At 10:13 AM 24/07/2003 +1000, Kahunapule Michael P. Johnson wrote:
I keep hearing you say that guns are evil and should be banned and not used by Christians. I don't believe that.
Actually I haven't said that guns are evil.
My thesis is that a higher availability of guns = higher use of guns = more dead people.
There is some evidence to support that.
My opinion is that people [who live in the suburbs] should not have guns at home.
Your opinion is shared by many people. You will probably never get a majority of Americans to agree with you on that. You probably won't even get me to agree on that.
My conviction is that Christians should not advocate a right to "lethal force".
I would have to qualify that statement to agree with it. Lethal force is appropriate in some cases (i. e. legitimate law enforcement action, just war, defending the helpless and innocent from the vicious and evil when there is no reasonable other recourse, etc.).
I firmly believe that there is nothing inherently anti-Christian in a gun, a knife, a spear, a rock, a rope, a car, a pen, tweezers, or conventional explosives. Every one of those things has good and holy uses. Every one of those things also could be used as an instrument in committing a sin. The objects are amoral. The hearts of the people who use them are where good and evil are manifested in using them. Is he or she hunting for food and preparing it, constructing a church building, transporting people to church, providing medical care, or some good thing, and doing so for good reasons? Then that person is blessed.
Agreed. But this is not my thesis.
That said, even though your sentiments seem rather odd to me, I do agree with you in some respects.
[smiles]
You say odd - yet we appear to be on the same side of the argument :-)
Mostly. :-)
I neither own nor carry a gun, but I don't condemn my brothers who do, as long as their hearts don't have murder in them.
Servant of Jesus Christ
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://eBible.org/mpj/
