2nd Amendment

FBI Director Christopher Wray Getting His Arse Whooped!

Published by Papa Giorgio

Republican Louisiana Rep. Mike Johnson rattled off several scandals by the FBI to his face during a Weaponization Committee hearing Wednesday.

Matt Gaetz questions Wray on FBI Cover-up

Here is the Internet Responding to the FBI Director (and THIS IS the questioning that Rep Gaetz was talking about):

Thomas Massie: Gun purchases and Pipe Bomber

Rep. Andy Biggs: “How many agents or human resources were present at the Capitol Complex Facility on January 6th?”

TIMCAST

FBI GETS DUPED By Russians Pretending To Be Ukrainian, Fulfilled False Censorship Requests

Rep. Wesley Hunt: Biden Admin Is Targeting Conservatives!

Published by Papa Giorgio

Rep Wesly Hunt: “Under this administration conservatives are being targeted. My first example is the ATF. The ATF is targeting lawful gun owners by crafting a rule that would make 40 million Americans felons overnight.”

NRA and Black History (Don Lemon Fact-Checked)

Published by Papa Giorgio

This is with a hat-tip to:

GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy traveled over to CNN This Morning on Wednesday to discuss his campaign. During the part of the interview about his recent speech at the NRA convention, host Don Lemon told Ramaswamy that it was “insulting” he would dare to say that black Americans enjoy equal rights.

(The longer video can be watched HERE)

NEWSBUSTERS has this:

….As Ramaswamy started to explain himself, Lemon repeated himself, “Okay, but that wasn’t fought for black people to have guns. I think—”

Again, Ramaswamy started to defend himself, “black people did not get to enjoy the other freedoms until their Second Amendment rights were secured and I think that that’s one of the lessons—”

Lemon was not happy with that explanation and started to shift the conversation away from guns to about race more generally, “But black people still aren’t allowed to enjoy the freedoms.”

After Ramaswamy told Lemon he disagreed and was “doing a disservice to our country” with those remarks, Lemon essentially told Ramaswamy to shut up, “when you are in black skin and you live in this country then you can disagree with me.”

Ramaswamy then called Lemon out for trying to use race to silence his critics and argued “Black Americans… absolutely have equal rights in this country.”

Lemon replied, “I think it’s insulting to black people, it’s insulting to me as an African-American. I don’t want to sit here and argue with you because it’s infuriating for you to put those things together. It’s not right, your telling of history is wrong.”

After Ramaswamy asked what he got wrong, Lemon returned to the straw man, “you’re making people think the Civil War was fought for black people—only for black people to get guns and for black people to have—”

[RPT BREAK]

This is a common thing I have found in Left’s and Atheist’s response to things they will say that the point you are making IS THE point of the of the discussion. So in this instance Don Lemon is saying Ramaswamy is saying that the Civil War was fought [only] to secure gun rights for black Americans. That that is it.

That is a straw man.

The Civil War was fought to secure Constitutional rights for black Americans.

SEE: What Was the Civil War Over?

I am gonna take another break within the break to give another example of how deterministic the Left thinks. This comes from my many years old post that grew beyond the debate I had with a professor of history at Michigan State U. We were told over-and-over-and-over again that THE REASON we entered Iraq was for WMDs. That is a rewriting of history.

[break-in-break]

Reasons for Entering Iraq

This next portion is taken from a series I do in responding to a local writer in a small journal. The original post is entitled, “Concepts: Are We Insane? Nope, Just You Van Huizum.“

U.N Resolutions

Yet another unfounded swipe at the Iraq War. John Van Huizum lives in a bubble where if he has come to a conclusion years ago… that’s it! History forever stays right where John wants it to stay. Here is an excerpt of John’s (click to enlarge it) article shows a complete lack of history.

I doubt he think any differently about Vietnam based on his 1970’s conclusions. It wouldn’t matter that after 1990 — the fall of the Wall — 100,000 of thousands of Soviet era documents were now being translated and reviewed by military historians and good books based on MORE historical documents. Because these new documents support the traditional (and not the Left’s reasoning) for entering and fighting this proxy war of WWIII (the Cold War), this new information is rejected from the matrix of the left’s consciousness. But that is neither here-nor-there.

So, let’s deal with some of the contentions in John’s excerpted article. Firstly he notes that there were insufficient reasons for going to war.

May I remind him there were many U.N. Resolutions against Iraq that were almost all not met:

  1. UNSCR 678 – November 29, 1990
  2. UNSCR 686 – March 2, 1991
  3. UNSCR 687 – April 3, 1991
  4. UNSCR 688 – April 5, 1991
  5. UNSCR 707 – August 15, 1991
  6. UNSCR 715 – October 11, 1991
  7. UNSCR 949 – October 15, 1994
  8. UNSCR 1051 – March 27, 1996
  9. UNSCR 1060 – June 12, 1996
  10. UNSCR 1115 – June 21, 1997
  11. UNSCR 1134 – October 23, 1997
  12. UNSCR 1137 – November 12, 1997
  13. UNSCR 1154 – March 2, 1998
  14. UNSCR 1194 – September 9, 1998 (“Condemns the decision by Iraq of 5 August 1998 to suspend cooperation with” UN and IAEA inspectors, which constitutes “a totally unacceptable contravention” of its obligations under UNSCR 687, 707, 715, 1060, 1115, and 1154.)
  15. UNSCR 1205 – November 5, 1998
  16. UNSCR 1284 – December 17, 1999

….See Additional UN Security Council Statements…

Official U.N. resolutions aside, Bush went to Congress and made his case with these and many other points. One point being that Iraq was firing almost everyday on our fighter pilots in the no-fly zone. In the cease fire of the First Gulf War, this was enough — under international law — to RESUME aggression….

…read it all…

So you see, the reasons of going in were many. But the Left is so tunnel visioned that this is why they often lose in any conversation they stay in over 2-minutes.

[break-in-break over]

The War was for applying many principles of rights to and for blacks while trying to unite the country, namely freedom. And an important aspect of this is the 2nd Amendment.

The Reconstruction era was mutated under Democrats.

