Live by the sword?

[FollowingHim]

However, the situation described here is actually more common for an individual to encounter.

Do you have stats to support this claim?

Just check in any year how many terrorist attacks occur, vs how many small-scale assaults & burglaries etc. Obviously far more small-scale crimes occur, so you're far more likely to end up caught up in a small-scale crime than a terrorist incident.

Yes sometimes it makes the situation worse.

Thankyou, that is my point.

But more often than not it does improve the situation.

Now, same question to you: Do you have stats to support this claim?

Honestly, I don't know how often it improves the situation vs how often it makes it worse. However, the fact remains that sometimes it can make the situation worse. This means we need to be very careful how we apply the principle of Jesus' one statement to buy a sword (thankyou for reminding us of it yet again @The Revolting Man, yes we all agree it's there) in the wider context of "love thine enemy". This is a complex issue.

Seeing it from either narrow-minded perspective of "anti-gun" or "pro-gun" will not result in the clearest understanding.

 

[AmbassadorforChrist]

yes we all agree it's there) in the wider context of "love thine enemy". This is a complex issue.

I have always made a distinction between "my enemies" and "God's enemies".

I personally think that verse is referring to people who we don't get along with; such as a neighbor who we may have a personal dislike for, but no moral ground to stand on.
As Christians we should love those people, and forgive such perceived trespasses.

It's much like two children fighting over something petty, and getting into a physical altercation over it, vs. One of the children doing what the parents have already told them not to, and having one of the other children step in to put a stop to it.

Murder has already been commanded against, so I would have no issue rendering someone who was attempting such a thing biologically inactive. It is for this type of scenario (among others) that I carry a gun.

Retaliation on a hateful neighbor on the other hand, I have a problem with, this is what I think that verse applies to.

 

[FollowingHim]

Murder has already been commanded against, so I would have no issue rendering someone who was attempting such a thing biologically inactive. It is for this type of scenario (among others) that I carry a gun.

Note that I did not say it was wrong to carry a gun.

I used this sad case to get people thinking about when and how it is appropriate to present one. Because there's a pastor who might still be alive if he'd left his gun concealed. And yes, I'm hypothesising. But it's very informative hypothesising if you're willing to do it - particularly putting yourself in the shoes of the criminal.

 

[AmbassadorforChrist]

Note that I did not say it was wrong to carry a gun.

I used this sad case to get people thinking about when and how it is appropriate to present one. Because there's a pastor who might still be alive if he'd left his gun concealed. And yes, I'm hypothesising. But it's very informative hypothesising if you're willing to do it - particularly putting yourself in the shoes of the criminal.

I realize you didn't say it was wrong, and I didn't say you did.

Ultimately I agree with a lot of what you said.
I think it boils down to a lack of training, and not being in the right mindset. Had that pastor been properly trained, or had followed his training if he was trained, the chances of the bad guy getting his gun would have gone way down.

I have always been told to "never point a gun at something you are not willing to kill", and "if you ever pull a gun on someone, be in the right mindset to follow it through to the very end".
I think this is where a lot of people who carry a gun are lacking; they are carrying the gun to bluff with, and run into problems when someone calls their bluff. I don't know if that is what happened with the pastor, but I suspect that a combination of the aforementioned problems, influenced the outcome of that situation.

Knowing when it is appropriate to present a gun would be very difficult to put hard and fast rules on.
Everyone is going to feel differently about any given situation. Someone experienced in hand to hand fighting may feel very confident in a situation like that, while a overweight middle aged man may choose to fall back on a gun.
If I had been in that situation, I may have chosen to leave my gun concealed, but it would have depended on whether I thought I could handle the situation without it.

 

[Pacman]

Now, same question to you: Do you have stats to support this claim?

https://www.louderwithcrowder.com/cdc-releases-gun-report

 

[FollowingHim]

https://www.louderwithcrowder.com/cdc-releases-gun-report

Thankyou, that's really interesting.

 

[rockfox]

he would not have appeared a serious threat to the man. In the worst-case scenario, he might have been beaten up as the man escaped

This is an incredibly naive take. I can think of probably a dozen ways to kill a guy in a bathroom without a gun. With a gun the pastor at least had a fighting chance.

