Gun Control & the Catholic Church

[Bennie_P]

I don’t understand the 2 photos with the word “OR” between them. What is the point?

Are you saying that people cannot enjoy firearms AND be faithful to Christ?


By the way, the passage you quote (Luke 9:23-25) is NOT really relevant to someone who is protecting his life from a mugger. It clearly is written to say that a religious martyr, who loses his life in defense of the faith, shall be with Christ. It does, however, not address anything to do with saving your life from a robber/murderer. Consequently your passage was irrelevant to the topic of self defense.

I’m sorry I it is typ-o it was supoose to be For

 

[Bennie_P]

I need to ask you guys to forgive me. Though I have no problems with gun ownership, self-protection, etc. I also have no problems with some sort of gun regulation and taking certain types of weapons out of production. But it really isn’t a priorty for me either way.

I think the justifications you give for your positions are weak, mainly the justifications from the Church standpoint and I really wish you could see that. As to using the constitutuion it may give you your stronger defense for “rights” to bear arms, but as we see with how the constitution can be twisted, as some of you pointed out, has allowed for the worst crime and abomination mankind can do and that is murder innocent children even before they are born.(this is my #1 political priority, to stop abortion.) The constitution is man made and apparently not worth the paper it is written on. We are also seeing that it is being used to shout down and silence the Church’s voice in all discussion of morality and justice.

I have been egging you on, If you want to use your time, your money etc., on this issue, gun control, it is your choice and your right.
I just hope I have given you couple things to think about.
Forgive me if I tempted you stumble.

 

[Sir_Knight]

Because He wants us to use our free will…I think though that His statements on the sword were pretty obvious, though.

Not when He earlier told them to sell their outer garments to buy a sword. What’s the point of buying a weapon if it is not intended to be used? Couldn’t that money have been better spent by providing for the poor? Obviously, Jesus intended for the weapon to be used if required.

No…I’m not getting back into this discussion–just wanted to say that.

Could have fooled me.

 

[Sir_Knight]

And St Francis is one the “soldier” Saints, he was soldier that gave up the sword to live for Christ. So was St Ignatious of Layola, that is a soldier tha gave up the sword to follow Christ. Saint George was killed for not denying Christ, not in battle but as a martyr, unless you want to count that Dragon thing, (I wear a St George Medal). Saint Michael is in Battle with Satan for us, so I guess his sword is really symbolic as the Sword of Truth?:knight2: Your point?

And St. Gabriel Possenti was a seminary student studying for the priesthood when his seminary and his village was attacked by terrorists. Using a GUN, he saved his school and town.

http://www.possentisociety.com/images/shot_big.jpg

Sixty years later, the church OFFICIALLY declared him a saint.

 

[Sir_Knight]

This is **your **opinion here not Church teaching. You show me where the Church tells us the best means of protecting oneself is with a firearm?- you are stretching to come to this conclusion.

It is OFFICIAL Church teaching that we have a GRAVE duty to protect ourselves. A grave duty MUST be accomplished by the BEST means possible. It is MY opinion that in MOST cases, the BEST means of personal defense is with a firearm. This is evident that those who might find themselves into life-threatening situations (police, soldiers, etc.), arm themselves with a gun. That, pretty much CONFIRMS my opinion.

Rom 8:31 *What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who is against us? *
Rom 8:32 He that spared not even his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how hath he not also, with him, given us all things?
Rom 8:33 Who shall accuse against the elect of God? God is he that justifieth:
Rom 8:34 Who is he that shall condemn? Christ Jesus that died: yea that is risen also again, who is at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us.
Rom 8:35 Who then shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation? Or distress? Or famine? Or nakedness? Or danger? Or persecution? Or the sword?
Rom 8:36 (As it is written: For thy sake, we are put to death all the day long. We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.)
Rom 8:37 But in all these things we overcome, because of him that hath loved us. :bible1:

Our best means of protection is putting our lives into the hands of Christ.

God does not expect us to just sit back and do nothing ourselves because we place our trust in Him.

 14What is the use (profit), my brethren, for anyone to profess to have faith if he has no [good] works [to show for it]? Can [such] faith save [his soul]? 15If a brother or sister is poorly clad and lacks food for each day,   16And one of you says to him, Good-bye! Keep [yourself] warm and well fed, without giving him the necessities for the body, what good does that do?   17So also faith, if it does not have works (deeds and actions of obedience to back it up), by itself is destitute of power (inoperative, dead).