  • The period immediately following the Civil War (1865 -1877) is known as Reconstruction. Its promising name belies what turned out to be the greatest missed opportunity in American history. Where did we go wrong? And who was responsible? Renowned American history professor Allen Guelzo has the surprising answers in this eye-opening video.

MORE EXAMPLES

Slavery

The Third Force Act, also known as the KKK or the Civil Rights Act of 1871, empowered President Ulysses S. Grant to use the armed forces to combat those who conspired to deny equal protection of the laws and, if necessary, to suspend habeas corpus to enforce the act. Grant signed the legislation on this day in 1871. After the act’s passage, the president for the first time had the power to suppress state disorders on his own initiative and suspend the right of habeas corpus. Grant did not hesitate to use this authority. (POLITICO)

Terrorist Arm of the Democrats

The above links are from my PAGE about America’s racial history

[RPT BREAK OVER]

Later in the argument, Lemon burned a second straw man, accusing Ramaswamy of ignorning Reconstruction and the Civil Rights Movement. Ramaswamy never discounted those things, CNN even played a clip of him invoking Lyndon Johnson, but narrowing in on gun rights, Ramaswamy portrayed the NRA as a civil rights organization, “And you know how they got it? They got their Second Amendment rights, and they actually got the NRA played a big role in that, but today Don—”

Clearly not paying attention, Lemon shot back, “The NRA did not play a big role in that. That is a lie. That’s a lie. That’s not—the NRA did not play a big role in that.”

Going back again to race generally, Ramaswamy added “The part that I find insulting is when you say today, black Americans don’t have those rights after we have gone through Civil Rights Revolution in this country—”

Not happy with that, Lemon claimed it was Ramaswamy who was being insulting, “you are here sitting here telling an African-American about the rights and what you find insulting about the way I lived the skin I live in every day and I know the freedoms that black and white—that black people don’t have in this country and that black people do have.”

After Ramaswamy again called him out for trying to silence people, Lemon absurdly claimed he wasn’t, “I’m not saying you should express your views; but I think it’s insulting you’re sitting here—you’re sitting here, whatever ethnicity you are, splaining to me about what it is like to be black in America. I’m sorry.”

That led to Ramaswamy being the most agitated he got during the interview, “Whatever ethnicity I am? I’ll tell you what I am, I’m an Indian-American, I’m proud of it, but I think we should have this debate. Black, white, doesn’t matter on the content of the ideas.”

If the partisan labels on that question were reversed, it would be considered racist which is not surprising for the host who is always putting his foot in his mouth.

NRA

As for the NRA… even the modern Civil-Rights Movement were connected closely to their 2nd Amendment rights.

  • Negroes With Guns: The Untold History of Black NRA Gun Clubs and the Civil Rights Movement (LIBERTARIAN INSTITUTE)

Race, the Second Amendment and the NRA | NOIR Season 7 Episode 2

Black NRA Supporter Confronts STUPID Kids Against Guns at March for Our Lives (Full Show)

Self-Defense | Moreland and Geisler

Published by Papa Giorgio

This is a book I came across via a recent article I read. The article quoted the book [below] but I wanted to expand a bit on it. The philosophical discussion dealt with “activists” (those leaning towards corporal punishment all the time), and pacifism. The middle ground Doctors Moreland and Geisler call “selectivists.” I will emphasize the smaller quote used in a recent post:

First, in an evil world, force will always be necessary in restraining evil persons. Ideally, killings by police and military should not be necessary. But this is not an ideal world; it is an evil world. Ideally, we should not need locks on our doors or prisons. But it is simply unrealistic to presume we can get along without them in a world where thieves exist.

Second, it is evil not to resist evil. One is morally guilty for refusing to defend the morally innocent. Sometimes physical force and life taking seem to be the only effective way to accomplish this. All too often in our violent world hostages are taken and all efforts at negotiations fail. Occasionally military action may be the only way to save these innocent lives.

To permit a murder when one could have prevented it is morally wrong. To allow a rape when one could have hindered it is an evil. To watch an act of cruelty to children without trying to intervene is morally inexcusable. In brief, not resisting evil is an evil of omission, and an evil of omission can be just as evil as an evil of commission. Any man who refuses to protect his wife and children against a violent intruder fails them morally. Likewise, selectivists argue that any country that can defend its citizens against evil aggressors but does not do it is morally remiss.

J.P. Moreland and Norman L. Geisler, The Life and Death Debate: Moral Issues of Our Time (Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 1990), 134-135.

Is Gun Culture “Driven” By Christians?

Published by Papa Giorgio

For countries AND FOR soft sites like schools… the application is still the same:

Since the dawn of the atomic age, we’ve sought to reduce the risk of war by maintaining a strong deterrent and by seeking genuine arms control. “Deterrence” means simply this: making sure any adversary who thinks about attacking the United States, or our allies, or our vital interests, concludes that the risks to him outweigh any potential gains. Once he understands that, he won’t attack. We maintain the peace through our strength; weakness only invites aggression.

This strategy of deterrence has not changed. It still works. But what it takes to maintain deterrence has changed. It took one kind of military force to deter an attack when we had far more nuclear weapons than any other power; it takes another kind now that the Soviets, for example, have enough accurate and powerful nuclear weapons to destroy virtually all of our missiles on the ground. Now, this is not to say that the Soviet Union is planning to make war on us. Nor do I believe a war is inevitable — quite the contrary. But what must be recognized is that our security is based on being prepared to meet all threats.

(Address to the Nation on Defense and National Security, March 23, 1983, Ronald Reagan)

A friend posted a link to an article where a “theologian” (I assume he theologizes vs. being a professional “theologian” noted the following:

  • There are few things as quintessentially American as apple pie, the Dallas Cowboys and the possibility of being shot anywhere you go.” [….] “Christians in America are going to have to voluntarily divest themselves of weapons of war if we’re going to muster the political will to reform our systems and markets that profit from the fear and death they sell.” (America’s Gun Culture Is Driven By Christians – Here’s How To Stop School Shootings)

Just a few thoughts out loud before the quotes, links, media, and the like.

