Stephen Ruis asks the question that is the title of this post. I appreciated this post because I often get tweets that claim the Bible as the source of the right to bear arms. Lots of people think that God wrote the Constitution or at least the Second Amendment. I think of Jesus as an exponent of peace, love, forgiveness, redemption, and non-violence. I can’t imagine him blessing an AR-15. Or blessing someone who uses an assault rifle to slaughter innocents.
Ruis answers on his blog:
If there was ever a reason to oppose Christian nationalism, it is the confounding of Constitutional rights with what are supposed to be god-given rights.
Arm yourself. Exercise your God-given rights. Carry everywhere you go. (anonymous gun rights supporter)
Where in the Bible does it say that we have a god-given right to bear arms? In the Old Testament, the Hebrews were bearing arms all of the time but that was at the order of their leaders, so that was military service, not walking around the neighborhood rights.
New Testament fanboys go to incredible lengths to disavow Jesus telling his supporters to sell what they have to buy a sword (Luke 22). Since this doesn’t appear in the other three canonical gospels, it gets only one vote out of four for being an honest quotation. In any case, there are many other citations disavowing violence by Jesus.
Open the link to read the rest of his post.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Which god “gives” that right?
The rather obviously answer to the question posed: No!
But it seems to me that there is a Constitutional right bear arms. . . or something like that.
No, there isn’t outside of service in the National Guard.
As Jsrtheta says, there is a constitutional right to bear arms if you serve in the National Guard.
It’s a good question because so many gun zealots think the Second Amendment is in the Bible
Obviously, their thinking is wrong.
I would think Christians would believe that God knows what it’s like to lose a son. The problem is that some don’t see their perceived enemies as sons of anyone. They believe that He gave them dominion over fish and fowl, and over those they consider unholy. That idea is central to Western religion and is often taken to extremes. So, in a way, it’s not so much true that they believe the Constitution is in the Bible, but rather that they believe the Bible is in the Constitution, that God granted them the powers they perceive in the 2nd Amendment to carry weapons of war with no other license than that granted by God to those who believe in Christ as their savior to battle the evil hordes always trying to abduct Santa Clause and steal Christmas. They don’t want to shoot turkeys; they want to shoot Marxist savages. God gave them the 2nd Amendment to kill us.
“Santa Clause”. I wonder if that was autocorrect or 2nd Amendment Freudian slip.
I have found a lot of evangelicals to be breathtakingly ignorant of their own text. Not true of all, ofc, but of many. Jesus taught people to love their enemies, turn the other cheek. He said, “Blessed are the peacemakers.”
Sharing with you, Left Coast, an exchange I had on FB with a friend this last Christmas. This friend has written a great book on puns. He’s a renowne Pun-dit.
ANDREW: Will be posting some pics from our slog through the bog. Watch for miry views.
BOB: Sorry, I won’t be joining you. Hope you are not o-fen-did. I’m swamped already.I’m sure that you are much ad-mired as a consequence, Andrew.
ANDREEW: A re-peet performance.
BOB: Always look forward to these posts bayou, Andrew!
Okefenokee, Andrew. Much impressed by your marshal prowess.
ANDREW: For Peet’s sake!
BOB: You cut me to the quicks andrew.
ANDREW: Don’t mind me. I’m just searching for a little morass. By the way, why do Santa’s elves look alike? Because they vary very little.
ME: You sleigh me, Andrew.
Amanita think about this for a while.
Shocked, though, that you would post this racist comment about the pole-ish peoples.
Keep your comments to your elf.
Their size dwarfs the imagination.
Santa keeps them straight by Nick-naming them all.
tWEEn, dWEEb, etc.
Those elves. Clause-ette cases, all of them.
https://andrewcalhoun.com/books
First time I was ever intellectually stimulated by puns.,A fun zero-some game, though, or a case of ought-o-correct gone a’ muck? What do I know? When it come to puns, am-a-tourist.
LCT and Bob: y’all been eating razor soup. I figure you Bard summat
There’s no god. Gun humpers know that their “rights” to carry guns are very flimsy, which is why they try to shote them up with “god” and erroneous interpretations of the 2nd amendment.
The diefication of weapons is insane. A latest shooting highlights the insanity where five people were recently killed outside Houston in Texas. They had the “audacity’ to complain about gunfire at night so the neighbor shot them. Gun owners should not have more rights than others, and they certainly shouldn’t be shooting people over a noise complaint. https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/national-international/police-5-people-killed-in-shooting-at-home-north-of-houston/3246939/?fbclid=IwAR253siTA4ffEFgDFFjy6acpxrtgM_fBLXJWkGU5Pm81QhOXFQx_V46xPHs
There is, among conservative Christian thinkers I know, a pervasive belief in the “city on the hill” myth. It is their assertion that the United States May be seen in history as guided by the hand of an interventionist God, who supports the nation so long as the nation follows his will. Claiming this, these people are willing to support almost any policy suggested by someone who will posit the basic tenet of chosenness as a reality.
You of course know that I vigorously disagree with this attitude, which allows anyone, say Donald Bush or George Trump, to claim Christ in his corner and swing his fists or his court.
John Winthrop’s “City upon a Hill” was a warning, not an ideal. Winthrop was speaking of the fact that the world was watching just how well this new community lived by the ideals it professed to hold.
Then Reagan got ahold of it, and ruined the thing.
