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Christian Viewpoint On The Gun Debate

JosephZ

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A pistol is less than 30". Should they be banned for being even more "beneficial in manuvering in closed quarters"?
There needs to be a limit on magazine capacity for handguns.

All true, but the subject we were discussing was rifles.
 
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RDKirk

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Now, how many of those characteristics of a firearm can demonstrated to be able to make a firearm more lethal? I see very few. Most are just cosmetic features.

Why do you think the military adds those features to combat rifles in addition to their being fully automatic?

Just to be "tacticool?"
 
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RDKirk

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The Declaration of Independence has some deistic thought as well as some Aristotelian thought. The Constitution...not so much. I'd be interested in someone pointing out the clause in the Constitution that is uniquely Christian and nothing else.

The first Amendment is pretty straight from Roger Williams, and Roger Williams brought the concept of "separation of Church and State" to America. In fact, Roger Williams coined "separation of Church and State," although he didn't invent the concept. In further fact, the existence of the First Amendment is because the state Roger Williams' founded (Rhode Island) refused to ratify the Constitution without a written guarantee of the separation of Church and State.


Yes. We can say that everything, including Enlightenment thought, has been "tainted" by Christian thought that had been by then embedded into European culture. But that doesn't make it Christian.
 
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Eschatologist

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If it's the weapon that is intended to attract the most attention, then why are most mass shootings done with handguns? Every mass shooter is aiming for "attention."
 
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Eschatologist

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If that appears reasonable to you, then you are in favor of banning most semiautomatic rifles.

Here is a source about Virginia.

 
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Eschatologist

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The morals of most secular people in the West are Christian in origin regardless of how much they may want to deny it. Secular humanism is just a version of Christianity without God, for the most part. Atheists and agnostics in the West are quite different from the same groups in places like Turkey, for example.

So, you can't really divorce the Enlightenment from Christianity. The Enlightenment itself wouldn't exist, were it not for Christianity. There's a good reason it didn't derive from the Islamic World, for example.

It doesn't "betray the sanctity of Christianity" to connect the Constitution with Christianity. If anything, denying its influence downplays how important Christianity has been for the development of the US. And the way that this society has declined in morality is precisely because of how much mainstream society wants to discard that influence in favor of materialism, collectivism, race Marxism, gender theory, feminism, and the LGBT nonsense. It's fallen precisely because of how we have let our government, media, and academia dilute and discard faith.
 
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Eschatologist

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There needs to be a limit on magazine capacity for handguns.


All true, but the subject we were discussing was rifles.
Why should there be a limit? Law-abiding citizens might comply with that, but criminals won't.
 
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dogs4thewin

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If it's the weapon that is intended to attract the most attention, then why are most mass shootings done with handguns? Every mass shooter is aiming for "attention."
Which is why I believe that one way to stop or slow them down has nothing to do with guns instead they should not report on them as much. I am not saying to not say a word, but whether to report it and move on do not spend hours talking about it ( as was the case with a recent local shooting. Do not mentioning shootings that happened years ago and comparing shootings report on it it happened OK move on. This would also likely help the families of any deceased.
 
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RDKirk

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If it's the weapon that is intended to attract the most attention, then why are most mass shootings done with handguns? Every mass shooter is aiming for "attention."
Most incidents that are charted as "mass shootings" are criminal incidents or incidents of personal violence. Most of those are done with handguns and there is no intention to attract public attention because the intention is usually to kill specific individuals (although there might be any concern about collateral deaths).

When an AR-15 is used, more often it's to attract public attention, and the intention is to kill as many people as possible.
 
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Eschatologist

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I could support the media not mentioning the name of the shooter in reports to lower the "infamy" involved, but discussing past shootings is probably a good thing. It's also good to discuss the motives of shootings. Granted, a lot of the motives will be ignored or downplayed, because they often go against the narrative. The current administration wants us to believe that white supremacists are the greatest domestic threat, but the majority of shootings in the last several years have not been from that group. We've seen multiple shootings in the last few years from the far left, like the trans shooter in Nashville and the anti-Christian shooter in Sutherland Springs. Granted, most shootings are just personal not political, of course.
 