The article says Scott Baker is a theologian. I could teach theology, but wouldn’t say I am a theologian.

If your shot in Texas, is it by a regular church going Christian?

Note as well that the article gets no where close to the subtitle’s statement of stopping school shootings.

Also, I wonder which of these choices or thoughts, investing vs. divesting, were racing through the mind’s of the Christians who worked at the Presbyterian Elementary Covenant School (or even non-believers at Uvalde for that matter) thought of. Were they thinking, “gosh darn it, I am so glad I divested in my right to defend my own body and the bodies of the innocent.” [/sarcasm]

There seems to be a false dichotomy. Gun violence happens, and, it will [presumably] stop when Christians [who are law abiding and God serving] “divest themselves” of them these “weapons of war” — whatever that is?

  • …given the constitutional protection that is interpreted as a blanket right to private gun ownership, creates an environment in which no single action can solve this quandary. I know it can be done because I grew up in a world in which people smoked on airplanes and in restaurants, and now they don’t. (IBID)

Once Christians are “out of the way” then federalism can be moot and much like a federal law that stopped smoking on a plane, so to will shootings stop?

Or.

More people will be be killed like sheep.

I think the later.

Thankfully the police response at Covenant School was quick. Fourteen minutes to the scene. And a few minutes to the threat was stopped. However, if “investing” was practiced, the threat could have been neutralized in minutes.

This hope of “divesting” will happen in “no place,” or, UTOPIA.

Opining still may I say this idea of giving up a right by Nature’s God is not a Christian idea, not to mention that Christians and Jews, historically, around the world would have been in a better position in life if they were armed [I mean, actually having it – life that is].

…How many Jews the Nazis would have murdered if most European Jews had guns is impossible to know. But common sense suggests that the number would have been much lower. The Warsaw Ghetto revolt was begun with 10 old pistols and very little ammunition. Later a few hundred pistols and rifles and a few machine guns were smuggled into the ghetto. Himmler told Hitler he would quell the revolt in three days. It took four weeks. Many hundreds of German troops — perhaps a thousand — were killed or wounded.

If the Nazis knew that Jews refused to go to roundup areas and that many Jews were armed, awaiting Nazis to enter every apartment, it is difficult to imagine that the Nazi genocidal machinery would have been nearly as effective. And, vitally important, even had the number of Jews murdered been near 6 million (which I doubt), not all ways of dying are equal. There is a world of difference between being gassed or shot to death while standing naked beside the mass grave you were forced to dig and getting killed while shooting a Nazi….

(Jews and Guns [emphasis added])

Common sense seems to be missing in the article at Premier Christianity.

Take a more recent example of a divesting that was through complacently:

Or a kid who stopped a mass killing at a mall by conceal carrying. And the many other documented persons who stopped mass killing sprees – see FEE’s article on Eli, but this short video is good:

Here is how I (at the time) characterized it on my Facebook:

The mall had a “gun free zone” notice at all entrances. Glad Eli ignored that and embraced his Constitutional right.

[A friend noted this]: What a complete bad ass. Self taught. 8 hits in 10 shots at 40 yards is amazing shooting.

[My response]: He wasn’t Dicken around

NEW DETAILS

The Greenwood Park Mall shooter began firing at 5:56:48PM.

15 SECONDS LATER, at 5:57:03, 22-year-old Eli Dicken carrying under the new NRA-Backed Constitutional Carry law, fired 10 rounds from 40 yards, hitting the shooter 8 times. The shooter collapsed & died. 

(NRA)

There are many instances of this heroic action, as noted well here:

Or the research by criminologist and researcher Gary Kleck, noted here in an article by Larry Elder:

…The “common-sense” gun control activists rarely ask, “What about the beneficial effect of gun ownership?” The Centers for Disease Control examined research on the defensive uses of guns. It concluded: “Studies that directly assessed the effect of actual defensive uses of guns (i.e., incidents in which a gun was ‘used’ by the crime victim in the sense of attacking or threatening an offender) have found consistently lower injury rates among gun-using crime victims compared with victims who used other self-protective strategies.”

The CDC’s report also found that “defensive use of guns by crime victims is a common occurrence.” Exact statistics are hard to find because the police are not always notified, so the number of defensive gun uses is likely understated because they’re underreported. “Almost all national survey estimates indicate that defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals,” wrote the CDC, “with estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to more than 3 million per year, in the context of about 300,000 violent crimes involving firearms in 2008.” The CDC noted one study of defensive gun users who believe that but for their own firearm they would have been killed.

Criminologist and researcher Gary Kleck, using his own commissioned phone surveys and number extrapolation, estimates that 2.5 million Americans use guns for defensive purposes each year. One in six of that number, or 400,000, believe someone would have been dead but for their ability to resort to their defensive use of firearms. Kleck points out that if only one-tenth of the people are right about saving a life, the number of people saved annually by guns would still be 40,000.

For some perspective, consider the number of Americans who die each year because of medical errors. A 2016 Johns Hopkins study called medical error the third-leading cause of death in the United States, accounting for about 250,000 deaths annually, or 10 percent of all deaths. Other studies put the number as high as 400,000 a year or more — since medical examiners, morticians and doctors rarely put “human error” or “medical system failure” on a death certificate….

Likewise, Reason.com notes much the same:

…Thirty-one percent of the gun owners said they had used a firearm to defend themselves or their property, often on multiple occasions. As in previous research, the vast majority of such incidents (82 percent) did not involve firing a gun, let alone injuring or killing an attacker. In more than four-fifths of the cases, respondents reported that brandishing or mentioning a firearm was enough to eliminate the threat.

That reality helps explain the wide divergence in estimates of defensive gun uses. The self-reports of gun owners may not be entirely reliable, since they could be exaggerated, mistaken, or dishonest. But limiting the analysis to cases in which an attacker was wounded or killed, or to incidents that were covered by newspapers or reported to the police, is bound to overlook much more common encounters with less dramatic outcomes.

