My sincere thanks to Preston Sprinkle for continuing our gun conversation, and I would also like to thank him for the robust manner in which he is continuing it. His latest is here.
Now it is true that at Q Denver I did say that the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. I would urge you first to read through Preston’s post on the deficiencies of such a sentiment, and meditate on his words. Meditate on it until you are almost persuaded, and then come back here. It is more fun that way.
There are three points I would like to make.
First, notice that I did not say that the good guy had to be shooting his gun, or even waving it around. What happens to violent crime rates when concealed carry laws are widely in effect? When Florida passed their concealed carry laws, their homicide rates went from 36% above the national average to 4% below. States that have banned concealed carry have violent crime rates that are 11% above the national average. In Texas, the first year after concealed carry passed, their rape rates fell 93% faster in the first year than before, and 500% faster in the second year. The point to be made here is that we are not just measuring the effect of guns in active use, we are also measuring the effect of guns on the premises.
States and municipalities with strict gun control laws are places where every unarmed citizen has been made into a “gun free zone,” and so criminals know that it is highly unlikely that any victim they select will be armed. The effects on crime rates are predictable. Reverse that situation and the effects are also predictable. Strict gun control laws turn average citizens into patsies, marks, chumps. The debate must not begin only when the crime is in progress.
This argument lines up with one of the central points of having an armed populace. The point of having guns is not to enjoy the exhilaration of using them. Rather success is measured when you don’t have to use them. This is so bad guys with guns can be made to think twice. Let’s ask the burglar. Would he rather work a neighborhood where 100% of the homeowners are unarmed, or would he rather work a neighborhood a third of the homeowners have guns, and he doesn’t know which third? This is not a hard question.
The second point is this. Addressing active shooter situations, Preston cites an FBI study, to this effect:
“But 26 of 160 were stopped when someone in the crowd stopped the shooter. You might think this is a decent enough percentage to justify the good guy with a gun myth, but according to the study, only 5 were stopped with a guy with a gun while 21 were stopped by unarmed civilians.
Good guys with no guns were four times more successful at stopping bad guys with guns.“
There are several responses to this. One is to wonder about the logic of it. In order to really compare, we should want 100 active shooter situations where the bystanders were completely unarmed, and then compare it to 100 active shooter situations where the bystanders were heavily armed. In other words, why were there only 5 interventionists with guns? Perhaps because of gun control legislation? How many of the courageous 21 wished they had a gun and heroically made do with what they had?
But the second point to make is one I raised during our Q & A at Denver. The unarmed 21 who stopped the bad guy on a rampage, did they do it by pursuing the way of non-violence? Did any of them throw a punch? Did any of them hit the guy on the head with a chair? From behind? Would Jesus hit somebody on the head with a chair?
And third, suppose you are following, as best you can, Preston’s proposed way of non-violence. You find yourself in an active shooter situation, and are pinned down somewhere in the mall. You have a moment where you are temporarily safe, but every minute counts. You are entirely unarmed, and can do nothing yourself. However, you do have your phone.
Sincere question — who are you going to call? If you call 911, you are calling good guys with guns, right? If you do that, you lose the argument, right? You want good guys with guns to come and stop the bad guy with a gun. Losing this argument under those conditions would be worse than death. Preston is pinned down also, over across the mall concourse, and so you yell at him. “Hey, Preston! Is it lawful to call the cops? I mean, won’t they just show up and perpetuate the cycle of violence?”
In his post, when Preston doubted the competence of the vigilante carrier, he appeared to be arguing that bad guys with guns needed to be stopped with trained good guys with guns. But how is that the way of non-violence? Calling in the good guys who are trained and therefore better shots is not non-violence. We shouldn’t shoot anybody, and besides, let’s make sure we do it right.
Maybe we should call the church’s prayer chain coordinator instead.
And who is saying the bad guys are any better trained than your average citizen with a gun anyways? Most concealed carry citizens can readily join a gun club whereas criminals can’t so where the heck do they train, their basements?
Literally laughed out loud at the last sentence in this series of questions:
> The unarmed 21 who stopped the bad guy on a rampage, did they do it by pursuing the way of non-violence? Did any of them throw a punch? Did any of them hit the guy on the head with a chair? From behind? Would Jesus hit somebody on the head with a chair?
Canon Press needs to sell WJHSOTHWAC? bracelets.
A Nation of Cowards. Written over 20 years ago. http://www.rkba.org/comment/cowards.html
I was thinking about this just this morning. For the “guns kill people” folks, unless they take their mantra all the way to the bank and disarm the cops, what they’re really arguing about is what level of training and background checks are sufficient for someone to be armed.
As Wilson is fond of saying, “it is not whether, but which” (will be armed with guns).
“The point of having guns is not to enjoy the exhilaration of using them. Rather success is measured when you don’t have to use them”
True, but this is America, heavily influenced by both Hollywood and rampant misdirected testosterone. We are all about the exhilaration.
And if success is measured by not having to kill anyone, that one cannot very well claim that killing is not a sin. If killing is not a sin, than why are we even bothering to try to avoid it?
Because murder and self-defense aren’t the same thing? Can you really not see a difference? That like conflating a fire in your own fireplace with a fire on the neighbor’s cat.
Ma’am, there’s a distinction in Hebrew, which makes the commandment to properly read, “Thou shalt not murder.”
OOPS! I’m being needlessly redundant! Dunsworth, I see, brought this up in the previous thread!
” but this is America, heavily influenced by both Hollywood and rampant misdirected testosterone”
Looks like the solution for your version of Christianity is to boycott Hollywood, …and men, …and weapons of any sort. That should not be too hard for you judging by the preceeding thread where you show yourself actively boycotting much of the Old Testament in favor of your private interpretation of one commandment.
