Alyssa Milano said the following
about Republican Texas state Rep. Matt Schaefer’s tweet that he was “NOT going
to use the evil acts of a handful of people to diminish the God-given rights of
my fellow Texans. Period.”
Can someone cite which passage of the Bible God states it is a
God-given right to own a gun? This guy is unbelievable and is clearly owned by
the gun lobby. Can someone cite which passage of the Bible God states it
is a God-given right to own a gun? This guy is unbelievable and is clearly
owned by the gun lobby.
Let’s begin by acknowledging that
there were no guns in the Bible. Moreover, there were no cars, smartphones,
printing presses, or Hollywood actors either. There were, however, lots of
weapons in the Bible.
Little has changed since Cain
killed his brother Abel (Gen 4). Cain did not use a gun to kill Abel. Consider
that “there were 43,516 knife crime offenses in the 12 months ending March
2019” in England and Wales, “an 80% increase from the low-point in the year
ending March 2014.” Airplanes were used to bring down the Twin Towers. Timothy
McVeigh used fertilizer and diesel fuel – both legal – to murder 168 men,
women, and children.
Schaefer went on to write, “none
of these so-called gun-control solutions will work to stop a person with evil
intent.”
If crazy evil murderers like
church shooters knew that people in a congregation were armed, do you think
they would attempt an assault? I don’t think so.
Every mass shooting in the United
States took place in areas where the people were unarmed: schools, nightclubs,
movie theater, and oddly enough, a military base (Fort Hood) where the soldiers
were not permitted to carry a weapon.
You may recall the Killeen,
Texas, Luby’s restaurant shooting in 1991. “George Hennard … crashed his pickup
truck through the front plate glass window of the Luby’s Cafeteria … shot 50
people (killing 23), exchanged shots with responding police, and then hid in a
bathroom and fatally shot himself.” He did not use an AR-15.
After the shooting where her
parents were murdered by the gunman, Suzanna Hupp, a survivor of the shooting
who watched her parents die, spoke out against new gun control measures. “I
don’t view myself as a victim of gun violence, I view myself as a victim
of a maniac who happened to use a gun as a tool,” she told lawmakers.
“In what she called a ‘stupid
decision,’ Hupp said she realized she’d obeyed Texas law and left her gun in
her car. At the time, people were not permitted to carry a weapon into public
places. ‘It still makes me angry when I think about it. You can’t go up against
a guy with a gun with a saltshaker or a butter knife.’”
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. Let’s not forget that Alyssa Milano killed two of her
unborn children so she could further her career. She said it was her
“choice.” Well, it was the choice of Cain to kill Abel and the choice of the
most recent shooters to kill their victims.