About half of the defensive gun uses identified by the survey involved more than one assailant. Four-fifths occurred inside the gun owner’s home or on his property, while 9 percent happened in a public place and 3 percent happened at work. The most commonly used firearms were handguns (66 percent), followed by shotguns (21 percent) and rifles (13 percent).

Based on the number of incidents that gun owners reported, English estimates that “guns are used defensively by firearms owners in approximately 1.67 million incidents per year.” That number does not include cases where people defended themselves with guns owned by others, which could help explain why English’s figure is lower than a previous estimate by Florida State University criminologists Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz. Based on a 1993 telephone survey with a substantially smaller sample, Kleck and Gertz put the annual number at more than 2 million….

But I want to return to that FEE ARTCLE linked above. In it some person’s are quoted that may be more rightly called “theologians” IMHO.

…For centuries, many people have employed the term “Good Samaritan” to describe anyone who isn’t compelled to come to the aid of the innocent but takes the initiative to do so anyway. A Good Samaritan takes charge of a bad situation, improves it as best he can, and prevents further harm. That is exactly what Elisjsha Dicken did in Greenwood.

Undoubtedly, the critical reporter in this instance is a person of good intent. He can’t imagine Jesus endorsing Dicken’s action because Jesus was a man of peace. He might even cite Matthew, chapter five, in which Jesus urges us to “turn the other cheek” if someone insults us or physically slaps us in the face.

“The question of rendering insult for insult, however, is a far cry from defending oneself against a mugger or a rapist,” writes Lars Larson in Does Jesus Christ Support Self-Defense?. To “turn the other cheek” means to refrain from a needless escalation of a problematic situation. Elisjsha Dicken did not escalate anything; in fact, he dramatically and decisively de-escalated it in the only possible way, given the circumstances.

The reporter likely shares the widely-held, radically pacifist or “namby-pamby” view of Jesus—the view that he would never endorse an act of violence for any purpose, even if it’s necessary to save lives. It implies that Elisjsha Dicken should have run for cover and allowed the Greenwood shooter to kill another dozen or two people. That’s wrong, if not downright blasphemous.

When Jesus dined at The Last Supper, he gave his disciples specific instructions, including this one (Luke 22:36):

He said to them, “But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don’t have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one.

Note that he did not advise anyone, then or at any other time, to stand idly by and allow wanton slaughter of innocents. And he offered support for the threat of force to prevent the theft of property as well. In Luke 11:21, Jesus said:

When a strong man, fully armed, guards his own house, his possessions are safe. But when someone stronger attacks and overpowers him, he takes away the armor in which the man trusted, and divides up his plunder.

This is the same Jesus who, in Luke 12:39, says, “If the owner of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into.” It’s the same Jesus who never criticized anyone for possessing a lethal weapon such as a sword, though he certainly condemned the initiation of force or the impetuous and unnecessary use of it.

In Jesus, Guns and Self-Defense: What Does the Bible Say?, Gary DeMar maintains that

Being armed and willing to defend ourselves, our family, and our neighbors is not being unchristian or even unloving. Self-defense can go a long way to protect the innocent from people who are intent on murder for whatever reason.

The Greenwood reporter’s errant perspective is not untypical of people who think they know Jesus and Christianity but spend more time criticizing them than learning about them. I see evidence of this all the time, most recently from a speaker at an April 2022 conference in Prague, Czech Republic.

“When it comes to the source of individual rights,” the speaker pontificated with misplaced confidence, “there are only three possibilities.” One, he said, is a Creator (God), which he summarily dismissed as a ridiculous, untenable proposition. The second is government, which he ruled out as equally ridiculous and untenable. The only logical option, he said, was “nature”—something which he suggested evolved out of nothing from nobody. As I listened with the largely student audience, I thought to myself, “This supposed expert hasn’t even considered a fourth option, namely, a combination of the first and third—which is to say that God, as the author of nature, is in fact the author of individual rights as well.”

The speaker added another uninformed dig at Christianity by claiming it was stupid for Jesus to ever suggest you should love your neighbor. “What if your neighbor is an axe-murderer? How much sense would that make?” he asked derisively. If he had known of the passages I cite above, he would have been embarrassed by his own ignorance. As a general principle, Jesus argued, you should love your neighbor but the same Jesus would urge you to arm yourself if your neighbor threatens your life or property.

In The Life and Death Debate: Moral Issues of Our Time, Christian theologians Norman Geisler and J. P. Moreland write:

To permit murder when one could have prevented it is morally wrong. To allow a rape when one could have hindered it is evil. To watch an act of cruelty to children without trying to intervene is morally inexcusable. In brief, not resisting evil is an evil of omission, and an evil of omission can be just as evil as an evil of commission. Any man who refuses to protect his wife and children against a violent intruder fails them morally.

When Elisjsha Dicken pulled out his gun to stop a shooting spree, he had every reason to believe he might attract the shooter’s aim and be killed himself. Fortunately, he was not, and he is among the living whose lives he saved.

If Elisjsha Dicken had been killed, the rest of us could at least take comfort in the words of Jesus as quoted in John 15:13. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends…..

Turning to Gary DeMar’s article that was quoted above but needs more room for further context:

…What about Jesus’ injunction to “turn the other cheek” (Matt. 5:38-39)? There’s a big difference between slapping someone across the face and someone wanting to take a baseball bat to your head or the head of your wife and children. Self-defense is a biblical option in such cases. Consider this passage from biblical case law:

“If the thief is caught while breaking in and is struck so that he dies, there will be no bloodguiltiness on his account. But if the sun has risen on him, there will be bloodguiltiness on his account. He shall surely make restitution; if he owns nothing, then he shall be sold for his theft (Ex. 22:2-3).”

The homeowner can assume that someone breaking into his house at night has nothing but bad intentions. He may be armed or not. The homeowner does not have to ask any questions to find out. The homeowner can respond by striking the intruder “so that he dies.” If this happens, even if the attempt was only theft (unknown to the homeowner), the homeowner is cleared of all guilt in the thief’s death.

