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Bishop says tighter gun laws will help build culture of life
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Fairwinds
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why should I care about what foreigners think about American law?
more importantly, how did this stray from a discussion on how we are to consider an American bishop’s poorly formed opinion (“assault rifle” is a hot button term used by gun grabbers, so anyone using it is either uninformed on second amendment law at best or opening adopting the grabber position).
you can post all the cherry picked stats you want on a thread where gun control is the topic, I could match them with better sources showing you are wrong, again. however, this is not the place for that debate.
gun grabbers have a fantasy about confiscating semi-automatic rifles. this would be in defiance of American constitutional law, so if you’re so concerned about rendering unto Ceasar, start with a better understanding of what Ceasar says.
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Fairwinds
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is confiscation of semi-automatic rifles (what the bishop was really trying to say, once the grabber language is clarified) the teaching of the Church that I am required to obey?
a simple “yes” or “no” will suffice.
inquiring minds want to know.
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HansTrappist
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Abortion is an issue of faith and morals due to the fact that an intrinsic evil is involved.
Gun control is not an issue of faith and morals. Guns are not intrinsically evil.
Self-defense is a basic human right, so perhaps this aspect of “gun control” is what you are alluding to. But gun control as an issue of public policy is not an issue of faith and morals. The bishop is certainly free to give his political opinion here, but he is not teaching on a issue of faith and morals.
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LilyM
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No, but then confiscation of 100 cats that someone is keeping in a 1-bedroom flat isn’t either. Does that mean that it isn’t a sensible thing to do? Or that a bishop cannot and should not teach that it is the moral thing to do rather than let the welfare of those cats (or for that matter their owner) be compromised?
Human welfare is certainly a matter of faith and morals, just as animal welfare is, and accordingly the prevalence and control of guns is a legitimate sphere for comment and teaching as the prevalence and control of neglectful cat owners.
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HansTrappist
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No.
Gun control is not an issue of faith and morals.
It is a petty political issue.
Abortion is an issue of faith and morals because it is intrinsically evil.
Owning guns is not intrinsically evil.
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Fairwinds
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agreed with all, adding that using guns is not intrinsically evil either. I disagree that this is a petty issue, I have a professional interest in constitutional law.
if the Church issues directions on control of auto-loading rifles and magazine capacity, I will, of course, obey. but as friend Prodigal must admit, Caesar permits them to his subjects under a well developed set of laws that balance private rights and public interest.
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ishii
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I would guess that some countries think America has a problem with its free speech. In Canada you can get in trouble if you say the wrong things about muslims.
cbc.ca/news/world/story/2008/06/13/f-rfa-macdonald.html
America is a unique country with lots of freedom - and with that freedom comes a need for virtue and order. When we lose that (as we are in the process of doing) then we can expect all the gun violence to escalate. People complain when we bring abortion into the debate, but why not? Abortion is the ultimate act of violence against the innocent. Its not hard to see why so many have no regard for life.
America with all its problems - gangs, immigrants, over-medicated upper middle class nihilist teenagers, the mentally ill, Islamic terrorists, etc - those issues result in lots of gun violence. Those problems are not created by the 2nd Amendment, but the right to own guns and the widespread existence of guns in this country does make it easier for those problems to manifest themselves via gun violence. As we have seen, sometimes it manifests itself in knife violence - as we saw recently. In Japan, their societal problems manifest themselves in Jr. High bullying and knife attacks. And suicides - they often jump in front of oncoming trains. Maybe we need train control.
This is no simple matter - and there is no easy solution such as gun control which will solve or lessen these problems, even though oppportunistic politicians will offer simplistic solutions and slogans that betray their ideology and their disdain for the constitution. We need to address the root causes of these issues. Gun control doesn’t work - look at the big cities in this country - they often have the strictist gun control measures in effect. And yet, they have the highest gun/homicide rates in the country.
Ishii
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Prodigal_Son1
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What foreigners? The Business Insider is an American company.
I provided that because the media very well maybe where a bishop might get information.
One of the interesting statistics offered in the article shows the power of big money lobby, and how it has possibly prevented some research from taking place.
Really? Must this discussion continue with the ‘slurs’ and condescension? I gave my explanations of why my faith formed conscience is what it is. I have tried to avoid the slurs, condescension, and only give articulation to my own point of view. Charity is required of all of us.
My view of Caesar’s is not based on something I prefer to hold back for myself. Everything on this earth is of this world, and will not be taken into the next life. Read Roman’s 13 and see if you can find any correlation with ‘render unto Caesar.’
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Prodigal_Son1
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No. Now, may I explain, or do you only want to talk down to me? Ease up with the tone, or I won’t bother responding.
I believe what the bishop was ‘trying’ to say, was said. No more, no less. He did not use the term ‘confiscation.’ Maybe some plain speak would help us at this point. Drop the slurs, and explain how you interpret bans to possibly be? Keep in mind the guns Adam Lanza used were ‘banned,’ but his were ‘grandfathered.’
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Prodigal_Son1
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We haven’t had a universal background check, required of every sale. Kind of hard to say it would, or would not, have some impact. Simply saying ‘gun controls don’t work,’ isn’t an answer. Choosing metropolitan areas, of high masses of people, is very much a point in itself, especially in a nation that has the amount of guns available to the public.