 

[FollowingHim]

This is an incredibly naive take. I can think of probably a dozen ways to kill a guy in a bathroom without a gun. With a gun the pastor at least had a fighting chance.

Yes. If you had a reason to.

I'm making a key assumption here - I am assuming that the pastor was killed because the criminal perceived him to be an imminent threat to his life, and acted accordingly. And that he had no other rational reason to kill him.

Of course, I am simplifying enormously, and there are a million other possible scenarios that I discounted because they were less likely, one being that this guy was actually mentally insane and would have killed the pastor even if he was no threat to him at all. Plausible but unlikely, because people usually have a reason before they kill someone.

If I put myself in the criminal's shoes, I can far more readily imagine myself killing someone who threatened me with a gun than killing a nice man who said "hello, what are you doing here, would you like a cup of tea?". I can imagine myself stealing his wallet and car though, and beating him to a pulp if he tried to stop me. Because stealing his money and car could actually help me escape from the cops (selfish motive to steal), while killing him unprovoked would not help me in any way but would simply land me in jail for far longer than I was already facing (selfish motive to not kill). Even criminals have brains, and it takes very little brain to do that maths.

 

[rockfox]

I am assuming that the pastor was killed because the criminal perceived him to be an imminent threat to his life, and acted accordingly. And that he had no other rational reason to kill him.

You are giving the criminal more benefit of the doubt than the pastor.

And you are projecting your own imaginary motivations onto a criminal and are not thinking anywhere nearly evil enough. Many people have been killed for a mere verbal slight. Or for a few messily dollars. Or because of the color of his skin. Or even just for sport. Lots of that last one actually.

In this case, it is most likely that the pastor represented a chance of the criminal being caught and so he was killed. To give the pastor the benefit of the doubt would be to say that the pastor came upon him and acted in self defense but failed. Or that he tried to apprehend the criminal (to save someone else from becoming a victim) and failed.

There is no safety in weakness.

 

[Pacman]

There is no safety in weakness.

A thousand likes!

 

[steve]

I'm making a key assumption here - I am assuming that the pastor was killed because the criminal perceived him to be an imminent threat to his life, and acted accordingly. And that he had no other rational reason to kill him.

You are making a nonsensical assumption.
Once the pastor was disarmed there was absolutely no rational reason to kill him. In fact, killing him was entirely irrational in that it put the focus of the police on him. If he just would have disarmed the pastor and escaped, dropping the gun on the way out, nobody would have been looking for him.

I hope that you could not put yourself in the mindset of a deranged killer, because that is what this guy obviously is.

 

[FollowingHim]

I have just finished reading "The Memoirs of Field-Marshal Montgomery", an absolutely fascinating book. He commanded the Allied land forces at Normandy, ended up the head of the British army post-WW2, the military chief of the temporary European alliance that preceded NATO, and finally the deputy military chief of NATO until retirement after the longest military service of any British soldier in the last two centuries. Close friend of both Eisenhower and Churchill.

Most importantly from the perspective of this conversation, he was a firm Christian who explicitly interweaves the role of his faith through everything he writes about. Interestingly, he never actually touches on the question of the relationship between Christianity and military action - rather he just assumes both as essentials, and then leans on his faith as the fundamental support required to carry out the military action that he is involved in. He frequently quotes Biblical passages around Joshua etc as inspiration, but does not discuss those New Testament passages that can be read as presenting a different approach. It is unfortunate that he didn't directly address this matter, his explicit opinion on that question would have been very interesting.

But of particularly amusing relevance to this conversation is one little quote:

Each nation has its own views on certain matters, which must be understood and respected by the others. ... American boys are brought up to believe certain things; they grow up in the shadow of those beliefs, and nothing will ever change them.

Please take that in a neutral perspective - this isn't a dig at Americans specifically, as I've snipped that out of his thoughts on several different nationalities, it is an observation that some of our differences in view are "baked-in" and are not things we should try to change in each other.