“And if success is measured by not having to kill anyone, that one cannot very well claim that killing is not a sin. If killing is not a sin, than why are we even bothering to try to avoid it?” Is disciplining your children when they do something they should have known better than to do, a sin? Certainly not. Do you want to avoid it as much as possible, by hoping the situation does not arise and taking steps to bring up your children in wisdom? I should hope so. There are millions of things that we want to… Read more »
“Is disciplining your children when they do something they should have known better than to do, a sin?” No, but killing them is a sin. You can now proceed to argue that the bible does allow us to kill our children, in fact we are commanded to do so, but that wouldn’t be accurate application of scripture. “People who believe in defending themselves are not by definition heartless monsters.” Precisely, and why are they not heartless monsters? Because they believe killing is a sin, an unfortunate and regrettable one that will weigh heavy on their hearts. And it does, killing… Read more »
So, self-defense is a damnable sin?
And I’d still like to know if you think the 1 Samuel 15 account is a lie or an example of God commanding His People to sin.
Why would God command sin (if killing is by definition sin) while simultaneously condemning sin? That’s common sense? That’s logic? That’s not confusion?
Me,
In a respectful tone of voice, I would request that you please differentiate between murder and “killing”.
There is, after all, a difference with a distinction between the two. Thou shalt not murder is the command.
“In a respectful tone of voice, I would request that you please differentiate between murder and “killing”. You’re very kind, RFB. In a purely spiritual context that is the whole problem, I cannot fully distinguish between the two. Both murder and justified homicide simply stain our souls. So in the world we have abortion, assisted suicide, euthanasia, capital punishment, pre-meditated murder, involuntary manslaughter, all ways of trying to shape the law, attempts to make various forms of killing “not sin.” Morally, ethically, I really believe it is all sin, sin that sometimes the law should show mercy about, sin that… Read more »
ME, have I missed it where you have answered the question about your views of God’s proscribing the death penalty (whether to pagan nations as a whole e.g. the Canaanites, or to individual lawbreakers) in his good and holy Law? Are you saying God commanded his people to sin? Are you saying those commands were not sin then, but things changed and now all killing is sin? Your view is not at all clear on this point.
Me, Again, respectfully, I would not advise you to move against the dictates of your conscience. I do think that it is imperative that for our conscience to operate properly, it must be informed by the Word of God so that it is a conscience with knowledge. It is not difficult to distinguish when we view that God does not see human life as sacred, but one that has dignity because of the image impressed upon it. Nowhere does God posit a blanket prohibition upon killing, and very obviously, He speaks highly of Christian men who were violent and killed… Read more »
“but that does not mean that we as Christians should go around trying to re-label sin.” Nor should we as Christians call something sin, that the Bible does not call sin, even for the very laudable purpose of not wishing to minimize the seriousness of taking human life. You are actually the one doing the re-labeling, as your label of “sin” for every form of killing originates with yourself, not with scripture. One more time (and I think between various people here, this is about fifth time you are being directly asked this): when God commanded killing in some circumstances,… Read more »
“One more time (and I think between various people here, this is about fifth time you are being directly asked this): when God commanded killing in some circumstances, was He commanding sin?” I’ve attempted to answer that question several times, but it’s a complex issue that does not lend itself well to a simple comment. God cannot sin, God is perfect and Holy. We however, are flawed people trapped in a broken world. We cannot avoid sin, “there is none righteous, not one.” No one will ever go through life without sinning. Moses allowed for divorce, was God commanding sin?… Read more »
“Allowing for divorce” is not equivalent to, “I, as a holy God, command that in this circumstance, you will divorce, lest my wrath be upon you.”
God, the holy God, did in fact command that people kill under certain circumstances, under pain of judgment.
How could this be sin?
As Dunsworth pointed out, this DOES NOT address cases such as 1 Samuel 15. Saul sinned by not killing. God commanded killing.
ME, why are you being so hostile? Of course I’d never say that we’re allowed to kill our children. I was simply using analogies to point out that the fact that something is regrettable and you wish to avoid it, has absolutely zero value for the process of determining whether it’s sinful. “To sit there declaring killing is not a sin, it’s a right, and therefore carries no penalties, causes no emotional and spiritual damage, is not only heartless, it’s naive and self righteous.” That would indeed be terrible — naive, cold-hearted, and self-righteous among other things. Fortunately, non one’s… Read more »
Hi ME, I don’t think that all killing is a sin. But I agree with you that it causes great unhappiness to those who are compelled to do it. I don’t believe that any police officer who has to kill someone in the line of duty ever feels okay about it.
Or if they do, it doesn’t speak well of them! I’m sure there are hard-hearted and bloodthirsty police officers in the world, just as there are hard-hearted people of all types.
Of all the combat veterans that I have ever known. The closest to being OK with it that I have ever known is somber acceptance of necessity. Normal folks dont like killing other folks. It is against our design.
I’m curious – do you really think everyone who is attempting to defend guns as a tool of defense is gleeful about the idea of shooting invaders? I know some people are – they hit me pretty hard when I was defending John Piper’s character when he made statements against using guns in self defense (a position I disagree with, but I think the disagreement flows from understanding, and not from any moral perfidy or lack in Piper’s soul and conduct) – but I don’t think Jane or Doug are at all of that mindset.
