", and maybe it really said "shoot" or "injure" rather than "kill". But anyhow...

Those stats are probably related to the oft-quoted, infamous 1986 Kellerman study published in the New England Journal of Medicine. At least from googling "22 times more likely", it seems to be related to the Kellerman study and may just be an "adjustment" of Kellerman's original "43 times more likely" figure. If you dig into that number, you would find that the vast majority of deaths in the Kellerman study were due to suicide (333 out of 389), followed by criminal homicide in a distant second place (41 out of 389). Following Kellerman's logic, one could argue that keeping sleeping pills or razor blades in the home increases the risk of death to women, who rarely use guns to commit suicide. A lack of firearms in Japan does not prevent them from having a high suicide rate. Other points debunking the figure are that the Kellerman study was less than 400 households, made no distinction between whether the gun involved was the homeowner's or the intruder's and included a disproportionate number of households inhabited by people with previous criminal history, which one would expect to be exposed to a higher risk of death by firearm. Google...it's a wonderful thing.

Also, to provide a little context, here's a table with comparative info on accidental deaths. There's risk with everything, whether it be a swimming pool in the backyard or being a pedestrian or driving a car. As is shown in the table blow, the risk from guns is miniscule.

I don't see how a shotgun in your hand makes for an impractical defense weapon unless you are wanting to be Rambo.

A shotgun of the hunting variety can be impractical for a variety of reasons. Long barrels make them unwieldy in the confines of a house; long barrels are more easily grabbed by an assailant; women in particular may find the recoil of a 12-guage shotgun unsuitable.

Addressing my earlier statement that gun deaths are indicative of something other than their availability and are more likely a sign of cultural or other issues -- in my argument, declining moral standards of right and wrong and the value of human life -- I offer this study:
Would Banning Firearms Reduce Murder and Suicide? A Review of International Evidence, by Don B. Kates, Pacific Research Institute and Gary A. Mauser, Simon Fraser University

Abstract: The world abounds in instruments with which people can kill each other. Is the widespread availability of one of these instruments, firearms, a crucial determinant of the incidence of murder? Or do patterns of murder and/or violent crime reflect basic socio-economic and/or cultural factors to which the mere availability of one particular form of weaponry is irrelevant?

This article examines a broad range of international data that bear on two distinct but interrelated questions: first, whether widespread firearm access is an important contributing factor in murder and/or suicide, and second, whether the introduction of laws that restrict general access to firearms has been successful in reducing violent crime, homicide or suicide. Our conclusion from the available data is that suicide, murder and violent crime rates are determined by basic social, economic and/or cultural factors with the availability of any particular one of the world’s myriad deadly instrument being irrelevant.

Some notes from the study:

• Handguns are outlawed in Luxembourg, and gun ownership extremely rare, yet its murder rate is nine times greater than in Germany, which has one of the highest gun ownership rates in Europe.
• Hungary's murder rate is nearly three times higher than nearby Austria's, but Austria's gun ownership rate is over eight times higher than Hungary's.
• Norway has far and away Western Europe's highest household gun ownership rate (32%), but also its lowest murder rate.
• The Netherlands has the lowest gun ownership rate in Western Europe (1.9%), but the Dutch gun murder rate is higher than the Norwegian
• Murder in Europe was at an all-time low before the gun controls were introduced
• In the 19th and early 20th century England, there were no firearms restrictions in England and it had little violent crime; by the late 1990s, however, England moved from stringent controls to a complete ban on all handguns and many types of long guns. By the year 2000, violent crime had so increased that England and Wales had Europe's highest violent crime rate, far surpassing even the United States.
• In America, on the other hand, despite constant and substantially increasing gun ownership, the United States saw progressive and dramatic reductions in criminal violence in the 1990s.
• A survey by the British Home Office for the same time period found that while the American crime rate fell, 18 of the 25 countries suffered violent crime increases during that same period.
• While the American gun murder rate often exceeds that in other nations, the overall per capita murder rate in other nations (including other means such as strangling, stabbing, beating, etc.) is oftentimes much higher than in America.
• In 2004 the U.S. National Academy of Sciences released its evaluation from a review of 253 journal articles, 99 books, 43 government publications and some empirical research of its own. It could not identify any gun control that had reduced violent crime, suicide or gun accidents.

I will also note that in Switzerland one doesn't hear of mass shootings, yet there are some 500,000 FULLY AUTOMATIC, true assualt rifles in Swiss homes, where the government supplies and then requires men to keep their weapons at home. No school shootings. No nut jobs going on a rampage through Swiss villages.