If a person is being attacked, and we fail to come to their aid, we have failed in our responsibility to protect others EVEN IF we trusted in God to protect them. Maybe, God was going to use US to protect them and we FAILED in that DUTY. The same applies to protecting ourselves since we are duty bound to take an equal amount of care of ourselves as we do of others.

 

[Bennie_P]

And St. Gabriel Possenti was a seminary student studying for the priesthood when his seminary and his village was attacked by terrorists. Using a GUN, he saved his school and town.

Sixty years later, the church OFFICIALLY declared him a saint.

But this incident isn’t the reason he was delclared a Saint and it isn’t even mention in his biography. He was declared a Saint for his devotion for Our Mother Mary. Here is his official biography from the Passionists web sight.

St. Gabriel Possenti
a heart dedicated to Our Blessed Mother

Gabriel loved Mary as his Sorrowing Mother, the woman who saw her own Son die on the Cross. Gabriel stood next to her on the Cross, to be a “son” to her in Jesus’ place. He stood by her to show the many others how they too must become her sons and daughters.
The story of Gabriel spread throughout Italy and beyond at the very time Catholics were drawing new strength from Lourdes and La Salette, and the solemn proclamation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. His devotion served as an example for the growing Marian spirituality of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Gabriel’s love for Mary would respond to the teaching of the II Vatican Council on Mary and the role that Council describes to be hers in the Church.
Above all, Gabriel had become in the few years of his religious life the “sign” of holiness and dedication that each Christian is called to become. Through his struggle as a youth to commit himself to the Cross - and in so many other ways he has become the “sign” which the Second Vatican Council expects of every religious!

St. Paul the Apostle writes in his first letter to the Corinthians, how He preaches Christ and him Crucified. Today, 2000 years later, we Passionists see the Passion of Christ in the suffering of the world.
We Passionists make the Paschal Mystery the center of our lives.

I wonder what he wants to be known for?

http://www.passionistmonastery.org/images/people/sacred-heart-cropped.jpg

 

[ablaifall]

I’ve never heard of a anti-personal defense (i.e. pro-gun control) sermon by a priest or bishop, but I live in a pretty rural state.

Sometimes, the police just plain old can’t come at all. There are no cops covering my town from 1am to 5am each weekday. That is true of many Vermont towns. But, Vermont is one of the most heavily armed states in the Union (except Burlington, crime capital of the state).

The Church recognizes our duty to protect our family and neighbors from evildoers. It is totally okay for Catholics to own firearms. The Church recognizes that police officers are rarely in a position to prevent crime, but are usually only able to prosecute criminals after the fact. They can’t be everywhere at all times. We are not asked by the Church to allow our innocent children to be victims of evil.

Go in Peace to the gun store.:knight2:

 

[melensdad]

‘enjoy’ firearms?

Yes, my family and I enjoy using our firearms as a way of spending quality family time together. Shooting brings us closer together as we have a wonderful common activity that we can do as a family

Here is my 12 year with her semi-automatic rifle in the back ‘yard.’ We have a whole shooting range set up back there. That cute little rifle with the nice wood stock is something that you would call an “Assault Weapon.” In one of the photos it even shows it with one of those evil 30 round “High Capacity” magazines. It is “Capable of Accepting” other evil cosmetic accessories that really don’t do anything and are not linked to crime, but seem to be favorite “features” that anti-gun people want to ban like “flash suppressors” and “folding stocks” but then again every rifle is capable of that, even an old hunting rifle . . . such are the misunderstandings of folks who don’t know about guns, and those misunderstandings are used, in the form of lies, by noted anti-gunners like Rev Jesse Jackson, Fr Michael Plfleger and the Brady Campaign.

The positive side benefit of learning about guns *(both my wife and I grew up in non-gun owning households) *is that we have learned that the anti-gun myths are generally lies. Another side benefit is that we have learned a lot more about safety and moderation. We also learned how to defend ourselves from an aggressor. We’ve had many guests come to our house to learn about shooting, many were from foreign nations and areas where guns are banned (quite a few visit from Japan). One of the first things they want to do is learn about guns.