Daytime is a different story because the victim can make a better assessment of intent. If two people enter a building with a shotgun, as happened in the Texas church, killing these people before they kill you and others is the right thing to do. Being loving, peaceful, just and generous, and self-giving do not apply. To put it simply, there’s no time.

[….]

The story of David and Goliath is helpful since “five smooth stones” and a “sling” are the closest equivalent to a handgun we can find in the Bible. David seems to have been armed with his sling at all times. There was no way he could run home to get his sling when a lion or a bear was about to attack his flock (1 Sam. 17:31-37, 41-54).

It’s possible that Jesus had the Old Testament case law in mind when offered this injunction to His disciples:

“But be sure of this, if the head of the house had known at what time of the night the thief was coming, he would have been on the alert and would not have allowed his house to be broken into (Matt 24:43).”

But of course, you rarely know when someone is going to break into your house or decides to kill people in your church, therefore, you must be on guard all the time.

In another passage, Jesus is teaching by analogy:

“When a strong man, fully armed, guards his own homestead, his possessions are undisturbed. But when someone stronger than he attacks him and overpowers him, he takes away from him all his armor on which he had relied and distributes his plunder (Luke 11:21).”

A fully armed strong man is a deterrent to a thief. It’s the fact that the strong man is armed that protects the potential thief from being harmed. Another strong man will think twice about ever trying to rob or harm someone who is armed.

Here’s what critics of armed church members miss: Armed people save lives by making evil people think twice about attacking a person or place where there might be some armed push back. One could say that it’s loving to be armed since it might stop someone who has evil intent from not following through with an evil act.

The most famous New Testament passage is a command of Jesus for His disciples to sell their garments and buy a sword (Luke 22:36-38). Personally, I do not believe this is a good proof text for being armed, but it does show that being armed was a norm for that time, and Jesus does not object.

Peter impetuously uses his sword against a servant of the high priest (John 18:10; Matt. 26:51; Luke 22:50) who had come out with a crowd armed with clubs and swords (Luke 22:52). Under normal circumstances, swords were permissible for self-defense, otherwise why did the “chief priests and officers of the temple and elders” have them? There is, however, something else going on here of biblical-theological importance that has little to do with self-defense.

However the sword passage is interpreted, at no time did Jesus condemn anyone for having a sword. The disciples lived in dangerous times (Luke 10:29-37). Furthermore, the Romans didn’t seem to have a problem with their subjects (the Jews) owning swords.

Gun-Free Zones are soft targets for people who have no regard for the law. The gunman who killed the people in Luby’s Cafeteria had broken the law by bringing a firearm into a place where the law said it was unlawful. Murderers are, by definition, lawbreakers.

Now to the question. Should churches, for example, ensure that there are armed and trained people at every service? Absolutely! Christians might say, “But we should put our trust in God.” God has given us the ability to reason and assess the times like the sons of Issachar, “men who understood the times, with knowledge of what Israel should do, their chiefs were two hundred; and all their kinsmen were at their command” (1 Chron. 12:32).

Consider the following from the book of Nehemiah:

“But when Sanballat, Tobiah, the Arabs, the Ammonites and the people of Ashdod heard that the repairs to Jerusalem’s walls had gone ahead and that the gaps were being closed, they were very angry. They all plotted together to come and fight against Jerusalem and stir up trouble against it. But we prayed to our God and posted a guard day and night to meet this threat.

Meanwhile, the people in Judah said, “The strength of the laborers is giving out, and there is so much rubble that we cannot rebuild the wall.”

Also our enemies said, “Before they know it or see us, we will be right there among them and will kill them and put an end to the work.”

Then the Jews who lived near them came and told us ten times over, “Wherever you turn, they will attack us.”

Therefore, I stationed some of the people behind the lowest points of the wall at the exposed places, posting them by families, with their swords, spears and bows. After I looked things over, I stood up and said to the nobles, the officials and the rest of the people, “Don’t be afraid of them. Remember the Lord, who is great and awesome, and fight for your families, your sons and your daughters, your wives and your homes.”

When our enemies heard that we were aware of their plot and that God had frustrated it, we all returned to the wall, each to our own work.

From that day on, half of my men did the work, while the other half were equipped with spears, shields, bows and armor. The officers posted themselves behind all the people of Judah who were building the wall. Those who carried materials did their work with one hand and held a weapon in the other, and each of the builders wore his sword at his side as he worked. But the man who sounded the trumpet stayed with me.
 
Then I said to the nobles, the officials and the rest of the people, “The work is extensive and spread out, and we are widely separated from each other along the wall. Wherever you hear the sound of the trumpet, join us there. Our God will fight for us!” (vv. 7-13).

While they trusted God and prayed, they also understood that they were responsible for their immediate welfare by posting a guard (v. 9). Notice that while Nehemiah said, “Our God will fight for us,” we’re also told that “half [the men] were equipped with spears, shields, bows, and armor.” This is not a contraction. Prayer is not enough unless it’s the only act that we have at our disposal.

They never let down their guard.

So, we carried on the work with half of them holding spears from dawn until the stars appeared. At that time, I also said to the people, “Let each man with his servant spend the night within Jerusalem so that they may be a guard for us by night and a laborer by day.” So, neither I, my brothers, my servants, nor the men of the guard who followed me, none of us removed our clothes, each took his weapon even to the water (vv. 21-23).

One more thing, when Israel’s enemies heard that the men were armed and on guard, they had second thoughts about attacking. Human nature has not changed since Cain killed Abel. What has changed in our culture is a disregard for human life.

May I connect the dots and say “Christians divesting” themselves of a God given right is disregard for life.

Right around the time David French went #NeverTrump, he had an excellent article at NATIONAL REVIEW which I noted on my website. Here is an excerpt from it:

…One cannot analyze the Second Amendment without understanding its moral and philosophical underpinnings. Colonial America was a land populated by people who were both highly literate biblically and steeped in Lockean philosophy.

The biblical record sanctioning self-defense is clear. In Exodus 22, the Law of Moses permits a homeowner to kill even a mere thief who entered his home at night, and the books of Esther and Nehemiah celebrate the self-defense of the Jews against their lawless attackers. Nehemiah exhorted the Israelites to defend themselves: “Remember the Lord, who is great and awesome, and fight for your brothers, your sons, your daughters, your wives, and your homes.” The oft-forgotten climax of the book of Esther is an act of bloody self-defense against a genocidal foe.

