Here is a new twist on gun control. Despite the fact that the Constitution protects our right to bear arms, Taylor Schumann in an article in Christianity Today entitled “Are We Attempting to Serve Two Masters, Jesus and Gun Rights?” suggests that you cannot be a Christian and own guns. 

This is probably the most stupid argument I have ever heard, but not a surprising one from the left who will use any means whatsoever to get guns out of our legal, trained, and careful hands. She suggests that if I get rid of my guns (and yes, I own more than one and usually go armed even to church), I am saving lives. Really? That means that she automatically assumes that I am, as former infantry officer Streiff suggests, “a murderer-in-waiting.”

Obviously, Schumann has never read the statistics, or if she has, refuses to admit to their truth: 

Gun Facts Info provides the following information about gun use by law-abiding citizens.

  • Guns prevent an estimated 2.5 million crimes a year, or 6,849 every day. Most often, the gun is never fired, and no blood (including the criminal’s) is shed.
  • Every year, 400,000 life-threatening violent crimes are prevented using firearms.
  • 60 percent of convicted felons admitted that they avoided committing crimes when they knew the victim was armed. Forty percent of convicted felons admitted that they avoided committing crimes when they thought the victim might be armed. 
  • Felons report that they avoid entering houses where people are at home because they fear being shot.
  • Fewer than 1 percent of firearms are used in the commission of a crime.

The Center for Disease Control, in a report ordered by President Obama in 2012 following the Sandy Hook Massacre, estimated that the number of crimes prevented by guns could be more, maybe as many as 3 million annually, or some 8,200 every day.

Most gun violence is carried out by gangs, drug dealers, and poor young black men who, with no father-figure in their lives, strive to feel important and respected, and feel they find that respect by using a gun to end arguments and perceived slights. Liberals try especially hard to discredit this statistic, but because of the living conditions they are forced into by in those large, Democrat-controlled cities, African-Americans, while making up only 13% of the population, commit 39% of all crimes.  About 6% of young black men become career criminals. The areas with the greatest gun violence are the poor areas of large, mostly Democrat-run cities, where gun regulations are stringent and the guns used in crimes are illegally possessed.  To suggest, as the Left does, that those guns are transported into cities like Chicago from states with less rigid gun laws is illogical.  If the gun laws in these other states are so lax that illegal guns are shipped to Chicago to be used in the weekend shooting deaths that are commonplace, why aren’t the states that are the supposed source of those guns themselves teaming with violent deaths in every city and small town?  Might not many of those guns instead come the same way drugs come to our cities – – – via the illegal aliens who are flooding our southern border?

Mr. Streiff points out that Schumann’s theological argument that Jesus is against guns and therefore if we have guns, we must be against Jesus, is filled with holes.  He points to the following:  

“In Exodus, we are told we can kill a home invader at night. In Nehemiah, we are told to fight to defend our families. In Esther, Jews take up arms against an unjust ruler (sort of the main purpose of the Second Amendment). Jesus frequently uses the metaphor of a shepherd protecting his flock from thieves and robbers. Because a shepherd killed marauding animals (see David and his sling), one can assume He is not talking about hugging it out.”

But even Mr. Strieff forgets to mention that Jesus’ disciples carried swords, which

we know since Peter used one to cut off the ear of one of the soldiers who came to arrest Jesus as Judas betrayed Him.  And over and over we find references to Christians as soldiers. Soldiers, then as now, were always armed!  

 Paul in Philippeans 2:25 and Philemon 1:2, refers to other Christians as “fellow soldiers.”  Later Paul warns Christians, “You therefore must endure hardship as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. No one engaged in warfare entangles himself with the affairs of this life, that he may please him who enlisted him as a soldier” (2 Timothy 2:3-4).  

And then in Ephesians 6:10 – 17. “Finally, my bretheran, be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might.  Put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the Devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore, take up the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand in the evil day, and above all to stand. Stand therefore, having girded your waist with truth, having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace, above all, taking the shield of faith with which you will be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one.  And take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God.” 

God teaches His followers not to commit murder, but at the same time He has always expected His people to use weapons to defend themselves against evil.  The entire Christian life is a metaphorical warfare against evil, but sometimes that evil takes human form and the metaphorical warfare must become a literal fight. This is in no way contradicted by the Word of God or by New Testament teachings.

Using the Christian faith as a bludgeon to beat us into submission is a common ploy as Leftists repeatedly tell us we must accept same-sex marriage despite Biblical prohibitions on homosexuality and agree that individuals can change gender (which science says is built into our unchanging DNA) because God is love and thus love must make us accept what is sin or what is biologically impossible.  In many churches, sadly, this has worked. And so, to use theology to ban guns should not surprise us.  Attempting to do away with our constitutional right to bear arms is an ongoing campaign of the Left and Democrats, and this is just their latest tactic.  But while we can agree that murder is wrong, self-defense is never wrong, and the defense of the lives of others is required of a Christian.  Thus, doing away with our God-given and constitutionally guaranteed gun rights is only a political issue and never, never a theological one!