You are right, not all people are gleeful or exhilarated about the idea shooting someone in defense and I don’t mean to imply they are. However, I do think that we have been heavily influenced by Hollywood and our culture and many, many people do romanticize the idea of being gunslingers. I should also mention that I cut men a great deal of slack here, I mean they are often called to protect and defend, and that’s a beautiful thing, that’s something that should be celebrated, not disparaged. But those I know who have engaged in defense are well aware… Read more »
I agree with you, both about Hollywood glorification of gun violence (and then their actors and directors hypocritically scolding people with guns), and that defense of life that results in killing always has a cost, even if justified.
I also agree that there are some who really do articulate their love of guns for defense in gleeful terms that profoundly disturb me. I just don’t think that everyone here in the comments is exemplifying that attitude.
Ian,
“I just don’t think that everyone here in the comments is exemplifying that attitude.”
Everyone?
Is anyone?
I’m not sure if anyone is in this particular thread. I know some of the people in the thread exemplified that attitude the last time it came up, when John Piper wrote against guns used for self defense.
Mr. Miller, I think that I have not seen the attitude about which you speak. I ask this in the context of “the Lord my God lightens my darkness. For by You I can run against a troop, and by my God I can leap over a wall…He trains my hands for war, so that my arms can bend a bow of bronze…I pursued my enemies and overtook them, and did not turn back till they were consumed. I thrust them through, so that they were not able to rise; they fell under my feet. For You equipped me with… Read more »
And since you bring up David and war and peacefulness, to throw in a tangential comment, I didn’t provide a fraction of the number of Philistine foreskins in order to get my father-in-law to allow me to marry his daughter…. not even a fraction.
Some = Better than none.
Is that the origin of having skin in the game?
I went back to the post about John Piper and noticed two things.
1) You made the same argument there;
2) The attitude I was decrying does, actually, seem to be absent. I believe I was conflating the racism with all the other positions I was frustrated with at the time, and I apologize for that conflation both then and now.
You are correct, and I was not.
To be clear, I was not trying to rub your nose in it.
In my vocational experience we had a humorous saying: “Oh no, not an eye witness”.
It was in reference to the notoriously poor accuracy of human memory, and how it is subject to emotional influences that color the memories. It is not you; it is all of us.
That’s why “just the facts” is so important.
I commend you on your fact checking and willingness to do so. That is called intellectual integrity.
I didn’t get the feeling that you were going for a dominance play – I appreciate you pointing me back at the facts. Thank you. :)
Anybody know any statistics on how many accidential gun injuries and deaths occur from ccw holders acting otherwise lawfully?
Just taking my state into consideration it’s about level with the amount of injuries and deaths caused by law enforcement
Thanks. This is one of the problems with the anti-gun folks. They assume that the bad guys will act good (and follow the law), while the good guys will act bad (by being irresponsible). I have not seen any convincing stats that show either of these counterintutive assumptions is valid.
It’s very, very low. CCW holders are extremely law-abiding. In addition, although those who have access to a gun and are determined to commit suicide usually do so with the gun, they would find another means if the gun were not available — meaning, the presence or not of the gun doesn’t make a measurable difference in suicide rates. In addition, accidental gun shootings by kids are comparable to the number of children who drown in bathtubs each year. So those who play up the danger guns in the home pose toward children ought to also be worried about the… Read more »
Obligatory:
1/2 Hour News Hour – Gun Free Zones
https://youtu.be/S7pGt_O1uM8
Preston Sprinkle sounds like an intelligent, articulate guy. Yea, even a good guy. It is unfortunate that the term “proof texting” is in his vocabulary.
My experience is that people who use that term are trying to make themselves “text proof”. ????
I’ve noticed that, too.
Is that your own phrasing? It’s very good! I want to know who I should credit it to when I use it in the future :)
C’, so far as I know, that phrase was endowed to me from above. To that end, I pronounce it public domain as of now !
????????????
“Let’s ask the burglar. Would he rather work a neighborhood where 100% of the homeowners are unarmed, or would he rather work a neighborhood a third of the homeowners have guns, and he doesn’t know which third?” It doesn’t seem like a hard question, does it? Not until you actually have to walk through those neighborhoods and you realize that those homeowner are far more likely to use those guns to commit suicide than to shoot a thief. When we aren’t fantasizing about all the burglars we are chasing away, we’re actually shooting ourselves, our loved ones, our children, and… Read more »
And take away those guns, and guess what? People still commit suicide and kill their families. That is the real world we live in.
Please.
I am willing to concede that your statements such as “…homeowner are far more likely…” and “…Half the time the good guy is so depressed…” are pure hyperbole to accent your position.
The numbers are decidedly against your position. Read some of Clayton Cramer’s work on the subject.
Then apply the facts to the opinion forming process.
I agree that stronger gun control laws are a reasonable choice, but crime has to be dealt with first. In the US, blacks are around 10x more likely to commit violent crimes than whites. Fix the black problem and the gun problem becomes less of an issue.
As someone with over 3 decades of public safety experience (including all of the formal and non-formal education and training commensurate with that), I will firmly disagree that “stronger gun control laws are…reasonable”. I concede that my experience yields only anecdotal information, not science-based research. Nonetheless, my experience has been that gun control laws only remove guns from those willing to abide by law. I also have seen, as a very consistent experience, a repetitive failure/refusal to prosecute violent and non-violent firearm violations at both the Federal, state and local level. The laws needed to impact crime committed with firearms… Read more »
RFB,
Could you clarify: Are you citing 18 USC 922 (g) as the existing law needed to impact crime committed with firearms, and saying it needs to be enforced? If so, I’m not disagreeing, but that is part of the Gun Control Act, so we are talking about gun control here.