Nor did Jesus require his followers to surrender their lives — or the lives of spouses, children, or neighbors — in the face of armed attack. His disciples carried swords, and in one memorable passage in Luke 22, he declared there were circumstances in which the unarmed should arm themselves: “If you don’t have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one.” Christ’s famous admonition in his Sermon the Mount to “turn the other cheek” in the face of a physical blow is not a command to surrender to deadly violence, and it certainly isn’t a command to surrender family members or neighbors to deadly violence.

In his Second Treatise of Civil Government, Locke described the right of self-defense as a “fundamental law of nature”:

Sec. 16. The state of war is a state of enmity and destruction: and therefore declaring by word or action, not a passionate and hasty, but a sedate settled design upon another man’s life, puts him in a state of war with him against whom he has declared such an intention, and so has exposed his life to the other’s power to be taken away by him, or any one that joins with him in his defence, and espouses his quarrel; it being reasonable and just, I should have a right to destroy that which threatens me with destruction: for, by the fundamental law of nature, man being to be preserved as much as possible, when all cannot be preserved, the safety of the innocent is to be preferred: and one may destroy a man who makes war upon him, or has discovered an enmity to his being, for the same reason that he may kill a wolf or a lion; because such men are not under the ties of the commonlaw of reason, have no other rule, but that of force and violence, and so may be treated as beasts of prey, those dangerous and noxious creatures, that will be sure to destroy him whenever he falls into their power. (Emphasis added.)

Moreover, Locke argues, these laws of nature were inseparable from the will of God:

The rules that they make for other men’s actions, must, as well as their own and other men’s actions, be conformable to the law of nature, i.e. to the will of God, of which that is a declaration, and the fundamental law of nature being the preservation of mankind, no human sanction can be good, or valid against it.

This right is so fundamental that it’s difficult to find even leftist writers who would deny a citizen the right to protect her own life….

So much different than Scott Baker seemed to say…

  • “given the constitutional protection that is interpreted as a blanket right to private gun ownership”

… we really find out IT IS a blanket right. And on Facebook I asked the following question bnecause I could not for-the-life-of-me understand why my friend liked the article? So I asked him,

  • What did you like from the article? I read it twice, and I am curious what was the main part of the article made you go “yes, that makes sense”

He merely responded with over six paragraphs from the article.

Which was vacuous of history, common sense, facts, and full of cherry picked verses.

Tulsi Gabbard Discusses Religious Liberty with Jay Sekulow

Published by Papa Giorgio

Tulsi Gabbard opens up about the importance of her faith and how the Democratic party has come to resent religion. The former Hawaii Congresswoman shares how her personal relationship with God grounded her on the presidential campaign trail while opening her eyes to the growing hostility from inside the party towards people of faith. Tulsi is joined by Chief Counsel of the American Center for Law & Justice (ACLJ), Jay Sekulow to discuss his career defending religious liberty and the ongoing battles that threaten this essential freedom.

Why Americans Are Buying Guns (PragerU)

Published by Papa Giorgio

In the aftermath of every mass shooting, we hear calls for “commonsense gun control.” But how do you determine which gun laws are commonsense? Jason Riley, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, explores this loaded question.

  • It’s worth noting that the past two landmark Supreme Court rulings on gun control were brought by black plaintiffs who simply wanted to defend their homes and their families.

EBONY MAGAZINE:

….“I believe the reason we’re seeing more women of color joining this movement to use firearms is because they’re realizing this in not a political issue,” she said. “It really never has been. It’s about personal safety and protection.”

Washington went on to say, “a firearm is an equalizer for women because women have a harder time defending themselves when they’re attacked by a man; men have more body mass.”

Women protecting themselves against potential dangers is always something to think about and consider when you’re going out or if you’re in an unfamiliar environment.

Ector thinks the spike in women owning guns is due to the issue of rape in Michigan. He says women make up half the classes he teaches…..

AMMO LAND:

….The history of Black women arming themselves dates back to our earliest years in this country.  Harriet Tubman even carried a gun for protection on the Underground Railroad.  She also used her rifle to threaten runaway slaves who wanted to turn back, telling them, “You’ll be free or die.“Black women activists (in the 1960′s and 1970′s) first ”used the gun as a bid for equal power within their often sexist movements, “ says Laura Browder, author of Her Best Shot: Women and Guns in America.

Black women are arming themselves and putting criminals on notice.  As this trying year progresses, expect to see more and more Black women choosing the gun as a means of self-defense and self-protection for themselves and their families…..

SCOTUS Strikes Down Unconstitutional Concealed Carry Law

Published by Papa Giorgio

Finally, today marks a monumental step in the right direction for gun rights activists. Listen as Buck Sexton breaks down the Supreme Court’s decision:

Here is some of the TRANSCRIPT:

…..“to keep and bear arms.” That first part, keeping up of the arms, was dealt with pretty well in D.C. v. Heller. Remember that case from some years ago?

You had an individual licensed to have a gun for work but who lived in the District of Columbia and couldn’t even bring his firearm that he had at work all day home with him. So that’s crazy, right? But that was the law, and they would arrest you. D.C. was vicious about enforcing even the most minor infractions of firearms law. Unless you’re, you know, a gang member with a long history of drugs; then they’re always looking. And this is the thing you have to remind yourself about the libs.

If you’re somebody who has guns and is actually a danger to society, they don’t want to make an example of you. They want to go soft on you. This is what we’ve seen with the progressive prosecutors and criminal justice reform, as they call it. But if you’re guy who likes to go hunting on the weekends but you cross from Virginia into D.C. with two shotgun shells in your pocket that are 20-gauge meant for pheasants, guess what? Too bad. You’re on your own. They’re gonna lock you up. That’s their attitude, right?

