Gun Control & the Catholic Church

[Bennie_P]

2,853 died in this statistic 2004 statistic . . . one every 3 hours, which is 7.6 per day. So isn’t that Nearly 8 ? Or should they say a little over 7?

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.Suicides would be reduced if a gun wasn’t used in the attempts, Guns are less forgiving as say drug overdoses. Those that get a second chance, well the majority take it.

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?

**Nobody is passing over the root cuase, lest not me. Part of the issue of moral decay is America;'s love affair with the gun. What is shocking is how the love of a gun will blind people so they cannot see how thier love of a material object is more important then innocent life. Materialism is the root of the problem. Just like the gun lobby thinks thier gun ownership is going to make the world safer for themselves, thier families, etc. and allow them live out thier American dream is the same mindset that those that have no business with guns think the gun will make life better for them so they can live out thier American dream - but you can’t see the connection - can you.:doh2: **

Unrestricted access to guns not a solution, it is part of the problem.

 

[Ray_Scheel]

**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.

I’ll repeat it again. They have been caught lying too many times, particularly mixing and matching numbers they know are not equivalent but claiming they are to try to justify their goal. They are smart enough to pull their materials when factually challenged, but that doesn’t justify floating the misinformation (an example of which has been pointed out to you already) in the first place. Jack Chick does much the same, taking just enough fact to make it look like he might be talking about the real issue, but twisting it up and mixing it around so its no longer relevant to the point he’s trying to make.

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?

Between the false comparison and deliberately ignoring the other efforts of the lobby to try to score emotional points, I’m not sure there is anything in this that can be responded to in in the manner of a logical debate, because none of this statement of yours qualifies for inclusion in that manner of discussion.

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.

No I don’t. (And to think you just complained about me making diversions, sheesh - It looks like that just a pre-emptive accusation so you could excuse doing that very thing just a few lines later. Again, this kind of stuff has no business in a logical debate).

 

[melensdad]

Evan, I’m sorry to hear about your daughter and I hope she got proper counciling and pray she is healed. Never the less, suicide should be removed from the list because it is not considered violence in the criminal sense. That is one of the tactics used to inflate statistics. If we want to discuss violence, then we need to look at violence. Why not also then add other suicides into the statistics? For that matter, why not include some of the additional data about violence like the gang bangers who kill by running down another gang member with a car? Or by beating them with a pipe? In order to talk about the violent aspects of any problem we are best to look for the root cause of the violence and not try to dump into the statistics factors just for shock value. Perhaps you and I will have to disagree about whether suicide should be included, but I suggest it should not.

 

[melensdad]

I’ll repeat it again. They have been caught lying too many times, particularly mixing and matching numbers they know are not equivalent but claiming they are to try to justify their goal.

Bennie P:

BULL . . .

Lie # 1

Assault weapons are criminal’s weapons of choice.

RESPONSE:
“Since police started keeping statistics, we now know that assault
weapons are/were used in an underwhelming 0.026 of 1% of crimes in New
Jersey. This means that my officers are more likely to encounter an
escaped tiger from the zoo that to confront an assault weapon in the
hands of a drug-crazed killer on the streets…”

    -- Joseph Constance,
        Deputy Police Chief,
       Trenton, New Jersey

Lie #2:

Experts agree that gun ownership should be prohibited.

RESPONSE:
This year FSU professor Gary Kleck received the Hindelang Award (the
American Society for Criminology’s award for a book making the greatest
contribution to the field of criminology) for “Point Blank - Guns &
Violence in America”. In it he sharply criticizes the methodology and
relevance of the CDC studies so frequently cited in the media. His
conclusions are particularly unsettling for gun control advocates
because they come from one of their own.

“Before I undertook this study I was a pro-control academic who believed
instinctively that people should not have guns. Gradually, I came to
see that the best available evidence did not support the case that is
usually made for gun control.”

           -- Gary Kleck
              Professor of Criminology
              Florida State University

Lie #3:

Guns are complex devices not easily manufactured or smuggled.

RESPONSE:
In 1977, of the guns confiscated in Washington DC, 40% were obtained
from out of state, 40% were police weapons, and 20% were home-made.

BATF, Analysis of Operation CUE (Concentrated Urban Enforcement, interim
report (Washington D.C., February 15, 1977), pp. 133-34.

Lie #4:

Private gun ownership is not needed since the police will protect us.

RESPONSE:
“Law enforcement agencies and personnel have no duty to protect
individuals from the criminal acts of others; instead their duty is to
preserve the peace and arrest law breakers for the protection of the
general public.”