Not really, that is just another underlying dynamic. My point is that there are literally tens of thousands of existing laws, codes and statutes that prohibit virtually any and all non-legitimate possession, transfer and use of firearms. In addition to those, there is an even greater body of law prohibiting violent acts with other instruments. None of these words on paper have any control over the behavior of the unwilling. Someone willing to knock over a stop-n-rob, carjack, etc, are unconcerned that there are laws against such behavior. They do not pause when going for a gat and say, “oh,… Read more »
Well, no, words on paper have no control over anything, but men enforcing the intent of those words does, or would. I think the intent of all that unlawful for any person who is/has, etc. is to keep guns out of the hands of the kind of people who “are unconcerned that there are laws against such behavior”. It hasn’t worked. It hasn’t worked because not enough people are interested in making it work. At first I thought that was where you were going with it.
Your premise of “…not enough people are interested in making it work” is valid and foundational. Those not “interested” are generally not in the apprehension area of LE; it certainly is prevalent at the prosecutor level. My premise is that additional law solves nothing since the existing laws are not being used now. The goal of government restriction of fundamental civil rights is to be by the least restrictive means. In shorthand, that means commend those who do well, and terrorize those who do evil. It does not mean to draw ever tighter concentric circles around generally law abiding citizens… Read more »
The model I find most appealing is how the Czechs handle gun laws. I certainly agree that most gun regulation in the US has been done in bad faith.
The “more likely” part is accurate enough, is the “10x” hyperbole or is that the actual difference? Don’t know, I’m asking.
I’ll dare ask this: What would “fix the black problem” entail in your view? Do I need to brace myself for the answer?
The thing is, no one is contending that guns in the home are a deterrent or defense against violent crime in the home because people are shooting intruders every day. The argument is any given home in a populace where some number of legal guns is present, is safer from violent invasion, than that same home in a populace where guns are not known to be legally available — without a single shot ever having to be fired. ME’s refuting a claim that is never made — that guns are being used to shoot intruders at some fantastic rate, and… Read more »
?? ‘K, but I wasn’t responding to any of that. :)
Sorry, I was responding more to ME above you than to you.
“ME’s refuting a claim that is never made — that guns are being used to
shoot intruders at some fantastic rate, and that this contributes to
safety.”
I said no such thing. In fact, I said the precise opposite.
Then why is it relevant how many gun homicides there are compared to gun suicides? I’m probably just misunderstanding your intent with that statement, but I can’t fathom where it fits into the argument either way.
Statistics are clear that gun suicides far outweigh gun homicides. So if the goal is to protect and defend human life, than we need to be aware of how guns are really being used in the world. Statistics show that it is extremely rare that an armed homeowner will ever confront a burglar. It is not rare that some man will blow his head off, in fact those numbers have grown. The pro-gun argument, which I happen to support, is always about the extremely rare encounter with a thief, right when we happen to be at home and armed. That… Read more »
But you can’t count the homicides that didn’t happen due to deterrence or protection. So I simply don’t see how comparing the two usefully informs us about whether guns for protection are worth the risk of suicide. And the risk of suicide exists only for those at risk of suicide — people don’t commit gun suicide just because there’s a gun lying around. People with family members at risk of suicide shouldn’t keep guns accessible, and gun control won’t prevent gun suicide short of total ban and confiscation. It seems to like your statistic could be used to argue several… Read more »
I think it’s actually more connected to availability than that – the linked sources in this article indicate a drop in suicides coincided with a drop in coal gas ovens – http://www.cracked.com/article_20396_5-mind-blowing-facts-nobody-told-you-about-guns_p3.html (article does contain bad language and some unclear thinking).
Now, that evidence doesn’t get us immediately from “gun availability facilitates suicide” to “banning guns will cause a drop in suicides”, but it did make me think harder about the issue.
Depends on what timespan and what crime you look at; for example, the FBI statistics on arrests for murder in 2012 show a 12x disparity between blacks and whites, per capita.
Well, I knew it was some kind of disparity, and not a small one, so I’m not disputing. Still worried bout your “fix” wording, not knowing just what you have in mind.
I don’t claim to know what’s best. The Liberian experiment was ultimately unsuccessful and probably shouldn’t be repeated. The Rhodesian and South African models are worth studying. Even Black Nationalism and warranteeism are worth putting up for discussion.
Which must be why Japan has a suicide rate sitting at near 0, and why the firearm suicide rate has increased so much with the firearm ownership rate. Oh wait, neither of those is true.
http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/2016/04/robert-farago/cdc-study-suicide-rate-increase-tied-opiate-ods/
“Half the time the good guy is so depressed you have to take his gun away so he doesn’t eat it. That’s the real world we live in.”
I must be living in the other half of the time.
Guns are palateable, with some ranch dressing! ; – )
This is why children should be allowed to wear capes to school! ;- )
(You, Memi, are a brave soul! This is a tough thread!)
Nerdy side note: Batman comic book worlds are actually where the good guy almost never wins. That’s why Batman exists – and he fails about half the time. Superman, though – he usually wins. :)
Your contention that gun ownership increases suicide rates and accidental (or purposeful) home shootings and domestic violence is false. As is your contention about the mentally ill.
– http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/jlpp/Vol30_No2_KatesMauseronline.pdf
– http://johnrlott.tripod.com/whitney.pdf
– http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2146767
I have to imagine Preston’s larger point, in the context of Anabaptists throughout history, is that while it’s not altogether wrong for *someone* to use a gun on another person, the Christian must certainly abstain. It may seem unintuitive, but the police—and we can debate Christians being police at another date—are commissioned by God to do things the Christian is not. After all, we’re all about roles here at Mablog, right? ;)
Well, I don’t know if he meant that he holds that view, but if he did, I would think it would be a world where one must conclude that Christians can’t be police.
Really?
Soldiers also asked him, “And we, what shall we do?” And he said to them, “Do not extort money from anyone by threats or by false accusation, and be content with your wages.”