Well, in this case the New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen — Bruen is the superintendent of the New York State police — what we have here is the “bear arms” part of it finally coming into Supreme Court focus. And by 6-3 the proper cause requirement for getting a handgun permit, a firearm permit to have and carry a concealed pistol or revolver, the proper cause requirement is gone now. It is unconstitutional.

Now, what this means, in effect — remember D.C. v. Heller said, “You gotta be able to — if you’re a law-abiding citizen and you meet some very basic thresholds, you gotta be able to — buy a gun. You can’t just say, ‘You’re not allowed to have a gun, period,’ because the Second Amendment.” Well, now it’s can you get a concealed carry permit? Can you actually carry your weapon with you? And I know there’s gonna be the whole distinction between concealed carry and open carry and all this.

But just to be able to carry in any capacity in these states was not allowed unless you were special, unless you could prove, demonstrate a special need that is different from just people in general. And 6-3 decision here. Roberts did join the majority; so he may be a wimp, but he’s not a lunatic. 6-3 decision, took a sledgehammer to the anti-gun regime of so many of these states, or I should say the anti-bearing arms regime, right? ‘Cause you’re loud to own in New York, you’re allowed to own a firearm in California, but can you carry it anywhere?

Can you get a concealed carry permit? Now, in the state of New York, as I said, this is near and dear to me because I have not been able to. As an adult, I have not been able to enjoy Second Amendment rights in my home state, and it’s obscene. And one of my favorite parts of this decision, one of my favorite parts of the way they dismantle… I mean the libs, Breyer, Sotomayor, Kagan, just pathetic stuff in their dissent. Honestly. “Oh, but there’s so much gun violence!” Wait, but there’s so much gun violence, you guys are banning guns in these states in every way you can but there’s still so much violence.

Almost like the only people who are gonna have guns in a no gun regime state like New York or California are the bad guys. Oh, that is what happens. That is what happens. New York bans and has for over a hundred years. I’ve known about the Sullivan law passed in 1911… By the way, I rarely would say this you to. If you are a Second Amendment enthusiast, though, reading this whole decision just because of the history that it goes into is fascinating, the history of weapons and concealed carry and the Old West and even goes back in the medieval period, goes back to English common law, seventeenth century, eighteenth century.

It’s fascinating history, of course, written by the constitutionalists, the conservatives on the court in their 6-3 slap down of this unconstitutional absurdity of you’re not allowed — a law-abiding American in these states was not allowed — to get a pistol to carry concealed for protection unless they were special, which basically meant unless you’re connected, unless you know how to work the system. And that’s why honestly you know who is the getting concealed carry permits in New York City specifically? Celebrities………

MORE form JUSTICE THOMAS:

…..I just want to read to you. THIS IS FROM THE OPINION, WRITTEN BY JUSTICE THOMAS, who is… I’ve said this before. If I can come up with a better, more specific phrase, but he is a national treasure. He really is. Justice Thomas is an amazing man who should be so much more… I mean, he’s celebrated by conservatives. He should be celebrated so much more nationally for what he is, being brilliant, having an incredible life story. But I digress.

“When we look to the latter half of the 17th century,” this decision says, respondents’ case only weakens. As in Heller, we consider this history ‘[b]etween the [Stuart] Restoration [in 1660] and the Glorious Revolution [in 1688]’ to be particularly instructive. During that time, the Stuart Kings Charles II and James II ramped up efforts to disarm their political opponents, an experience that ‘caused Englishmen … to be jealous of their arms,’” and there’s other examples like this.

But this is the key point, friends. When you look at the history of these efforts to disarm the law-abiding, whether it’s in England, whether it’s in the medieval period, or it’s in the Revolutionary period in America, you look at these efforts to disarm, it’s always a means of the powerful asserting their control. Because they want to be able to do whatever they want to do. They don’t want anyone to be able to say, “No, you’re a tyrant. No, you’ve gone too far, and I can do something about it.”

And this really goes to the heart of the Second Amendment. When you read through the history, it’s fascinating. Those with the guns or the swords and the daggers and the halberds and those with those weapons, they don’t want others to be able to meet them with steel and gunpowder. They want to be the ones that get to call all the shots. They say, “You know what? We’re just gonna…” “No. You are not important. You don’t get a weapon,” and you could look all throughout history.

At different times, just the carrying of a sword unless you were connected to the nobility was something that could get you even executed. But then there are other times where there was an expectation that all gentlemen would be carrying. There are cultures, actually, where you have to carry a working blade. Cultures where carrying a knife for utility and for the protection of oneself and perhaps even one’s faith or one’s state, that was expected.

The libs ultimately… There’s the criminal justice component of this and the self-protection. But then there’s also the defense against tyranny aspect. And the left in this country, the anti-gun Democrat Party which now effectively is all the Democrat Party. There are some who will still pretend here and there to win some votes that they’re pro-Second Amendment. But the Democrat Party’s become the anti-gun party because they’re authoritarians.

You’ve seen this over the course of covid. You see this in your day-to-day lives. They want to control your speech. They want to control your property. They want to control every aspect of your life. They want to brainwash your children to gender identity theory. They want full and total control, and even if they may not have the eloquence and the constitutional understanding — which they certainly don’t — to put it in these terms, they do understand at some level that the individual ownership by citizens of this country, of firearms, is a personal act of rebellion against authoritarianism.

Or at least the possibility waiting in the wings, waiting on the sidelines to be that act of rebellion should it be called upon. And they hate that. They hate that because they know somewhere, deep down, hold on a second. We can’t just force them to do anything we want if we have full and total control of the apparatus. We can’t just start pulling people out of their homes and arresting them in front of their families because of climate denial. What do you mean? That would be a problem for us?

Ultimately, the true believers on the left, the real center of the Democrat Party finds that notion of an armed populace unacceptable, unacceptable to them, because they want… They’re always trying… They’re progressing, you see? Yeah, they’re always moving for the next thing, moving to the next issue. But their ultimate progression as progressives is to get to the utopia that is only possible when they are in total and complete control.