-- Lynch v. N.C. Dept. of Justice,
   376 S.E. 2nd 247 (N.C. App. 1989)

**
Lie #5:**

Firearms and ammunition are inherently dangerous products, more
dangerous than any other product sold in the US.

RESPONSE:

Leading causes of death and 1989 rates per 100,000 population are:

295.6 Heart disease
199.9 Cancer
47.4 Stroke
38.3 Accidents [details below]
34.0 Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease
30.8 Pneumonia
18.9 Diabetes
12.2 Suicide
10.8 Chronic liver disease, cirrhosis
9.2 Homicide and legal intervention

The following are selected U.S. deaths from accidents in 1989.

95,028 All accidents & adverse effects
46,586 Motor vehicle accidents – traffic
989 Motor vehicle accidents – nontraffic
12,151 Accidental falls
5,035 Poisoning by drugs/medications
4,015 Drowning
4,716 Fire & flames
2,992 Complications of medical procedures
3,578 Inhalation/Ingestion of objects
1,489 Firearms accidents
702 Electric current
608 Railway accidents

 

[Bennie_P]

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.

Well thier tatic is going to work in the long run if Gun Owners don’t come up a more sensible solutions then opposition to all and any type of guncontrol. There are too people that want a noticable reduction in gun violence and that are not of the mindset that a total gun ban is needed, but will accept it if a better solution isn’t offered. This all or nothing mindset is the guns owners worst enemy and will feed right into Sarah Brady’s idea of a solution, like I said I don’t agree with all her solutions - but I will not take a stand against them - if I’m not given a better choice - then unrestricted access.

 

[melensdad]

I’ll repeat it again. They have been caught lying too many times, particularly mixing and matching numbers they know are not equivalent but claiming they are to try to justify their goal. . . .

Between the false comparison and deliberately ignoring the other efforts of the lobby to try to score emotional points

Al Gore and others of his ilk keep insisting the reason we need “mandatory child safety trigger locks” is to substantially stop the “12 children killed by firearms every day in America.”

Let’s give a tip of the hat to historian Clayton E. Cramer (writing in the July 1 edition of Shotgun News) for going directly to the web site of the Centers for Disease Control (www.cdc.gov/nchs/datawh/statab/unpubd/mortabs/gmwki.htm – search under ICD 922.0) and looking up the actual number of American children under the age of 15 who are killed in handgun accidents each year.

For 1997, that number was 21 – down from a high of 55 in 1990.

No, that’s not a typo. Twenty-one children dead in handgun accidents in the whole of America in the entire year 1997.

Government-mandated airbags seriously injure more children than die in handgun accidents. Lightning and amusement park accidents and drowning in mop buckets beat out handguns in causing accidental deaths of children under 15. So why the national hysteria – and more importantly, where do Mr. Gore and the “gun control” gang come up with that “12-a-day” statistic?

The CDC says that in order to get to that number, you’re including in the so-called ‘children’ in your statistic 18- and 19-year-olds righteously shot while committing rapes and other serious crimes. That is printed in CDC data!!!

Well thier tatic is going to work in the long run if Gun Owners don’t come up a more sensible solutions then opposition to all and any type of guncontrol. There are too people that want a noticable reduction in gun violence and that are not of the mindset that a total gun ban is needed, but will accept it if a better solution isn’t offered. This all or nothing mindset is the guns owners worst enemy and will feed right into Sarah Brady’s idea of a solution, like I said I don’t agree with all her solutions - but I will not take a stand against them - if I’m not given a better choice - then unrestricted access.

So are you saying you actually now advocate spreading these lies? And that you believe that law abiding honest people should give into lies simply because it is easier than telling the truth

 

[Bennie_P]

So are you saying you actually now advocate spreading these lies? And that you believe that law abiding honest people should give into lies simply because it is easier than telling the truth

No, I going to sit back and watch the Gun Lobby and the Gun Control Advocates fight it out.

I already control the guns within my sphere of influence, my home.

But, which I doubt the odds of ever happening, if I have a choice between two pro-life candidates to vote for and one of then happens to have a sensible stand on gun control and the other doesn’t, I’ll vote for the pro-life and pro-gun control candidate.
But It is wishful thinking to think I will ever get a choice between two pro-life candidates, I consider myself blessed to get a choice of one pro-life candidate during an election.

Like I said earlier, I believe what I wrote, but it isn’t a high priority for me outside of this thread. I can only work with one person at a time.