In other words, do your job and do it right. Nothing in His reply suggests whatsoever that they needed to become flower children.
Point taken. Nor did he encourage anyone to aspire to be a centurion. “Remain where you are called.” ≠ “Go wherever you please.”
Are you conflating Mennonites with flower children?
People, like governments and godly people, are required to act Justly, among other things.
Christians are commissioned to do justice. A good way to do justice is to be a good cop, even a Christian cop.
That’s a flattened view of things, and I don’t think there is scriptural warrant for the Christian *becoming* a law enforcement officer. Even that job title just sounds so unChristian. LOL
Micah 6
He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.
And what does the Lord require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly[a] with your God.
Government should be Just, merciful and Humble. Godly folks are just the folks for that work.
unChristian.
Really?
“But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant (diakonos) of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer.”
And examine the context: “Therefore one must be in subjection, not only to avoid God’s wrath but also for the sake of conscience. For because of this you also pay taxes, for the authorities are ministers of God, attending to this very thing.”
There is that “ministers word again, although this time poised (in Greek) as “servants of God”.
I don’t mean the whole idea. Just idea of Christians being “law enforcers”. That’s the opposite of our calling.
“Our calling…” You mean like Jesus the law enforcer: “And making a whip of cords, he drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and oxen. And he poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables. And he told those who sold the pigeons, “Take these things away; do not make my Father’s house a house of trade.” God calls that attitude for upholding the law “zeal”: “His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.” or Moses the law enforcer: Moses saw that the people had broken loose (for… Read more »
It’s never okay for non-Christians to sin. Either lethal self-defense or public defense is a sin for everybody, or for nobody. And if it’s a sin for anybody, it’s not okay for pagans to do it.
That’s not how the NT authors teach hardly anything. It’s a sin for a woman to teach, but not for a man to. It’s a sin for a young believer to speak to an older one like he’s his dad, but not for the older one to do the same to him. Again, Doug Wilson loves to teach about societal order based on varying roles, and Anabaptists merely teach that government is not a role of Christians.
It is right to have a king but only infidels are qualified to be a king. Interesting theology.
Even if Paul isn’t necessarily excluding Christians from government in his Romans 13 teaching, he’s essentially saying that God commissions “infidels” to rule. That’s just a reality.
Those are not differentiated by “what would be a sin for you, is okay if somebody’s not a Christian,” though.
You’re right, “if it’s a sin, it’s a sin for everybody” was imprecise. Let’s try, if it an action is in any way sinful, being in rebellion against God does not make it acceptable. If an action such as defending the innocent is good, loving God while you do it does not make it bad.
Again, I’m merely speaking about roles. A woman teaching is sinful not because teaching is sinful, but simply because it is not her place to do it (in God’s order of things). Likewise, it is not the Christian’s place to enforce law in society.
“Would he rather work a neighborhood where 100% of the homeowners are unarmed, or would he rather work a neighborhood a third of the homeowners have guns, and he doesn’t know which third?”
Neither, he wants to work the neighborhood where no one is home. If someone is in the house when the break-in occurs, then the best option for the burglar is to flee immediately.
Not if the neighborhood subscribes to Sprinkles’ pacifist stance. In that case it wouldn’t matter if the homeowner was on hand and observing while being robbed. The presence of guns, for competitive target shooting, or whatever, is not particularly relevant to Sprinkles’ larger project of non-violence. Even if the neighborhood was full of gun/sword/baseball bat/etc owners, they would all be obliged to stand by and watch as their guns were robbed from them by the burglars.
Well, if criminals were so rational, why would they be criminals?????
Don’t play with your food Doug.
Great response Doug! See my comment over on Preston’s blog where I posted studies on the number and nature of defensive gun use. If you haven’t read Lott’s “More Guns, Less Crime,” it’s a must read. It blows the gun control arguments to bits. Also, check out my blog for a myriad of resources on this topic: https://brcrenshaw.com/2015/12/12/gun-debate-resources/
Keep up the great work!
Knowing nothing about Preston Sprinkle, I’m not surprised that a person given this name would advocate for non-violence, tidy-ness, smart haircuts, hyper-hygiene, etc. I don’t blame Preston for his name, but it does give an indication of the people / worldview from which he takes his cues. Yes, this is about power and who maintains it. Shall the populace maintain the ability to defend itself (even from the government), or will they be sheep, wholly dependent on summoning death squads? Consider John Crawford III, an innocent man inexplicably decided to carry a real looking pellet gun to a corner of… Read more »
It’s worth noting that the FBI article points out that in at least 11 of the 21 situations where an unarmed man stopped a shooter, it was a school and the person who intervened was prohibited by law from carrying. I would guess another large portion of those 21 incidents were also in gun free zones.
So the article does not tell us that unarmed people are more likely to stop these situations. It tells us unarmed people are more likely to face these situations. Basic, unforced error by Preston.
“defensive gun use” is mostly a myth.
http://www.armedwithreason.com/more-holes-in-the-defensive-gun-use-myth-new-study-finds-dgu-is-ineffective-and-rare/
Most of what gets classified as “DGU” is actually the illegal use of a gun to threaten or intimidate:
http://injuryprevention.bmj.com/content/6/4/263.full
https://www.reddit.com/r/dgu/
This is where people use weapons to repel criminals, sometimes there are civil ramifications…but most stories are where the good guy gets the girl!