So if availability of guns is supposedly THE primary cause for much violence in the U.S., then why do the Swiss not have the same crime issue -- they have full-auto (aka machine guns) in almost every home, yet don't have shootings like here in the U.S. that garner a political response of "too many guns", "too easily acquired"? And what of the countries that have a higher violent crime rate when their neighbors next door, with higher gun ownership rates, have lower violent crime?

If the availability of guns is shown to be a non-factor, then that leaves us with something to do with some combination of cultural, religious or economic factors. Since American survived the Great Depression without descending into criminal anarchy, I think it's more a cultural/religious values issue.

[Timothy Bonney]

It's not the gun that kills, but the one who is holding it.

I get tired of the trite "guns don't kill people, people kill people." The truth is that people couldn't kill people in such massive numbers without guns. Some guy with a knife isn't likely to kill dozens of people before he is caught like someone with a gun. Yes, the individual does the killing. But the death toll rises because the guns are available.

As Hauro and others have pointed out, guns in the home are more of a danger than a protection. Other than hunting weapons, I see no valid reason for non-law enforcement people to have guns.

We can argue all you want about the 2nd Amendment and what it means. I have two thoughts. First, the second amendment isn't holy writ, it can be changed. Second, the founding fathers weren't all knowing prophets. They couldn't have invisioned the destructive power available to human beings in the kind of weapons that are currently available.

The US is 13th in gun related deaths per 100,000. Look here for a chart of stats. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_co ... death_rate

If you look at Great Britain and Canada you'll see that we have a much higher rate of gun related deaths. Mexico's rate is only slightly higher than ours and we've heard much lately about murders in Mexico.

[Ed Pettibone]

Tim Bonney wrote in part "I get tired of the trite "guns don't kill people, people kill people." The truth is that people couldn't kill people in such massive numbers without guns. Some guy with a knife isn't likely to kill dozens of people before he is caught like someone with a gun. Yes, the individual does the killing. But the death toll rises because the guns are available."

Ed: Tim I agree that the founding fathers had no idea of the types of weapons that are available today and I believe there needs to be restrictions on automatic weapons and perhaps more stringent limits on who may have guns. But I do believe the constitutional right of citizens to bear arms is important.

Keep in mind that the greatest mass murders in the U.S. involved neither guns or knives. The World Trade Center was destroyed with two air planes and in Oklahoma City, Timothy McVeigh Used a rental truck loaded with agricultural fertilizer. Also across the country arson is the chosen method in many homicides each year. you may want to rethink your reaction to the ""guns don't kill people, people kill people" cliche.

[Timothy Bonney]

No, the statement still applies Ed. Most people don't have the where with all to create large fertilizer bombs or hijack and airplane but almost any idiot can get his hands on a gun. Here is another article that points to the tragedy of someone carrying a weapon into a restaurant and then killing his family including his ten year old daughter during the argument. If he hadn't had the gun likely less people would be dead.

http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/ ... -ohio?lite

So as you've suggested, there is nothing wrong with restricting the access to any of those weapons to the general public. As far as I'm concerned if the 2nd amendment as it is written is obsolete and needs revision. Again, it isn't holy writ.

[Ed Pettibone]

No, the statement still applies Ed. Most people don't have the where with all to create large fertilizer bombs or hijack and airplane but almost any idiot can get his hands on a gun. Here is another article that points to the tragedy of someone carrying a weapon into a restaurant and then killing his family including his ten year old daughter during the argument. If he hadn't had the gun likely less people would be dead.

http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/ ... -ohio?lite

So as you've suggested, there is nothing wrong with restricting the access to any of those weapons to the general public. As far as I'm concerned if the 2nd amendment as it is written is obsolete and needs revision. Again, it isn't holy writ.

Ed: I guess Bruce might object if I where to suggest they just close Cracker Barrels. (Flick will understand that one) But Tim, in most places one can still buy a gallon of gasoline for $4.00 or under. My point is that someone intent on killing others does not need a gun and as you pointed out, a knife is not very efficient for doing in multiple victims. I could list more examples but I do not advocate killing.

[Timothy Bonney]

Ed: I guess Bruce might object if I where to suggest they just close Cracker Barrels. (Flick will understand that one) But Tim, in most places one can still buy a gallon of gasoline for $4.00 or under. My point is that someone intent on killing others does not need a gun and as you pointed out, a knife is not very efficient for doing in multiple victims. I could list more examples but I do not advocate killing.

I know you don't advocate killing. And I know you support gun control.

My frustration is with others who act as if there is no differences between allowing people to have weapons with the power for mass murder and those who don't. The "people kill people guns don't" cliche is one of those black and white statements that doesn't take into account the much greater damage that a killer can do with a gun than without. We wouldn't say "drunk drivers kill people not cars" as an argument against controlling who can drive a car and wo can't would we?

