Maybe it would help if we fired all the oracles and listened to the criticisms » « Sullivanian mendacity

Someone tell the Christians that April Fools is over

Please, enough.

Anti-LGBTQ activist Matt Barber told American Family Radio listeners yesterday that the uninfringeable constitutional right to carry firearms is as biblical as a shepherd boy’s slingshot and claimed that Jesus Christ advocated for the Second Amendment.

Note also that while he can quote the Bible, he doesn’t understand it.

Maybe it would help if we fired all the oracles and listened to the criticisms » « Sullivanian mendacity

Comments

  1. Chris Capoccia says

    definitely poor understanding, even of the gospels. For a significant period, Jesus instructed his disciples to travel with nothing, not even a defensive weapon like a staff (Luke 9:1–6), and the instruction was presumably still in place up through shortly before the crucifixion where they were instructed to get a few swords (Luke 22:35–38). And then a little later, it seems the disciples were returning to being unarmed (Luke 22:49–52).

  2. says

    If it’s a constitutional right it’s not uninfringeable – it is entirely revocable.
    I wish these flag-waving morons cared as much about the 4th, and 14th as they do the 2nd. They are all important constitutional amendments.

  3. brucej says

    Marcus, you have to understand their comprehension of the Constitution is not the same as yours…

    YOO-ESS CONSTITOOSHUN:
    (drunk FOX SNOOZE uncle and Freedumb Caucus version)
    FIRST AMENMENDMENT: JEEBUS!!! NO GAYS OR MOOSLIMBS ALLOWED!
    SECOND AMMOMENDMUNT: GUNZ GUNZ GUNZ!
    buncha bullshit hippiestuff
    TENTH AINTMENDMENT: FEDERAL GUMMINT AIN’T THE BOSS OF ME!!!
    bunchmore hippie stuff and lettin the n****s and wimmin vote HAHHAHA! NO THEY CANT!
    ‘MERICA FUCK YEAH!!!

  4. Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden says

    shall not be infringed

    is right there in the test, so I’m that’s what he means. What he doesn’t know and can’t be bothered to find out is that no right is absolute and that while something that apparently violates an explicit right (like the right to bear arms) will face a very stringent test in court, in the US system a law or action which passes that test isn’t said to infringe on or violate the right at all: the court simply determines that the right didn’t extend that far, therefore it wasn’t infringed or violated by the law/action in question.

    By definition, then, no US constitutional right can ever be infringed.

    Canadian constitutional law does it a bit differently. s1 of the Canadian Charter of Rights & Freedoms states:

    The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.

    Therefore, the justices here generally speak of a “violation” of a right in ss 2-31 which can then be “saved” by s1 (or in the case of ss 2 and 7-15 “overridden” by s33).

    You’ll hear lawyers speak of violations of rights in the US that then turn out not to be violations (according to the courts), but the lawyers will continue to speak of them using the language “violation” or “infringement”. But this is rhetoric. It doesn’t actually reflect the agreed upon status of the law or action under the US constitutional system.

  5. Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden says

    Whoops: my #4 was for Marcus Ranum’s #2. Also my first sentence left out the word “sure” in the phrase that should have read:

    so I’m sure that’s what he means.

  6. blf says

    It makes perfect sense an individual who very probably never existed, and whose knowledge of personal weaponry stopped at around the bow-and-arrow, would advocate for a very poorly-worded sentence written in a language yet to be invented by people whose knowledge of personal weaponry stopped at about the musket, who were, in turn, clearly advocating for unlimited personal possession of machine guns. Obviously.

  7. willj says

    For sure Jesus would have carried a Glock. He’d have shot that guy’s ear off. Blessed are the peacemakers, the meek, the merciful, turn the other cheek. Yup, Jesus sounds like a republican to me.

  9. jrkrideau says

    Well, Luke 22:35–38 is obviously enough for the FBI to arrest Jesus and his henchmen. Those two swords signal either a terrorist attack or armed insurrection.

    I often get the impression that many US fundamentalists think the US constitution is one of the books of the bible.

    Bob Altemeyer in his book The Authoritarians https://theauthoritarians.org/options-for-getting-the-book/ makes the point that a lot of fundamenalists (Canadian rather than American in his student sample) don’t know much about the actual bible because they never read much, if any, of it.

    A Few Surprising Findings about Fundamentalists. Since fundamentalists insist
    the Bible is the revealed word of God and without error, you would think they’d have
    read it. But you’d often be wrong. I gave a listing of the sixty-six books in the King
    James Bible to a large sample of parents and asked them, “How many of these have
    you read, from beginning to end? (Example, if you have read parts of the Book of
    Genesis, but not all of it, that does not count.)” Nineteen percent of the Christian High
    fundamentalists said they had never read any of the books from beginning to end,
    which was neatly counterbalanced by twenty percent (but only twenty percent) who
    said they had read all sixty-six. (I tip my hat to anyone who put her head down and
    plowed through the first nine chapters of Chronicles I. Look it up.)
    On the average, the high fundamentalists said they had read about twenty of the
    books in the Bible–about a third of what’s there. So they may insist that the Bible is
    totally accurate in all that it teaches, but most of them have never read a lot of what
    they’re so sure of.

    Matt Barber was probably working from some kind of Biblical cheat sheet or , at best, a Biblical Coles Notes.

  10. Chris Capoccia says

    @jrkrideau
    Insurrection? Lol. The disciples were incompetent with swords. As the text continues, all they managed was clumsilly chopping off an ear (that was promptly miraculously put back in working order) before Jesus surrendered

    And really probably one of the points of the text is that true Christian weapons are not from this world because the enemies of Christians are not human (II Corinthians 10:4)

  11. mod prime says

    Matthew 26:52

    “Then said Jesus unto him, Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.”

  13. archangelospumoni says

    I didn’t know the Bible had stuff about males who **substitute** or **compensate** for having a tiny little needle dick by owning tons or dozens or truckloads of firearms. You know–long ones, hard ones, steely ones, shiny ones, loud ones . . . ad nauseam.
    Poor widdow needle-dicks.

  14. Knabb says

    I realize this is largely irrelevant and mostly a pet peeve, but slings and slingshots are not the same thing, bronze to iron age shepherds didn’t tend to have much in the way of elastic materials to make slingshots with, and if you’re going to idealize the metaphors in some book you might as well be able to get them right.

  15. chrislawson says

    Is “uninfringeable” where these people get their ideas about naval flags in US court rooms?

  16. chrislawson says

    Chris Cappocia@1

    Luke 22:36-38 is comedy gold.

    Jesus says, “If you have money or something you can sell, go buy a sword.”

    Then the disciples say, “Actually, Jesus, here are two swords…”

    “That was…suspiciously fast,” says Jesus.

    (That last line is not in the Bible, but the first two are.)

  17. Chris Capoccia says

    @chrislawson
    That was pretty funny :D maybe I can reuse the joke some time.

  19. Onamission5 says

    I for one am 100% in favor of replacing all guns with slingshots just like it says in the bible.