And more often this is the kind of thing that people report as ‘defensive gun use’: A 62 year old male said that at 6 pm “the police called. My alarm at my business went off so I went there to shut it off. Two men were outside my building, so from my car I shot at the ground near them”. The respondent said the men were trespassing. A 58 year old male was inside his home at 2 pm. “I was watching a movie and [an acquaintance] interrupted me. I yelled that I was going to shoot him and… Read more »
Here’s one off the top of the stack: A man was shot while breaking into his ex-girlfriend’s residence early Sunday morning, according to the Richland County Sheriff’s Department. Deputies responded to the incident at about 4:30 a.m. at a residence on Bent Tree Lane, not far from Broad River Road. Investigators found that the suspect had forced his way into the home through a window, according to the sheriff’s department. An acquaintance of the victim shot the suspect in the upper body, officials said. Read more here: http://www.thestate.com/news/local/article73651457.html#storylink=cpy Perhaps you find helping ladies defend themselves equal to illegal use “to… Read more »
Sorry, but anecdotes don’t trump data. Yes occasionally people use guns to defend themselves, but far more often those guns are used to threaten intimidate injure or kill innocent people.
If you read the comment you’re replying to a little more carefully you’ll note that I said DGU is “mostly” a myth, not that it never happens.
But when you look at the data it’s apparent that more guns = more crime, not less.
Oooh, you qualified the statement, how clever! So, you’re “mostly” wrong? (Almost had ya)
So many DGUs aren’t officially recorded, because people remedy the situation WITHOUT actually using the violence they’re prepared to deliver.
http://www.buckeyefirearms.org/myth-3-25-million-defensive-gun-uses-each-year-cant-be-accurate
No, my statement hasn’t changed at all; you just missed it the first time.
The studies I linked you to aren’t based on official reports, they’re based on surveys and self reporting. The results are the same. More guns = more crime.
Just because a bullet isn’t fired doesn’t mean the gun wasn’t useful. Just ask the Army about all of those tanks in the Fulda Gap that never faced a Soviet invasion. (one of them driven for a while by a friend of mine)
Yes, but if you look at the links I provided the use the gun is put to is far more often illegal intimidation or threats, not self defense. Whether or not the gun is fired is not the issue.
More guns = more crime.
Yes, that’s why the crime rate has plunged as the number of guns out there has doubled. See why I don’t take your “sources” seriously? They simply don’t pass a basic knowledge giggle test.
Correlation is not causation, the drop in the crime rate has more to do with things like an aging population.
But where there are more guns, and less regulation of guns, there is always more violent crime:
http://www.nber.org/papers/w7967
http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/abs/10.2105/AJPH.2013.301409?journalCode=ajph
Absolutely. That’s why in Washington DC, where guns are all but banned, they have about 18 murders per 100,000 people, but in Alexandria VA, where shall issue carry is the law, they have 2-3 murders per 100,000 people. That’s also why Chicago’s murder rate is so much higher than that of its suburbs.
Do you ever get tired of spreading nonsense from your keyboard?
Did you look at the links? Cherry picking two points doesn’t invalidate the overall data…
Your sources more or less mimic the discredited logic of the Kellerman study. Hence you are spreading absurdity.
More examples: compare the murder rates in New York City with those of her suburbs. Murder is by and large a consequence of kids without fathers in the home, not availability of guns.
You haven’t even looked at them have you?
And how would I know Siegel et al were using Kellerman’s methodology if I had not? Sorry, but at the micro and macro level, your sources fail because they simply don’t reflect what’s been learned in the past 15 years. Specifically, that shall issue concealed carry reduces crime.
So I’m not 100% on the argument here, whether it is about an extreme pacifist ideology or gun control in general. But if the latter, here are some interesting statistics: http://www.vox.com/2015/8/24/9183525/gun-violence-statistics I don’t know, while I don’t oppose gun ownership as a general principle, I don’t see why anyone ought to have an arsenal in their rec room. A person living in rural areas should be able to have a shotgun and/or rifle handy, a person hiking the Oregon trail should be able to carry a weapon with them, but at a school you should leave your guns home. Surely… Read more »
“but at a school you should leave your guns home. Surely it can be acknowledged that there is a time and place for these sorts of things.” I agree, theoretically, at a school you should leave your guns home. Unfortunately, as we know, there are people who don’t care that you or I think that, and so therefore I would rather have some of the people who are not there to kill people armed, so that when the people who are there to kill people show up, fewer people get killed. Or better yet, the people who are there to… Read more »
Ma’am,
“”but at a school you should leave your guns home…”
I will concede that the culture has changed. Nonetheless, in the years that I have been on earth it was common in any number of schools to have shooting clubs with students carrying their rifles to school. They saw it as a legitimate skill for both preparation for military endeavor as well as sporting activities. The same was also very common in colleges and ROTC activities. It was not an alien concept, and the fainting couches remained unoccupied.
I’m a school teacher at a school where all guns are banned. We are trained to hide under the desks when there is an active shooter.
If you want to go on a rampage and get as many kills as possible, there is no better place than our school. You have a guaranteed 10 minutes with gun free innocents. Gun free zones are MAGNETS for the psycho.
And cold war kids were hard to kill
Under their desks in an air-raid drill
— Billy Joel
Maybe we should call the church’s prayer chain coordinator instead.
Hmmm. Not particularly funny.
And to be honest, I am likely to text my wife or others saying guns have been fired and could they pray, and then ring the police. I suspect that they would inform others as well.
Thanks for saying that, Bethyada.
…threw up a bit in my mouth
When you are on a plane and your death is all but assured and there is not gun you can reach for to save yourself, you learn that prayer is far more important than we think. I too should simply like to take matters into my own hands and run about shooting the bad guys, but life has a way of handing you things that cannot be shot. So, all those men who eat their guns need to know this, they need to understand the power of prayer. If the goal is to save human life, then statistics show us… Read more »
Prayer is super important and necessary to life, but praying for food when you have a full plate in front of you is just plain ungrateful.