I’m not going to discuss the trains, planes, cars, etc. scenarios. They were designed for travel, guns were not. We seem to get off topic quite a bit. All issues are important, but each topic is it’s own. It’s not like our bishops only address one or two issues. I’m thankful they guide us on the multitude of issues.
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SamH
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If I own 100 firearms who am I hurting? Or as in your example is it in the best interest of the guns to have more room to move about?
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Fairwinds
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from post 1:
this demand to ban “assault weapons” is not a matter of faith and morals in which I must be obedient to the Church. I actively oppose it and support the present status of gun control law as it is consistent with the second amendment. by supporting a “ban” you are opposing Caesar.
I don’t expect plain speak from the gun grabbing lobby. an “assault weapon” means whatever is expedient to grabbers, usually meaning scary features like bayonet lugs or thumb hole stocks; “assault rifle” has a more specific military meaning, generally, a semi/automatic sub-.30 caliber rifle, cf, “battle rifle”.
likewise, “ban” is a weasel term. confiscation or future prohibition without grandfather clauses are, for me, distinctions without differences. I intend to replace my national match grade AR15 with a better model. the grabbers and the bishop don’t want me to because why… they fear me shooting up a school? they don’t like guns in general? they attribute the motivations of gang bangers to middle class citizens?
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Prodigal_Son1
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I can understand the calls for bans, when those type guns seem to draw the psyche of those with a propensity to use those guns specifically against society. One can only assume a false sense of power attracts them.
In agreeing with ‘common sense’ controls, such as universal background checks/registrations, I have to listen to such arguments as if Ms. Lanza is speaking. She was a law abiding citizen. She wasn’t the danger, unless some culpability can be attributed to her storage procedures. Many, 9 of 10, gun owners agree with the necessity of universal background checks. Ms. Lanza’s guns were not used by ‘gang bangers,’ and I think it would be false for anyone to attribute blame as such.
It’s not you, in particular, that anyone ‘fears.’ It’s the access to guns that is provided in the number of guns in this country. While you may be very safe, and have the highest security storage system, it’s not something we can expect of every gun owner. People are not equal in all aspects. I wouldn’t be opposed to safe storage requirements, not so much that everyone needs those requirements, because of those who don’t take safe precautions with their guns.
It’s the actions, sometimes through the access and use of guns, that immoral is entered into. If ‘Caesar’ wants to regulate a right given by ‘Caesar,’ we are called to give to Caesar, that which is his and give to God, that which is His.
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SamH
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Just curious - anyone know what an assault weapon is? Is it my .22 rifle with a 20 round magazine or is it my FN A5 bolt action .308 with a Night Force scope?
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Prodigal_Son1
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The last four mass shootings happened with a Bushmaster AR15 style weapon. Throwing semantics into the discussion doesn’t remove the actual type weapons being discussed. There were legal definitions during the ban, and more definitions offered in a proposed ban. I think to argue otherwise doesn’t help the view.
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Ender
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No one would accept for a minute that bishops ought to be prescribing medicines even though we all recognize and accept that we have a responsibility to heal the sick, but if prescribing medicine - which is necessary to heal the sick, which is a matter of human welfare, and which is certainly a matter of faith and morals - does not involve bishops writing prescriptions, then what argument is there for them offering their prescriptions for solutions to other problems? We look to people with the proper expertise to provide solutions to social problems and gun control is no more within a bishop’s sphere of knowledge than is medicine.
This is all wrong. It is one thing to condemn inhumane treatment of animals but quite another to craft laws to deal with such instances and this is the distinction people who support the involvement of bishops in political matters fail to understand. That it is easy to see when someone is sick gives us no insight into how to cure the illness and though it is a bishop’s role to point out various societal illnesses and call for them to be addressed it is not his role to prescribe the solutions.
Ender
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Fairwinds
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an “assault weapon” is whatever the gun grabbers want it to mean, the name was coined because “assault rifles” are difficult if not impossible to get legally and “weapon” is scarier than “rifle”. your .22 is probably one because you, know… they say it is. your FN A5 is scary looking, but its only a bolt action. but its menacing looking, so maybe.
an “assault rifle” in military usage usually means a sub-.30 cal. semi/automatic rifle, like an M16. a .30-06 BAR is not an assault rifle.
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Ridgerunner
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I don’t think you would try to argue that those mass shooters would not have done what they did at all, but for AR-15s. Your argument, as expressed before, is that some fewer would have been killed had the shooters been obliged to use other weapons.The last four mass shootings happened with a Bushmaster AR15 style weapon. Throwing semantics into the discussion doesn’t remove the actual type weapons being discussed. There were legal definitions during the ban, and more definitions offered in a proposed ban. I think to argue otherwise doesn’t help the view.
But there’s no certainty of that, since one would have to know the resources and imagination of a shooter (or bomber, perhaps, like McVeigh who killed more than all the recent shooters combined) to know anything like that.
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Fairwinds
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the last hundred high power matches I’ve been to had thousands of AR type rifles on the scene of the non-crime, hundreds of thousands of shots fired by men, women and children, and not a single fatality.The last four mass shootings happened with a Bushmaster AR15 style weapon. Throwing semantics into the discussion doesn’t remove the actual type weapons being discussed. There were legal definitions during the ban, and more definitions offered in a proposed ban. I think to argue otherwise doesn’t help the view.
and just what are the type weapons? semiautomatics? the difference between an AR and many hunting rifles is cosmetic only (unless bayonet lugs makes rifles more dangerous).
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