 

[Bennie_P]

Evan, I’m sorry to hear about your daughter and I hope she got proper counciling and pray she is healed. Never the less, suicide should be removed from the list because it is not considered violence in the criminal sense. That is one of the tactics used to inflate statistics. If we want to discuss violence, then we need to look at violence. Why not also then add other suicides into the statistics? For that matter, why not include some of the additional data about violence like the gang bangers who kill by running down another gang member with a car? Or by beating them with a pipe? In order to talk about the violent aspects of any problem we are best to look for the root cause of the violence and not try to dump into the statistics factors just for shock value. Perhaps you and I will have to disagree about whether suicide should be included, but I suggest it should not.

If you have had someone in your life, very close to you, that blew thier brains out with a gun, you understand how criminal that suicde by that method really is. Trust me it is violent and criminal to all involved.

 

[melensdad]

If you have had someone in your life, very close to you, that blew thier brains out with a gun, you understand how criminal that suicde by that method really is. Trust me it is violent and criminal to all involved.

I have.

I’ve also had someone close to me hang himself.

I don’t call for a ban on rope, cord, twine or string.

I don’t consider one form of suicide more violent than any other, all are tragic events and all effect the circle of family and friends around those who commit suicide. The tools used are not the cause of the suicide, and many who fail with suicide go on to try again with different tools. I know of a disturbed young man who tried 3 times to commit suicide in his car, he finally drove it off the edge of a suburban Chicago quarry into the pit, but that still did not kill him. His mother is working hard to get him help.

 

[melensdad]

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.

I thought you might find this interesting:
“Our main agenda is to have all guns banned. We must use whatever means possible. It doesn’t matter if you have to distort the facts or even lie. Our task of creating a socialist America can only succeed when those who would resist us have been totally disarmed.”

** -Sara Brady, Chairman, Handgun Control Inc, to Senator Howard Metzenbaum. The National Educator, January 1994, Page 3.**
​

 

[RLT]

Here is my 12 year with her semi-automatic rifle in the back ‘yard.’

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y75/melensdad/Tractor Pictures/Melfiringsitting.jpg

:tsktsk:
melensdad, I hate to critisize but…
.
.
.
it would be an (name removed by moderator)rovement if your daughter would lean forward with her knees supporting her arms. It will give her a stable platform giving her a good natural point of aim.
The posture she’s using now will cause her to muscle her weapon, causing inconsistant point of impact.
img.photobucket.com/albums/v446/echo4lima/sitting.jpg

 

[melensdad]

:tsktsk:
melensdad, I hate to critisize but…
.
it would be an (name removed by moderator)rovement if your daughter would . . . %between%

That photo was her first day shooting. She is now learning some better technique.

She is also shooting a lot more from a bench rest.

 

[Bennie_P]

I thought you might find this interesting:“Our main agenda is to have all guns banned. We must use whatever means possible. It doesn’t matter if you have to distort the facts or even lie. Our task of creating a socialist America can only succeed when those who would resist us have been totally disarmed.”

-Sara Brady, Chairman, Handgun Control Inc, to Senator Howard Metzenbaum. The National Educator, January 1994, Page 3.

​

Can you show me a link to this statement outside of a Gun Lobby web sight for verification?

 

[Bennie_P]

I have.

I’ve also had someone close to me hang himself.

I don’t call for a ban on rope, cord, twine or string.

I don’t consider one form of suicide more violent than any other, all are tragic events and all effect the circle of family and friends around those who commit suicide. The tools used are not the cause of the suicide, and many who fail with suicide go on to try again with different tools. I know of a disturbed young man who tried 3 times to commit suicide in his car, he finally drove it off the edge of a suburban Chicago quarry into the pit, but that still did not kill him. His mother is working hard to get him help.

**U.S. Suicide Statistics (2004) **
Suicide Methods

32,439 suicides

**Firearms **
51.6% 16,750

Hanging, strangulation, suffocation
22.6% 7,336

Poisons
17.9% 5,800

All other methods
7.9% 2,553

**U.S. Suicide Statistics (2001) **Attempted Suicides
There are approximately 750,000 suicide attempts each year.
An estimated 5 million living Americans have attempted suicide.
More females attempt suicide than males.
(3 female attempts for each male attempt.)

**Succesful - **

Men - Number of Suicides 25,566 total
Women - Number of Suicides 6,873 total

Firearms are still the most common method for suicide (51.6%), however when we break down the statistice by gender, we see that women use poisining more frequently than firearms

More males die from suicide than females.
(4 male deaths by suicide for each female death by suicide.)