Agreed, we can all practice this by reciting the Lords Prayer at target practice this week.
That’s some real Clint Eastwood stuff right there
That would be lovely. Much appreciated.
It’s super funny. Taking time out in a situation like this to call the prayer warriors to ask for Gods help to send in the armed warriors when all the time that you may have is to call the armed warriors yourself is seriously funny.
It’s not extra spiritual or holy to ignore the blessing God put in your hands. In fact it’s probably a sin.
Reminds me of the dude in the sinking boat joke…
Steve, I think I get what Doug was implying here. And if we want to have a laugh at the expense of the people on the prayer chain that is one thing. But as we are to be men of prayer and our strength is not in night but in the Lord, this strikes me as too close to laughing at the idea of prayer in such a situation. The Lord stopped to address a women ill for 12 years on the way to to treat a girl actively dying. So while I would call the police, and try to… Read more »
Take that thought experiment to a hundred women with criminal records.cevery rapist knows that she is unarmed
There’s only one thing that separates the good guys with guns from the bad guys with guns, and that is that the good guys are aware that killing is a sin and they desire to preserve as much human life as possible. Take away the concept that killing is a sin and you’ve completely erased the line between the good guys and the bad guys. I really support Wilson’s position, I am all about gun rights, but in this particular discussion I favor what Preston has laid out far more because he expressed an understanding that taking a human life… Read more »
Killing is not, per se, a sin.
“…because he expressed an understanding that taking a human life is undesirable…”
Which is not the same as saying killing is a sin.
It is fair and right to force the anti-gun crowd who are pacifists to stop arguing as if they are not. To advocate the use of non lethal force, or lethal force only by the state, would run into the same problems with “turn the other cheek” they claim their opponents don’t reckon with. If you are going to hyperbolize that text and make it about non-violence, stop pretending the state is free from the biblical morality you have crafted. Or that you can half follow your ethics by saying”strike them back on the cheek as long as you don’t… Read more »
Since this is now a day-old thread I’ll go off-topic and ask: Are we now willing to admit that Cruz will not be elected president, and he cemented that fact by drinking the political hemlock of announcing Fiorina as his running mate?
I’m not anti-gun. In fact, I’m a gun owner myself. But I am anti-put-your-faith-in-guns. I am anti-killing-people. And so I strongly disagree with the post. Jesus’s note that you can only have one master is quite true. We can put our faith in God and place our lives in God’s hands and instruction, or we can put our faith in the power and violence of firearms and place our lives in the measure of our relative skill and brutality comparison to our rival in violence. This does NOT mean that you can’t still have guns and God, just like you… Read more »
https://youtu.be/VTAZ7xzZKAw
Brilliant!
Yes, even in the “constitutional” days of the 1800s, when most of my arguments against violence would not have been given the time of day, it was common for open carry to be banned within the city limits in towns in dangerous regions, and for concealed carry to be banned altogether. Lawmen like Wyatt Earp ran into trouble with outlaws because they were trying to enforce gun control far stricter than anything “conservatives” would allow today.
I’d rather focus on the spiritual, Biblical side of this argument (see my other comment), because I’ve noticed that once focus turns to arguments over statistics, the spiritual nature tends to disappear entirely and it dissolves into a useless mess of people steadfastly determined to believe whatever numbers support their case and refusing to listen to anything else, and really becomes quite unproductive on both sides. So I want to write a quick comment disputing Pastor Wilson’s brief factual claims, a few studies to back up my claim, and then a note on John Lott since he really is the… Read more »
Here are links to the studies that due a much better job of investigating the various links between guns and crime than the cherry-picked random correlations used earlier. Not every one of these studies perfectly agree with each other – they use very different data sets and methodologies – but looking at them as a whole gives a good idea of what the main understandings are. Concealed Carry Permits “This research suggests that the rate at which CHLs (concealed handgun licenses) are issued and crime rates are independent of one another — crime does not drive CHLs; CHLs do not… Read more »
Finally, anyone can take cherry-pick ridiculous numbers and claim they’re making a pro-concealed carry argument, as Pastor Wilson did above. However, those claims are so false on their face that they can be demolished in a paragraph, as I did above. However, there’s one researcher who has spent the last 20 years trying to use more rigorous studies to prove that concealed carry laws prevent enormous numbers of crime, despite all the evidence going against him. His name is John Lott, and he is a liar and a fraud. Don’t take my word for it, listen to Michelle Malkin, who… Read more »
“but never once called a single Christian to bloody their own hands with violent judgment against anyone else.”
Do you mean Christians like Moses and Elijah?
I’m not aware of the “Christians” named Moses and Elijah whom you refer to. I’m not aware of anyone being called “Christians” until Acts 11, when the disciples were first called Christians because there was something distinctly different about them. What is asked of Jewish obedience before the death and resurrection of Christ is not what is asked of Christian obedience after the death and resurrection of Christ. We have been given a new covenant, a covenant of peace, and we’ve been given new hearts of flesh, with which we can obey in a new way. It is clear that… Read more »
Well sir, we will obviously disagree. To that end, this will be my last interface with you on the subject since more than likely there will be no agreement. I think, as St. Paul said, that “…these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come.” (Also, as a brief aside, we do know that the Spirit of God was given to His prophets, the men of which we speak.) Where you see discontinuity, I see connection. I do not see the beginning as divorced… Read more »
I think you’re confusing “faith” and different calls to obedience.
I never one criticized the faith of our Jewish forefathers. But they were clearly called to a different obedience than we were.
