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3 dead in the Boston Marathon Bombing?  Well how about 9 dead in South Carolina?  Just one nut with a gun and a bunch of disarmed civilians and you’ve got even more devastation, no bomb needed.  How high does the death toll need to get before liberals realize maybe somebody just needs to carry a firearm to stop the insanity?

Full Transcript of Audio

So I have to interrupt our series on the Tea Party – and we’ll definitely get back to it – but I have to interrupt our series because I need to address the recent news item, the tragic shooting in that South Carolina church last week, happened last Wednesday night in the church’s mid-week prayer meeting. So disturbing and horrific and despicable, it’s hard to even think about it or listen to news coverage of it, and in my flesh, all I feel is absolute loathing for this guy who did it. 9 people killed, he sat in the prayer meeting for an hour before opening fire. A prayer meeting! This psychotic, evil individual went into a prayer meeting at a black church to kill people. White guy, somewhere in his 20s. As the report goes, he was going off on a racist tirade before brutalizing people, so it seems there was an intentional targeting of blacks, which just heaps on more disgust. The pastor was killed along with six women according to Breitbart. One child played dead to survive. And the guy reloaded, listen to this, he reloaded FIVE times in his massacre of 9 people. Five times, five times! Did you hear me?!? Nine people? That was more than died in the Boston Marathon bombing! I mean, this is unbelievable, this is unreal that this happened and that these people were helpless victims, sitting there, defenseless victims getting slaughtered execution style. And the fact that it was a mid-week church meeting, the most sacred of assemblies, makes this so painfully inconceivable.

And here’s why I’m bringing this up. Because this is insane, this is totally insane and horribly and unnecessarily tragic, that something like this happens, that in a free country with a Constitution and the rule of law and the 2nd Amendment right to bear arms and where citizens still retain the prerogative of self-defense, where there is still a semblance of Christian consensus that we ought to defend life and defend the innocent, where there is a prohibition on the reckless slaughter of other people in cold blood because of the rule of law, it is insane and tragic that in this country people are left as victims like this, mass murder victims, left with no way to protect themselves. And if you think I’m bringing up guns and gun rights and the abject insanity of leftist gun control laws, you’re absolutely right. Except I’m not the one bringing it up, Obama did. President Obama already did. He already, as he always does as a good community agitator, injected his opinion, took advantage of his position as the chief executive, to inject himself and his maniacal liberal ideology into a local situation for the express purpose of exploiting the tragedy to advance an agenda. And that liberal political agenda would be gun control, an absolute favorite of raving lunatic Democrats. Just like a liberal to exploit a tragic situation as a platform for partisan politics. To be sure, he said he would hold off on making judgments ‘till the details were in, but right after that he says he had at least one point to make, and that was, “see, this is what happens when people have such free access to firearms and when gun control laws are as lax as they are in this country.” So he took the opportunity to do a little, good-old fashioned America bashing, how it’s our fault, we’re the worst country in the world, we have a culture of violence essentially because we still retain the right to bear arms and haven’t yet abolished what to him and other power-hungry liberals is an old-fashioned, outdated, violent civil right, that is our 2nd Amendment gun rights. Except the problem is, he’s completely wrong! And he’s just spewing more propaganda, as many other liberals and media pundits and cultural elitists will no doubt continue to do as this tragedy works itself out in the news and in the national conversation.

I repeat, Obama is completely wrong! Now to be fair, this is the natural knee jerk reaction of anyone of us trained in the public schools, brainwashed by the media for year after year. All of us have this natural reaction because we’ve been pre-programmed by the liberal narrative in our culture which has been spun now for generations, to think that the culprit here is guns and gun rights and that this is merely the outgrowth of failed gun control policy, that this is wild west America, uncivilized America and that’s why this happened, the guns are the problem, and the only solution is to tighten up and increase gun control regulations and continue the process of restricting access. The thinking is, we’re behind the times and behind all the rest of the civilized western world, and we just gotta let it go and turn in the firearms and dump this antiquated notion of a 2nd Amendment right to bear arms. Or at least just get our guns registered, right? As though that isn’t the first step to confiscation.

Look I’m being honest, so that you don’t feel bad if that was your reaction. As I said, that’s all of our natural reaction because of how we’ve been trained to think in this liberal culture, not logically, not reasonably, not with an eye to justice and the rule of law and a righteous standard. We’ve been trained to react emotionally and with a visceral, thoughtless impulse – “take away the guns!! The guns are doing this!” And the unfortunate thing is, that is completely the wrong response and the wrong reaction and the wrong way to go about addressing the problem.

Obama is spinning a false narrative, he is wrong: this is NOT what happens when people have easy access to firearms!! This is what happens when you disarm innocent civilians: maniacs come into our churches and shoot us! This is what happens when you disarm the citizenry, when you fail to inculcate a proper understanding of civil rights and civil responsibility, when you neuter the entire population and teach them that only violent people have weapons, when you teach generation after generation to give up their privilege and their responsibility to arm themselves, this is what happens: maniacs go on unchallenged, uncontested shooting sprees. Maniacs, who HAVE guns, criminals who always somehow happen to have unlimited access to weapons even after law-abiding citizens are disarmed and lose their access, maniacs come in and start shooting people who are defenseless, sitting ducks with no way out.