While it is easy for anti-gun people to see crime and blame guns, it would be easier if anti-gunners opened their eyes/minds and saw the friendships and fellowships that can be developed when guns are used to bring people together

(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)

(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)

 

[Bennie_P]

**

CHILDREN AND GUNS A LETHAL COMBINATION

In 2004, nearly eight young people aged 19 and under were killed each day by a firearm in the
United States. [1] In 2005, nearly 45 per day were non-fatally wounded. [2] The scourge of gun
violence frequently attacks the most helpless members of our society - our children. Consider
these facts:
• In 2004, 1,804 children and teenagers were murdered in gun homicides, 846 committed
suicide with guns, and 143 died in unintentional shootings. A total of 2,852 young people
were killed by firearms in the U.S., one every three hours. [3]
• In 2004, 82% of murder victims aged 13 to 19 years old were killed with a firearm. [4]
• During 2004, 55% of all murders of those under age 18 in the U.S. involved firearms. [5]
• Firearms are the second-leading cause of death (after motor vehicle accidents) for young
people 19 and under in the U.S. [6]
• The rate of firearm death of under 14-years-old is nearly **12 **times higher in the U.S. than
in 25 other industrialized countries combined. [7]
• In 2004, for every child and teenager killed by a gun, nearly five were estimated to be
non-fatally wounded. [8]
• From 1999 to 2004, firearms were responsible for 18% of injury deaths for Caucasian
teens ages 13-19 in the United States, 51% of deaths for African-American teens, 31% of
Hispanic teens, 18% of Native American/Alaska Native teens, and 19% of Asian/Pacific
Islander teens. [9]
• In a study of inner-city 7-year-olds and their exposure to violence, 75% of them reported
hearing gun shots. [10]
• "The firearm injury epidemic, due largely to handgun injuries, is 10 times larger than the
polio epidemic of the first half of this century." [11]
April 2007
**

 

[melensdad]

What is your point?

Is it that inner cities have broken down due to debauchery and free sex that leads to fatherless children? Is it that rampant use of illegal drugs in those same communities has resulted in violent outbreaks between gangs? Is it that the lack of family structures in those communities has resulted in the replacement of families by gangs because the youth of those areas are looking for people who care about them since, in many cases they have become social orphans abandoned by one or both parent?

Yes, guns are often the tool used in those inner city areas. They are already illegal there. They are NOT THE ROOT CAUSE of the problem.

Heck maybe the Reverend Jesse Jackson can speak to some of the issues I raised . . . oh wait, doesn’t he have 3 or 4 bastard children of his own? Fine example he sets!

 

[Ray_Scheel]

Bennie: Quoting stuff prepared by the Brady campaign about firearms use is the logical equivalent of using stuff prepared by Jack Chick about Catholicism. Beyond their selective reporting, Brady has been caught flat-out lying too many times, to the point that you’ve lowered your credibility by presenting their prepared materials as relevant.

 

[melensdad]

Brady has been caught flat-out lying too many times, to the point that you’ve lowered your credibility by presenting their prepared materials as relevant.

• In 2004, 1,804 children and teenagers were murdered in gun homicides, 846 committed
suicide with guns, and 143 died in unintentional shootings. A total of 2,852 young people
were killed by firearms in the U.S., one every three hours. [3]

2,853 died in this statistic 2004 statistic . . . one every 3 hours, which is 7.6 per day.

Suicide should be eliminated because it would occur anyway. Boys tend to use guns to kill themselves. Girls tend to take pills or to sit in a warm bath and slit their wrist. If you want to talk about suicide, we can get into all sorts of discussions about it, but it is totally unfair to blame guns for suicide.

Removing suicide from the above number means that under 1000 were murdered based on the numbers provided. A tragic number, but far less shocking. No wonder the Brady Campaign has been caught in lies so many times.

What is shocking is that people pass over the ROOT CAUSE of these problems. Most of the kids killed are killed by other kids. Most of those are gang members. Most are social orphans. Most have whores for mothers and several bothers/sisters sired by different fathers (most of whom take no responsibility for their children). Why don’t we work on the issue of moral decay?

 

[vern_humphrey]

amazing how many people try to tell me what I mean.

Amazing how many people try to tell us what Jesus meant – and how the Apostles got it all wrong.

 

[vern_humphrey]

amazing how many people try to tell me what I mean.

Amazing how many people try to tell us what Jesus meant – and how the Apostles got it all wrong.

 

[Bennie_P]

Bennie: Quoting stuff prepared by the Brady campaign about firearms use is the logical equivalent of using stuff prepared by Jack Chick about Catholicism. Beyond their selective reporting, Brady has been caught flat-out lying too many times, to the point that you’ve lowered your credibility by presenting their prepared materials as relevant.

**Bull **- The Brady Campaign is a legit organization that uses information and statistics that are from reliable sources. You can go to thier reports and see thier noted indenpendant resources and verify the information they present. Just because you disagree with thier goals doesn’t put them in the same league as Jack Chick. I’m offended by your use of this tatic of diversion. I do not support all the suggested solutions of the Brady Organization, but thier statistical information I consider reliable. The bottom line is the Church wants to reduce violence and those that love thier guns need to get onboard in trying to help do that and and so far the only solution the Gun Lobby comes up with is putting more guns on the Street. duh??? Either become part of the solution or mabe you are the problem?