I think, as I said earlier, that you’re conflating faith and obedience. Of course we have faith in the same God as Abraham. But those who followed “The Way” were practicing an obedience notably different than the obedience of those who had come before them, or even the Jews who were there right alongside them. That’s why they were getting called by new names – because they were visibly different. It is a new covenant. It is different than the old covenant. Our obedience that we are called to in that covenant is obviously different. That does NOT mean that… Read more »
Aside from anything else, this is statistical illiteracy: “But 26 of 160 were stopped when someone in the crowd stopped the shooter. You might think this is a decent enough percentage to justify the good guy with a gun myth, but according to the study, only 5 were stopped with a guy with a gun while 21 were stopped by unarmed civilians. Good guys with no guns were four times more successful at stopping bad guys with guns.“ You can’t say they were *four times more successful* based on the information given. You can say it happened four times more… Read more »
As long as we’re talking about “statistical illiteracy”, it bears mentioning that the “statistics” Pastor Wilson cited for his own argument were somewhere between clear deception and outright lies.
There’s not much space between “clear deception” and “outright lies”, so that’s a strong claim. I agree that correlation does not prove causation, but it does make it harder to prove the opposite relationship. Do you have figures to cite which show that more concealed carry makes violent crime go up?
Here’s what I wrote earlier: I consider 2 of the claims to be clear deception and the other to be an outright lie, and I agree there’s little space there. #1: Pastor Wilson falsely implies that concealed carry laws have a measured effect on crime The claim “States that have banned concealed carry have violent crime rates that are 11% above the national average” was copied-and-pasted straight from http://www.gunfacts.info. However, I looked it up, and it turned out to be completely made up. First off, there are only 4 states that “ban” concealed carry – Rhode Island, New Jersey, Maryland,… Read more »
You put a lot of work into that comment, so it deserves a “thank you” :-)
Gerv
1993: 9,922
1994: 9,102
1995: 8,563
1996: 8,376 – first year that concealed carry permits were granted in Texas
1997: 8,011
1998: 7,913
1999: 7,614
2000: 7,856 – only four years later and forcible rape started going back up
2001: 8,169
2002: 8,508
Two things. What is population each year? What is relative population of the illegal Mexicans living there? Or have those numbers been normed to those two factors?
Here is population (US Census estimated) 1993 17996764 1994 18338319 1995 18679706 1996 19006240 1997 19355427 1998 19712389 1999 20044141 2000 20851820 28142190 2001 21334855 2002 21723220 Here are your numbers… 1993: 9,922 1994: 9,102 1995: 8,563 1996: 8,376 – first year that concealed carry permits were granted in Texas 1997: 8,011 1998: 7,913 1999: 7,614 2000: 7,856 – only four years later and forcible rape started going back up 2001: 8,169 2002: 8,508 Taking only the first and last number (I have to get ready for work, so I leave the rest of the math to you) and plugging… Read more »
Timothy, do you not see that with or without the population numbers, there’s no discernible relationship between the drops in rape numbers and the CCP law? The drops were clearly occurring and were in fact largest long BEFORE the CCP were even granted, while the population increase was fairly steady. And the fact that rape numbers were dropping in Texas BEFORE any CCP law was ever passed isn’t a surprising thing because violent crime in general and rape in particular has been dropping all across the country since its peak in 1992, regardless of where and when CCP laws were… Read more »
“What is relative population of the illegal Mexicans living there?” “Since Mexicans are more violent than Americans and Texas has (presumably) seen an increase in the proportional Mexican population, the numbers can be further adjusted.” “Furthermore, in the aftermath of Katrina a large population of welfare blacks moved to Houston.” Timothy, from years of experience I think I’ve just have to concede that you cannot meaningfully dialogue or listen on race issues, and I’m simply not going to engage with you on them anymore. Did you forget Hurricane Katrina happened three years AFTER the last data point I typed? And… Read more »
I doubt that CC laws make violent crime go up. I don’t think that CC laws have a huge effect on how many people are participating in CC – the states that pass such laws have people carrying already, the states that don’t pass such laws won’t have many people carrying anyway. And the general body of people who get CCP are likely in low-crime groups. I would expect that overall CC makes crime somewhat more deadly than it would be otherwise (for the instigator and CC holder both), but that that difference would be hard to observe at the… Read more »
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/justin-curmi-/a-revision-on-the-bill-of_3_b_9772428.html
The main problem with the notion of self-defense is it imposes on justice, for everyone has the right for a fair trial. Therefore, using a firearm to defend oneself is not legal because if the attacker is killed, he or she is devoid of his or her rights.
This fellow must read a lot of John Piper!
Can we get some thoughts on Jesus making a weapon and driving the money-changers out of the temple? Did I miss such comments from Preston and/or Wilson? Is the discussion limited to lethal violence?
He tied some cords together on the spot and drove out some livestock with them.
“Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle.”
I think that lethal violence is categorically different from non-lethal violence, but as the violence in this passage is limited to animals even that doesn’t apply anyway. The passage was discussed extensively in the comments on the previous post on this topic.
Logic hurts sometimes. :)
You did see that all three numbers he posted were misleading and/or lies?
Logic that needs false statistics to support itself is likely also to be false logic.
Pastor Wilson, I’m still quite disappointed in the fact that 2 of the 3 “statistics” you quoted were untrue, and you still haven’t done anything to rectify that fact even though it’s been pointed out over and over again. What happens to violent crime rates when concealed carry laws are widely in effect? When Florida passed their concealed carry laws, their homicide rates went from 36% above the national average to 4% below. States that have banned concealed carry have violent crime rates that are 11% above the national average. In Texas, the first year after concealed carry passed, their… Read more »