And he made the reference to the city on a hill in a speech on the ship on the way here the point of which was that THE WORLD WILL BE WATCHING TO SEE IF THE COLONISTS TREAT ONE ANOTHER WITH CHARITY and SHARE WITH THE LESS FORTUNATE AMONG THEM. The speech called “A Model of Christian Charity.” Reagan, who got the line from Peggy Noonan, who got it from Winthrop’s speech, HAD NO CLUE that the phrase was from a speech espousing EVERYTHING REAGAN OPPOSED. I thought Reagan pretty braindead. But he looks like a genius next to Trump, ofc. He did have the sense to do arms control with the Soviets.
Yes, I do give him props for the arms control.
wise on both counts, jsr!
Quite so. I’m not a Christian anymore, but I always found the biblical Jesus to be a very good man.
Which makes me wonder why so many modern Christians are horrible.
Same
It was astonishing. Here this McCarthy-aiding extremist Cold Warrior, briefed as President about the actual “everyone loses” consequences of a nuclear war with the Soviets, did a 180 and ushered in detente and the INF. Wow. Which showed that the old man, despite his many failings, was capable of learning as contemporary Trumpanzee Repugnicans and their Glorious Leader Who Shines More Orange Than Does the Sun evidently aren’t. This inability to learn will bite them in the ample arse if they don’t get busy and put Trump in jail before the election season really gets underway, for if he is their nominee again, they will, ofc, lose again.
I am always leery of ascribing beliefs to political figures, especially ones I don’t like.
But there was evidence that Reagan and Gorbachev both saw the elimination of the nuclear threat as morally compelled. Which speaks highly of both of them.
I figure we ought to attach electrodes to Winthrop’s grave. He is probably spinning in it enough to generate electricity for a good sized subdivision.
As for Reagan and the end of the Cold War, it is my understanding that he was bucking advice from some of his closest advisors by trusting Gorbachev.
The Bible also warns about false prophets.
Matthew 24:24
For false christs and false prophets will arise and perform great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect.
https://www.openbible.info/topics/false_prophets
For millennia, people have, bizarrely, waged Holy War in the name of the Prince of Peace. The darkest of ironies there.
I don’t think Jesus, as depicted in the scriptures–or his disciples–carried “arms,” i.e., swords or daggers. Btw, when we read the 2nd Amendment, it does say “arms,” not “guns.” Military officers and dignitaries carried arms–swords & daggers, often. NO ONE carried a repeating gun when the 2nd Amendment was written, because they didn’t exist. They were all single (or two at most) shots, then took a couple of minutes to reload. It seems unlikely that if rapid repeating guns had existed, the relatively wise men who wrote the Constitution would have given a blank check to carry them.
It should be noted, too, that guns were used across early America for hunting. Lots of folks lived from the game guns provided.
As to Jesus, didn’t he say to Peter: “Put away your sword (arms). Why are you obsessed with fighting?”
Apparently, standing armies were looked on with suspicion. Combine that with the debate over federal vs states rights. Another reason why our military is under civilian control.
Some of them hated standing armies, but that was a remnant of the Glorious Revolution, and wasn’t a realistic fear. The two situations were quite different.
Washington knew the militias were in fact a joke. Had he been forced to rely solely on them, we’d still be paying taxes to England. But people like George Mason and Patrick Henry, neither of whom signed off on the Constitution.
You mention “federal vs states rights”: This is what rights talk has gotten us to. Neither the federal government nor the states have rights. They have powers and prerogatives. And the Constitution makes it clear who is the ultimate authority in the Supremacy Clause.
Don’t disagree. Merely trying to lay some groundwork. The dislike of standing armies goes back well before the revolution to experiences in Europe. Washington was understandably frustrated with militias whose members were totally voluntary and under no obligation beyond whatever short term contract they may have signed. That was in contrast to the British who I believe made a practice of “impressing” private citizens into involuntary military service. It took a lot of work to settle on the need for a robust federal system given the obvious shortcomings of the Articles of Confederation even beyond our inability to protect ourselves effectively from foreign incursions.
The bigger problem is that the “militia” was almost useless. Washington had to rely on them in the French and Indian Wars, where they were know to desert at the first shot. It was the Continental Army that won the Revolution, not the militia.
And Madison, with Washington’s agreement, was insistent on placing the militia under federal control. The general ineffectiveness of the Massachusetts militia in Shays’ Rebellion was a flashing red light to a lot of the framers.
“Some of them hated standing armies, but that was a remnant of the Glorious Revolution, and wasn’t a realistic fear.”
Fear is fear whether it is considered by others as realistic or not.
“Neither the federal government nor the states have rights.”
Yeah, they took that language out after the Articles of Confederation. I wonder why. Everything not listed specifically as a power of the federal government is left to the states. Those state preogatives are being very effectively used to deny all of us rights we thought we had. Moreover, we have never quite figured out how to mitigate the worst aspects of tribalism on any level.
Most of the gun mania is based on the manipulation of fear. The Second Amendment has superseded the First due to a substantial minority of Americans who cannot take criticism of any kind. The success of the First Amendment is dependent on the willingness to hear different viewpoints without taking it personally. This is true in regard to speech, religion, and the press. There are 16 million AR-15 owners in the United States out of 330 million citizens. Most hover in their homes afraid of what exists outside while a dangerous few choose to go out and shoot others they deem a threat. The strength of our Constitution is that it advocates peaceful and energetic debate. We are now endangered by a cadre of folk who cannot take other points of view.