Here is the priorities of the Catholic Church in America on the issue of violence. the Number Two priority appears to be “Gun Control” - I guess now you call USSCB equivalent of Jack Chick.

****VIOLENCE ****
http://www.archchicago.org/images/shared/spacer.gif Reproduced below is a discussion of one of the issues included in the U.S. Catholic Bishops’ Political Responsibility Statement.
Violence in our culture is fed by multiple forces - the disintegration of family life, media influences, growing substance abuse, the availability of so many weapons, and the rise of gangs. Traditional liberal or conservative approaches by themselves cannot effectively overcome this plague. In confronting a culture of violence, our Church calls for:

• opposing the violence of abortion;
• curbing the easy availability of deadly weapons;
• supporting community approaches to crime prevention and law enforcement;
• pursuing swift and effective justice without vengeance and effective reform of our criminal justice system;
• attacking the root causes of violence, including poverty, substance abuse, lack of opportunity, racism, and family disintegration;
• promoting more personal responsibility and broader social responsibility in our policies and programs;
• overcoming the tragedy of family violence and confronting all forms of violence against women;
• continuing to work for global disarmament, including curbs on arms sales and a ban on land mines.
  (Confronting a Culture of Violence, 1994.)

archchicago.org/catholic_values/catholic_teaching/violence.shtm

 

[melensdad]

**Bull **- The Brady Campaign is a legit organization that uses information and statistics that are from reliable sources. You can go to thier reports and see thier noted indenpendant resources and verify the information they present.

No, the gun lobby misleads and lies.

The number of fatal gun accidents is at its lowest level since 1903, when statistics started being kept. That’s right: Not only is the per capita accident rate at a record low, so is the actual number of accidents—even though the number of people and the number of guns are both much larger than in 1903. The assertions about “X children per day” are based on counting older teenagers, or even people in their early twenties, as “children.” The claims are true only if you count a 19-year-old drug dealer who is shot by a competitor, or an 18-year-old armed robber who is shot by a policeman, as “a child killed by a gun.” As for actual children (14 years and under), the daily death rate is 2.6. For children ten and under, it’s 0.4 per day—far lower than the number of children who are killed by automobiles, drowning, or many other causes.

       If the statistic about child gun deaths is the most notorious lie, one          of the most frequent has to do with gun shows. All of the antigun groups          repeat, incessantly, the phrase “gun-show loophole.” As a result, much          of the public believes that gun shows are special zones exempt from ordinary          gun laws. Handgun Control, Inc., the major antigun group, has an affiliate          in Colorado that claims that the “vast majority” of guns used in crimes          come from gun shows, while the Violence Policy Center calls gun shows          “Tupperware parties for criminals.” 

               This is all an audacious lie. First of all, the laws at gun shows are          exactly the same as they are everywhere else. If a person is “engaged          in the business” (as the law puts it) of selling firearms, then he must          fill out a government registration form on every buyer, and get FBI permission          (through the National Instant Check System) for every sale—regardless          of whether the sale takes place at his gun store, at an office in his          home, or at a gun show. Those who are not gun dealers by profession, but          happen to be selling a gun, are not required to follow this procedure.          To imply that gun dealers can go to an event called a “gun show” and thus          avoid the law is absolutely false. Also false is the charge about Tupperware          parties for criminals. According to a National Institute of Justice study          released in December 1997, only 2 percent of guns used in crimes come          from gun shows.

 

[melensdad]

**Bull **- The Brady Campaign is a legit organization that uses information and statistics that are from reliable sources. . . . Just because you disagree with thier goals doesn’t put them in the same league as Jack Chick.

       The facts tell a different story: 75 percent of murderers have adult criminal          records. As for the rest, a large number either have criminal convictions          as juveniles or are still teenagers when they commit the murder; laws          dealing with access to juvenile-crime records prevent full access to their          rap sheets. Furthermore, the category of “acquaintance” murders is misleading.          It includes drug buyers who kill a drug dealer to steal his stash, and          thugs who assault each other in barroom brawls.

There’s also a sad irony here. Domestic murders are almost always preceded by many incidents of violent abuse. If a domestic-violence victim flees the home, and her ex- husband tracks her down and tries to rape her, and she shoots him, the killing will be labeled a “tragic domestic homicide that was caused by a gun,” rather than what it legally is: justifiable use of deadly force against a felon.