[Gene Scarborough]

Why can't we just say: "People are sometimes crazy---and crazy with a gun it not good!"

[ET]

Well, I was going to let this one go, but a recent story makes the best rebuttal to Timothy's argument:

Other than hunting weapons, I see no valid reason for non-law enforcement people to have guns.

No valid reason, Timothy? Well, here's a most recent example: ‘I carry a gun all the time’ says woman who thwarted Macon holdup attempt. 57-year-old grandmother vs two men, ages 32 and 30.

1) What other instrument would have neutralized the threat faced by the grandmother?
2) The victim in this story states why she carries a firearm. Given her experience, what makes her reason(s) invalid?
3) What good is it to only give police firearms when they are not around when you need them and you have no time to call them?
4) What good would a hunting rifle or shotgun done for this lady within the confines of her truck?

"Laws that forbid the carrying of arms ... disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes... Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man." -- Cesare Beccaria, On Crimes and Punishment, quoted by Thomas Jefferson in Commonplace Book, 1774-1776

A great article related to the topic: "A World Without Guns: Be forewarned: It's not a pretty picture".

To imagine a world with no guns is to imagine a world in which the strong rule the weak, in which women are dominated by men, and in which minorities are easily abused or mass-murdered by majorities. Practically speaking, a firearm is the only weapon that allows a weaker person to defend himself from a larger, stronger group of attackers, and to do so at a distance. As George Orwell observed, a weapon like a rifle "gives claws to the weak."

The failure of imagination among people who yearn for a gun-free world is their naive assumption that getting rid of claws will get rid of the desire to dominate and kill. They fail to acknowledge the undeniable fact that when the weak are deprived of claws (or firearms), the strong will have access to other weapons, including sheer muscle power. A gun-free world would be much more dangerous for women, and much safer for brutes and tyrants.

There's an old saying: "God created man. Sam Colt made them equal." One of the "descendants" of Samuel Colt made a 57-year old grandmother the equal of two thugs like nothing else.

Guns exist for the very reason that society needs God and salvation through Christ: we live in a fallen, sin-plagued world where many have evil desires and many times those desires lead them to attempt to inflict harm on others. Guns and the violence often associated with them is not a problem of availability. It is an indicator of the underlying problem of living in a fallen world.

[Hal Eaton]

I'm really inspired when I read quotes from the intelligentsia in defense of allowing everyone (who so desires) to be armed with a deadly weapon at all times. (After re-reading this, I'd better add that i was being sarcastic.)

Here's Newt Gingrich, speaking to the NRA (which he describes as being "too timid"):

"A Gingrich presidency will submit to the United Nations a treaty that extends the right to bear arms as a human right for every person on the planet because every person on the planet deserves the right to defend themselves from those who would oppress them, those would exploit them, rape them or kill them."

Of course, those who would " oppress. . ., exploit, rape, or kill . . ." would be armed, too -- in every case. Try to imagine the number of shoot-outs that would occur every day under such a regime . . .

As to the problem of religious right organizations being attacked by gun-bearing fanatics, please recall the words of Voltaire: "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."

IMO (A designation seldom added to most O's.)

[ET]

I was not aware we had a "problem of religious right organizations being attacked by gun-bearing fanatics". Just who is promoting that idea or fear...or are you just making it up or being silly for the sake of argument?

[Hal Eaton]

I was suggesting that religious right organizations -- like the NRA, for instance -- and many of the religious-based militant survivalist groups in the USA -- mix their fear of being attacked with a belligerent philosophy of how-to-handle
differences of opinion.

Ed: Tell me more about your attitude toward the principle of allowing everybody to carry a deadly weapon.

Should you get laws passed to allow such gun-bearing legality, I, for one, would move elsewhere, for fear that some grandmother (ala your noted proof-text) would target me for bumping her cart in Wal-Mart.

[Ed Pettibone]

I was suggesting that religious right organizations -- like the NRA, for instance -- and many of the religious-based militant survivalist groups in the USA -- mix their fear of being attacked with a belligerent philosophy of how-to-handle
differences of opinion.

Ed: Tell me more about your attitude toward the principle of allowing everybody to carry a deadly weapon.

Should you get laws passed to allow such gun-bearing legality, I, for one, would move elsewhere, for fear that some grandmother (ala your noted proof-text) would target me for bumping her cart in Wal-Mart.

Ed P.: Hal when did the NRA become a religious organization , either right or left?

[Gene Scarborough]

Stupid question, Ed---he asked a real one and your give a cheap diversion