National Cathedral Dean Gary R. Hall may be “gay-friendly,” but he’s not gun-friendly, and what gays and everybody else needs is guns, not friends. Give me homophobia all day long, but keep your hoplophobia to yourself, Dean.
The deniers of Luke 22:36 have been busy this year:
Religious Calls for Gun Restrictions Continue to Struggle: Shootings in a Connecticut school produced clergy calls to curtail gun violence with new firearms restrictions. National Cathedral Dean Gary R. Hall was among the most vocal, proclaiming “I believe the gun lobby is no match for the cross lobby” and opening with prayer a Senate press conference on gun legislation. Gun control advocates pointed to a handful of state legislative victories, but federal legislation stalled.
Source: http://crossmap.christianpost.com/news/institute-of-religion-and-democracy-ird-s-top-church-news-stories-of-2013-8116
Our enemy, like the devil, has been playing this game for a long time:
“I first got involved in gun control in the ‘90s, when I was working at All Saints Church in Pasadena and three young boys were shot to death on Halloween night. They were trick-or-treating, and it was a drive-by shooting. Our congregation got together and put pressure on the city and the state to do gun control legislation. So I have been involved in this work for 20 years. I got into it because my heart bleeds for the people and the kids—both in mass shootings and also those who are being gunned down in daily urban shootings. And that is my experience with church people. Their empathy is called out.
My experience of Second Amendment fundamentalists—because no one is really arguing about the Second Amendment here—is that they’re arguing about whether their rights can be regulated. The Supreme Court in the District of Columbia v. Heller decision said that gun ownership was a right—but one that could be regulated, like free speech. But the psychology among Second Amendment fundamentalists is, “You’re trying to take something away from me that I deserve, and I will be vulnerable if you take it away.”
Source: http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/religion/news/2013/12/09/80696/1-year-after-the-sandy-hook-school-shooting-dean-gary-hall-calls-for-action-on-gun-violence-prevention/
Is Free Speech that regulated? Do you need a license to blog? A waiting period to write a letter to the editor? The most regulated free speech is pornography, and as long as your actors are 18 or older, you’re fine. It won’t even be labelled obscenity as long as you can prove your porn as “artistic value.” Yet when it comes to guns, we live in fear of breaking gun laws, that’s how bad it is, and we’re right to be fearful because their goal is the complete confiscation of our guns.
Back in 1976, Pete Shields, chairman of what is today the Brady Campaign, candidly laid out the blueprint for The New Yorker:
We’re going to have to take one step at a time, and the first step is necessarily — given the political realities — going to be very modest. Right now, though, we’d be satisfied not with half a loaf but with a slice. Our ultimate goal — total control of handguns in the United States — is going to take time. My estimate is from seven to ten years. The problem is to slow down the increasing number of handguns sold in this country. The second problem is to get them all registered. And the final problem is to make the possession of all handguns and all handgun ammunition — except for the military, policemen, licensed security guards, licensed sporting clubs, and licensed gun collectors — totally illegal
Source: http://reason.com/archives/2013/07/18/why-second-amendment-supporters-are-righ
This is why we fight, this is our struggle, to live in a country where we can keep our guns and preserve our freedom.