Maybe we ought to just outlaw men, oops, never mind. My wife would like that too much.

suicide.org/suicide-statistics.html

 

[melensdad]

I still don’t see where the whole discussion of suicide is going within the context. All of it is bad. The church says so. But it is not a gun issue.

As for your other question, see below: The quotation is not exactly the same, but the meaning appears to be essentially the same . . . ban all guns.

 

[Ray_Scheel]

Can you show me a link to this statement outside of a Gun Lobby web sight for verification?

That version of the quote has been embellished and is unfortunately being passed around in that form. Though there is a photograph of the actual quote in the cited source, even that version’s veracity is questioned among some advocates for legal gun possession.

 

[frnate]

I don’t understand why so many Catholics seem to be in favor of gun control. More specifically, the Bishops and Clergy of the church seem to favor it. Is there a specific teaching or specific position about gun control that I don’t know about? I’m a cradle Catholic, I’ve been working with my 12 year old who is in Catholic school going over basic Catholic teachings, she is in Catechism bowl at her school, she wants to learn how to shoot, neither she nor I can’t find anything about a position on gun control, but still I see/hear anti-gun talk from church leaders. Many of my friends are Jews, seems to me that, with the exception of some prominent American-Jewish politicians, Jews support gun ownership.
Can someone explain this to me?

The only legitimate form of gun-control is to use both hands

Peace,
+N

 

[Bennie_P]

That version of the quote has been embellished and is unfortunately being passed around in that form. Though there is a photograph of the actual quote in the cited source, even that version’s veracity is questioned among some advocates for legal gun possession.

Thank you.

Bogus Gun Control Quotes**** It is important to try to keep this dicussion as honest as possible, I know that both sides of the issue want to be right. But those of us here should understand the importance of honest discussion over just the will to win a discussion. thank you, again for this link.

 

[Ray_Scheel]

Thank you.

Bogus Gun Control Quotes It is important to try to keep this dicussion as honest as possible, I know that both sides of the issue want to be right. But those of us here should understand the importance of honest discussion over just the will to win a discussion. thank you, again for this link.

As far as I can tell, GunCite runs a clean ship all the time.

HGC / Brady however, is well known to misconstrue whato thers are sayingin its own talkign points.

For instance, on the mess resulting from the gun ban in Australia, its fact sheet accuses the NRA of lying about how that failed by cherry-picking certain before and after gun-related numbers (that it neglects to mention that even the Australian government previously indicated couldn’t be validly compared) and totally leaves off mentioning that the NRA’s criticism was that violent crime in general did sharply increase immediately after and continued to increase even after the initial monkeying with the books, a problem the Australian government admits while trying to dispute the timing of the overall increase was tied tot he gun ban while trying simultaneously to claim the drop in particualar types of gun crime were related to the ban.

Likewise, in its sheet on risks of guns in the home, they only count defensive uses of guns where a shot was fired resulting in a reportable injury to the other party. It also referenced to the overall death rate to older teens, but totally neglect to mention most of those deaths were not in the home and were in fact due to gang related criminal activity on the part of the “victim”.

I could go on and on and on with the flaws in the Brady materials. Yes, individually their stats usually hold up to scrutiny, but very often they know that the stat was measuring something other than what they imply it does, and the “logical” jumps they make just don’t make sense, its all emotion-driven, the facts they present too often have no causitive relationship to the conclusions they are presented to “support”.

 

[melensdad]

Back to the topic of the Church and gun control, does anyone else find it interesting that in Luke 22:35-38 it was not any John, or Simon or Peter but actually Jesus Himself who gave instructions to the disciples to get the sword?

He made it clear that it was far less important for them to be fully clothed against the weather and the elements than it was for them to be at least minimally armed (he stated that 2 swords for them was “enough”).

In the NAB version that part of the chapter is subtitled “Instructions for the Time of Crisis” and that alone seems significant because they are instructions from Jesus to his followers telling them to be prepared.

In the next section, after the betrayal, Jesus states to the Temple priests and elders: "Have you come out as against a robber, with swords and clubs?" Does this not imply that it is OK to defend against a robber?

. . .

Bennie P & Ray, normally I like to check facts before I post information about guns, it was my error for not doing so in the case of the Sarah Brady quotation. While she did mean what I quoted, she did not state it as it was quoted. There is a copy of the article cited at the University of Wisconsin, it gives the correct wording and shows that she clearly intends to ban guns, and further that she states that disarming is needed for socialism, but she does not directly advocate socialism.