The famous factoid that a gun in the home is 43 times more likely to kill a family member than to kill a criminal is predicated on a similar misclassification. Of the 43 deaths, 37 are suicides; and while there are obviously many ways in which a person can commit suicide, only a gun allows a small woman a realistic opportunity to defend herself at a distance from a large male predator.

              Emory University medical professor Arthur Kellermann is a one-man factory          of this type of misleading data. One of his most famous studies purported          to show that owning a gun is associated with a 2.7 times greater risk          of being murdered. Kellermann compared murder victims in several cities          with sociologically similar people a few blocks away in those cities,          who had not been murdered. 
              The 2.7 factoid was trumpeted all over the country; but the study is patently          illogical. First of all, Kellermann’s own data show that owning a security          system, or renting a home rather than owning it, are also associated with          equally large increased risks of death. Yet newspapers did not start running          dire stories warning people to rip out their burglar alarms or to start          lobbying their condo association to dissolve. The 2.7 factoid also overlooks          the obvious fact that one reason people choose to own guns, or to install          burglar alarms, is that they are already at higher risk of being victimized          by crime. As Yale law professor John Lott points out, Kellermann’s methodology          is like comparing 100 people who went to a hospital in a given year with          100 similar people who did not, finding that more of the hospital patients          died, and then announcing that hospitals increase the risk of death. Kellermann’s          method would also prove that possession of insulin increases the risk          of diabetes.

 

[melensdad]

**Bull **- in the same league as Jack Chick.

       The media are complicit in many of these lies. Take, for example, the          hysteria about so-called “assault weapons.” Almost everything that gun-control          advocates say about these firearms is a lie. The guns in question are          not machine guns; they are simply ordinary guns with ugly cosmetics that          give them a pseudo-military appearance. The guns do not fire faster than          ordinary guns. The bullets they fire are not especially powerful; they          are, in fact, smaller and travel at lower velocity than bullets from standard          hunting rifles.

The media have succeeded in giving a totally different impression—through deliberate fraud. The CBS show 48 Hours purported to show a semiautomatic rifle being converted to fully automatic—i.e., turned into a machine gun—in just nine minutes. But the gun shown at the beginning was not the same gun that was fired at the end of the demonstration. An expert from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF) later said that such a conversion was impossible. And in Denver, KMGH television filmed people firing automatic weapons and told viewers that the guns were semiautomatics.

The chief culprits are not the media but the antigun lobbyists themselves, some of whom have very little compunction about lying—even in cases where it can be proven rather easily that they are aware of the truth while spreading the falsehood. For example, in February 1989, a former BATF employee who had become a paid consultant for Handgun Control testified to Congress that “assault weapons” were rarely used in crimes. (He wanted to ban them anyway, as a precautionary measure.) Nevertheless, within weeks, Handgun Control was running an advertising campaign insisting that assault weapons were the criminal weapons of choice.

 

[melensdad]

**Bull **

       The most dangerous dishonesty concerns the ultimate intentions of the          antigun forces. Handgun Control claims that it merely wants to “keep guns          out of the wrong hands”; yet in 1999, it lobbied hard to preserve Washington,          D.C.’s outright ban on handguns. Back in 1976, the group’s then leader,          Pete Shields, explained the long-term strategy to The New Yorker: “The          first problem is to slow down the number of handguns being produced and          sold in this country. The second problem is to get handguns registered.          The final problem is to make possession of all handguns and all handgun          ammunition—except for the military, police, licensed security guards,          licensed sporting clubs, and licensed gun collectors—totally illegal.”          

      Sarah Brady has said that          people should not be allowed to own guns for self-defense. Yet in debates,          employees of the group steadfastly deny that the organization believes          in the policies articulated by its leaders. In short, they are lying about          what they want to accomplish. This is understandable, to be sure; but          not honorable, or right for the country.  Also it is not right morally as we are supposed to defend our lives according the the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

 

[Evan]

2,853 died in this statistic 2004 statistic . . . one every 3 hours, which is 7.6 per day.

Suicide should be eliminated because it would occur anyway. Boys tend to use guns to kill themselves. Girls tend to take pills or to sit in a warm bath and slit their wrist. If you want to talk about suicide, we can get into all sorts of discussions about it, but it is totally unfair to blame guns for suicide.

Suicide should not be removed, without guns, many suicide attempts ‘fail’ because there is time to reconsider your action. My daughter has tried to suicide in attempts to ‘get attention’. Her attempts were feeble (eating talcum powder was the latest). She says they are idle threats. But if she had a gun, she may end up dead even if the threat was idle in her mind

We don’t have guns in the house (used for sport). When I had a gun in the house, parts were here, parts were at the office. I had to combine the two to make a working gun (shotgun).