The NRA and religious response

IMAG0374

No one is coming for anyone’s guns.

All that is being asked is that background checks become a little more strict, and rifles whose only purpose is to kill large amounts of people at any one time not be so readily available to the general public.

If you are hunting, you don’t want to kill the prey with so many bullets that there is nothing left to take home. If you need a gun or rifle to protect your home, you certainly want one that will take out an intruder without strafing the neighborhood and endangering your neighbors.

But it is not just about guns.

The hate speech that people use to make people scapegoats for personal, political, or financial gain has consequences.

We can zoom in on Islam and claim that their beliefs motivate people to harm others, but I have been around long enough and have lived in enough places to notice that, while there are whole cable networks with religious programming that often promotes hate with misrepresentations of the targeted group, and politicians  often justify their own ideas as inspirations from God and their proposed legislation merely what God has told them to do, I see this coming from only one religion, having yet to see  a cable channel whose whole content is based on Islam, or politicians who push Sharia law in state legislatures regardless of what the religious networks and politicians want to get us to believe.

Two examples with as much weight as the obscure Imams politicians and religious leaders seek out and  hold up as the voice of Islam would be:

James Dobson, a conservative Christian leader, who has suggested that those who object to transgender women’s presence in women’s restrooms should shoot them.

“If you are a married man with any gumption, surely you will defend your wife’s privacy and security in restroom facilities. If this had happened 100 years ago, someone might have been shot. Where is today’s manhood? God help us!”,

and  Pastor Steven Anderson who celebrated the deaths in Orlando by saying that there are now “50 less pedophiles” in the world, and that people shouldn’t get too concerned because it was only “a bunch of… disgusting homosexuals at a gay bar, okay?”

“Now let me just be real clear: I’ve never advocated for violence. I don’t believe in, you know, taking the law into our own hands. I would never go in and shoot up a gay bar — so-called. I don’t believe it’s right for us to just be a vigilante… But I will say this: The Bible says that homosexuals should be put to death, in Leviticus 20:13,”

The United States was founded on the belief that all men are created equal and are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

These are not the only rights, but three among many.

And in the First Amendment we are guaranteed the right to assemble.
It is so annoying to robertrobb.com levitra no prescription hear the incessant shouting in the streets, restaurants and any other places without any regard for other people. He, the physician, can suggest for the most part nothing beats generic levitra “the release.”Just saying it relieves tension. Causes for Erectile Dysfunction: Numbers of causes play online viagra mastercard a crucial role.The Ayurvedic treatment of MS is gone for treating the essential pathology of the illness, decreasing the quantity of assaults, enhancing recuperation from assaults, stopping or backing off the ailment’s movement, and treating resistant brokenness. Furthermore it also increases the male stamina and libido and reinvigorates the sexual senses. cheap viagra tablet professional also helps improve the quality of orgasms in men.
But there is emphasis on the Second Amendment and those of a smaller number than the whole population who exercise their right to bear arms and are encouraged by their religious leaders to use them on undesirables as opposed to the whole population of the country based on equal rights and the right to assemble.

The trope is that the right to bear arms is important, or it wouldn’t have been in the Second Amendment, but further down the list.

But the right to assemble comes in the first, and trumps it.

And what  were the victims in the Gay bar in Orlando doing when someone who should not have gotten one shot them with an assault rifle?

They were exercising their God given rights to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness among friends with whom they had assembled.

But what was the first reaction of the gun crowd, and by “gun crowd” I don’t mean reasonable gun owners, but the NRA  sheep?

“They will be coming for our guns”.

Perhaps a better response, beyond some weak Christian sympathy, would be to see what they can suggest and perhaps encourage that will allow them to keep their guns while having responsible practices that will help avoid harm to their fellow citizens.

On Monday there was an increase in guns sales, the most popular item being the AR-15.

On Sunday some religious leaders in the United States praised the death of 50 innocent people as a good thing, and to distract us from this abomination of thought, we were told that a newspaper in Turkey praised the action too.

An apparent lapse in American exceptionalism.

 

 

 

Leave a Reply