And so long as we have an armed population in this country that represents the final bulwark against that tyranny. And they know it; so, they hate it. And they also like all the virtue signaling, of course, from, if we could only pass more gun laws, we would stop all the gun violence out there. It’s not true, but people say that and they feel proud and brave and smart. If only we passed this gun law.

No matter how many times they fail, it feels good for them to say it. It feels good for the left to shout this out so they will keep doing it, they won’t look at the data. Doesn’t matter to them. They want you disarmed and double masked. That’s the point. That’s how they see this. And if we allow them, that’s where we’ll go. But today’s Supreme Court decision a huge victory, a huge move in the right direction.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

BUCK: I gave a shout-out to Justice Thomas, who a lot of us know he’s amazing, but deserves even more praise than he gets from those of us who are fans of his jurisprudence, his sharp mind, and his courage. In this decision, he wrote, “A short prologue is in order. Even before the Civil War commenced in 1861, this Court indirectly affirmed the importance of the right to keep and bear arms in public. Writing for the Court in Dred Scott v. Sandford, (1857), Chief Justice Taney offered what he thought was a parade of horribles that would result from recognizing that free blacks were citizens of the United States.”

Again, this is a quote from the decision. “If blacks were citizens, Taney fretted, they would be entitled to the privileges and immunities of citizens, including the right ‘to keep and carry arms wherever they went.’ Id., at 417 (emphasis added). Thus, even Chief Justice Taney recognized (albeit unenthusiastically in the case of blacks) that public carry was a component of the right to keep and bear arms — a right free blacks were often denied in antebellum America,” and that’s the end of the quote there.

Just a reminder as well for everybody, it was the racist Democrat Party that worked so hard after the Civil War to make sure that black citizens of this country were disarmed. It was the racist Democrat Party during reconstruction and then leading all the way up into the era of the Ku Klux Klan that was doing everything it could to disarm our fellow Americans who were black. So there is a, as I said, long history of disarming in the name of oppression that stretches back for hundreds of years.

Not even just in America but hundreds of years. It stretches back all throughout history. The people in charge want you to shut up and do what you’re told. They get the guns; you get the orders. That’s the way they wanted it to be. Our Founding Fathers — the reason for the Second Amendment — realized, “No, that’s not gonna work. We’re not gonna have a free society, a truly free society of individuals with real liberty unless we change that dynamic.” So I think that’s essential to take away from all this.

Joe Biden Doesn’t Know Shite About Guns (Ben Shapiro)

Published by Papa Giorgio

Joe Biden goes on an incoherent anti-gun rant; the media fulminate over the supposed rise of “Christian nationalism”; and Jim Acosta of CNN says the NRA has blood on their hands. Here is a great comment on the Rumble upload of this:

  • If you ban abortion, women will just have it done illegally. If you ban guns, we will all be safe. Leftist logic.

 

Woman Stops Mass Shooting (MSM Fails To Report)

Published by Papa Giorgio

The day after the Uvalde School Shooting, a woman armed with a pistol killed a mass shooter who fired a rifle into a crowd during a party, police say. A woman with a handgun literally stopped a mass shooting, and none of the major mainstream media outlets have even mentioned it. The mainstream media doesn’t want you to know the truth about guns in this country because they can’t get you on board with more gun control laws if they’re they’re constantly showing you story after story of good guys and girls with guns stopping bad guys/girls with guns.

ACTIVE SHOOTER Smoked by WOMAN with a Gun!!

Last week, according to WOWK 13 News, people at a graduation/birthday party had complained to a man about speeding in the apartment complex parking lot where kids were playing. After a short time, the man, later identified by police as Dennis Butler, 37, returned armed with an AR-15 and began shooting into the crowd.

Fortunately, one partygoer was legally carrying a handgun. As Lieutenant Tony Hazelett, of the Charleston Police Department, described, “Instead of running from the threat, she engaged with the threat and saved several lives last night.”

(Also see RIGHT SCOOP)

NRA: America’s Longest-Standing Civil Rights Organization

Published by Papa Giorgio

African-American leaders speaking out against proposals to restrict gun rights at a Feb. 22, 2013 news conference in Washington, D.C. Among them: Harry Alford, president and chief executive officer of the D.C.-based National Black Chamber of Commerce.

Alford, who spoke in Milwaukee in 2008, said at one point:

“I want to thank the Lord for our Constitution. I also want to thank the NRA for its legacy. The National Rifle Association was started, founded by religious leaders who wanted to protect freed slaves from the Ku Klux Klan.”

Well known as a defender of the right to bear arms, the 5 million-member NRA does describe itself as “America’s Longest-Standing Civil Rights Organization.”

KILLING BLACK & WHITE REPUBLICANS

This made me think of a connection to the Democrat Party’s historical past. Here is my comment on that part of the group on Facebook:

You know, this reminds me of something from the Democrats past. What this is is a “hit card” that the violent arm [the KKK] of the Democrat Party use to carry around with them. They would use it as an identifier to kill or harass members of the “radical group” (Republicans who thought color did not matter) in order to affect voting outcomes. While we hear of the lynchings of black persons (who did make up a larger percentage of lynchings), there were quite a few white “radicals” lynched for supporting the black vote and arming ex-slaves. It is also ironic that the current Democrat melee is focused on racial differences.

I could go on, but I won’t.

Here is a short video discussing the matter:

  • “…virtually every significant racist in American political history was a Democrat.” — Bruce Bartlett, Wrong on Race: The Democratic Party’s Buried Past (New York, NY: Palgrave MacMillan, 2008), ix;
  • “…not every Democrat was a KKK’er, but every KKK’er was a Democrat.” — Ann Coulter, Mugged: Racial Demagoguery from the Seventies to Obama (New York, NY: Sentinel [Penguin], 2012), 19.

MORE GUN-CONTROL HISTORY

Today’s gun control advocates tend to paint themselves as concerned with the plight of minorities in America. What they don’t want you to know is that their movement originated as an initiative to deprive African-Americans of the means to defend themselves. In this episode of The DL, Dana Loesch is joined by NRA personalities and gun-rights advocates to delve into the deeply racist history of gun control and to explain how it continues to disproportionately affect minority communities.