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Eschatologist

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I could think of several cases where that isn't true. For example, the Virginia Tech shooter clearly was focused on attention and used handguns. He was also the most lethal shooter in terms of deaths per shot. He was frighteningly accurate in general.
 
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RDKirk

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I agree with that.
I don't agree with that. We have to be very careful about what we pin the name of Jesus Christ to, because that's how people then identify Him.

We do not want the name of Jesus Christ pinned to the actions of America, not even from its very beginnings. The United States has never, as a nation, behaved like Christ nor has been a model for the Church.
 
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RDKirk

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I can see that words like "most" and "more often" escape you.
 
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Eschatologist

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I agree in some respects, but I'll give what is probably the best example of why the West is or at least was uniquely Christian in some regards.

For most of human history, slavery was considered normal and acceptable. It still is in certain parts of the world. The UK became the first nation in history to criminalize slavery in the early 1800s. It may have allowed it long before that, but Christians were the majority of who pushed to end this practice. Later on, abolitionism was largely pushed by Christians in America, which eventually culminated in the 13th Amendment.

So while it is true that the vast majority of our government's actions (and those of any government) are not Christian in nature, we can still take credit for Christianity's wins in policy.

Another great example is how Christians were a huge part of the civil rights movement.
 
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JosephZ

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The current administration wants us to believe that white supremacists are the greatest domestic threat, but the majority of shootings in the last several years have not been from that group.
Homeland Security under the direction of Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf, a Trump appointee, also declared that white supremacist are the greatest domestic threat.

Among DVEs [Domestic Violent Extremists], racially and ethnically motivated violent extremists—specifically white supremacist extremists (WSEs) will remain the most persistent and lethal threat in the Homeland.

WSEs have demonstrated longstanding intent to target racial and religious minorities, members of the LGBTQ+ community, politicians, and those they believe promote multi-culturalism and globalization at the expense of the WSE identity. Since 2018, they have conducted more lethal attacks in the United States than any other DVE movement.


 
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JosephZ

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If that appears reasonable to you, then you are in favor of banning most semiautomatic rifles.
I don't know the exact number of semi-automatic rifle models that exist, but if most happen to fall into that category, then I'm fine with it.

I was looking for a source where Virginia tryed to ban ALL semi-automatic rifles. A previous member said Virginia tried to do this.

Below is the definition of an "assault rifle" from the Virginia bill. It also seems reasonable.

1. A semi-automatic center-fire rifle that expels single or multiple projectiles by action of an explosion of a combustible material with a fixed magazine capacity in excess of 12 rounds;

2. A semi-automatic center-fire rifle that expels single or multiple projectiles by action of an explosion of a combustible material that has the ability to accept a detachable magazine and has one of the following characteristics:

(i) a folding or telescoping stock;
(ii) a pistol grip that protrudes conspicuously beneath the action of the rifle;
(iii) a second handgrip or a protruding grip that can be held by the non-trigger hand;
(iv) a grenade launcher;
(v) a flare launcher,
(vi) a silencer;
(vii) a flash suppressor;
(viii) a muzzle brake;
(ix) a muzzle compensator;
(x) a threaded barrel capable of accepting (a) a silencer, (b) a flash suppressor, (c) a muzzle brake, or (d) a muzzle compensator; or
(xi) any characteristic of like kind as enumerated in clauses (i) through (x).


 
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RDKirk

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For sure, a great many Christians are in America. That does not make America Christian. It just means a lot of Americans are Christian.

If America were a Christian nation, there would never have been need of a Civil War or a civil rights movement....because people on both sides of those issues claimed to be Christian.
 
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Eschatologist

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It's a bipartisan delusion, to be sure.

DVE has been broadly applied to anyone that expresses anti-state opinions, which is a textbook tactic of authoritarian regimes.
 
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