Here’s the point I’m trying to make, I’m beating around the bush here. Here’s the point: this guy could have been stopped easily before he killed as many people as he did if someone in that room had a gun. I’m not saying that the incident itself would have been completely prevented. Bad things happening is the course of life, you can’t always prevent some violent crime like this from occurring. But most assuredly, it doesn’t have to turn into a 9-person death toll of massive carnage. That doesn’t have to be. You don’t need 9 people dying, captured in a small church building. What you CAN do is limit the scope and extent of the atrocity and sharply diminish the number of lives lost if the proper response happens in time. You can’t prevent, but you can halt, demobilize and resist the offender, you can disable the criminal and neutralize the situation and save lives, truly save real lives that count and that matter, if you have someone present with the ability to defend themselves. You can neutralize the situation if you have an equally forceful response when violence breaks out. And that’s exactly what ought to be in a nation of laws where the people maintain the morally just and morally superior prerogative of self-defense. This isn’t an issue of gun rights ultimately. It’s an issue of the sanctity of life and the moral obligation we have to protect and defend innocent human life at all cost. And because we have that moral obligation, we likewise have an obligation to maintain the right to keep and bear arms as the appropriate means to preserve human life against violent offenders.

Look, reloading 5 times and killing 9 people without an ounce of resistance is completely insane and unnecessary, tragically illogical and horrifyingly unnecessary for a free and civilized society and precisely a result of the fact that no one in that room was a carrying a firearm. That did not have to happen, that does not need to happen, some wild fiend reloading his weapon over and over again and killing individuals one by one, execution style, over and over again, and then walking out with no resistance, that did not have to happen in a country like America, in a country of laws where citizens have the prerogative because of the law and the moral consensus to protect themselves and others. I repeat, I’m not saying evil doesn’t have to happen, it happens in this world because it’s a fallen world, it’s a sinful world for sure and we are never going to perfectly eliminate evil; but the extent of the evil, the extreme degree of the evil, the unstoppable, unchecked force of evil resulting in 9 dead, that does not have to happen, and wouldn’t happen, if we were properly armed. One good guy in there with a gun, just ONE good guy, and that demonic individual would have been subdued on the spot before he was able to causally, repetitively reload and run through the nine determined targets that he had in mind to kill. He could’ve been stopped, listen, that guy could’ve been stopped, maybe not after the first two or three or five or however many, but he could’ve been stopped and disabled. Reloading?!? Do you know how long that takes? To reload and keep killing?!? That guy could have been shut down and the death toll would have been lower, and maybe he’d have been dead himself if someone in there had a gun to resist him, which would’ve been more appropriate and much more just than any of his victims dying; and lives would’ve been saved. How many? I don’t know, but even one saved is one less dead and even just one life is infinitely valuable and worth sparing. And that’s the point, no guns in there meant more dead. Armed, innocent, law-abiding civilians defending themselves because they were carrying would’ve meant less dead, and in all likelihood, significantly less dead.

Look, I’ve already said it numerous times, I’m not pretending guns means utopia. You cannot perfectly stop evil people in any society from doing evil things. Listen, you can’t perfectly stop evil. Evil will always exist, evil people will always go on lawless rampages, whether stealing or murdering or hustling or raping or whatever, but what you can do, what you can do in a society of LAWS, in a society with social order and a system of justice, what you can do is curtail, minimize, diminish, the horrifying impact and the negative consequences of evil criminal behavior. That’s one of the things that makes America great and has always made America great: in a society of legitimate law, starting with the Constitution, in a society where ALL people are governed by a supreme, overarching code, a binding system of ethics, evil is kept at bay, evil is curtailed and men are civilized. And the remarkable fact is, this system of ethics is uniquely Christian and uniquely biblical, grounded in its original inception in the teachings of Scripture. That’s where the whole idea of government by law, government by covenant, government by constitution comes from. And in a unique moment in history, in a noteworthy way, America stands as the example of a free society governed by universal, established law whereby all men are held accountable to a standard and all men are bound under a common covenant.

On the contrary, in a lawless, barbaric society, criminals go unchallenged. They do what they want, kill who they want, go into whoever’s hut and rape who they want. But in a civil society, criminals can be restrained and evil can be hindered, limited, stifled by proper legal limitations. And I’m obviously making the case here that one of the greatest social restraints against evil in our society as Americans is this very ability to bear arms. It’s a civil restraint against other violent citizens and also, perhaps more importantly, against a violent government itself. And quite frankly, as I said, that is all very novel, new on the stage of human history. This is all an exception to the rule and to man’s general experience, and that’s part of what makes America exceptional. That’s extremely different from the status quo of the world and of history, where evil savagery rules. This notion of law is novel precisely because it is civilized, as opposed to savage societies where might makes right and evil men prosper and evil men run rampant: they go unchecked by law and they go unchallenged for lack of a proper citizenry who maintains the civil prerogative to uphold law and order. But not so in America where the citizens can and must uphold law and order. And upholding law and order includes arming ourselves and defending the innocent, and that is embodied in our 2nd Amendment right to keep and bear arms. That right, that Amendment, is the covenantal, legal force behind our moral obligation to preserve and protect life against unjust encroachments in our civil society. This isn’t about political perspectives and political preferences, this is about morality and the sanctity of life and the moral imperative of a free people to protect themselves and to protect the weak. It is a moral obligation to stop evil men. And in America, thankfully, we are legally empowered to do just that. Yet the left, by seeking to abolish the right and the prerogative of the citizenry to administer justice and defend itself in the face of violent assault, is quite frankly reducing us back to savagery and back to the uncivilized, social bondages of antiquity.
What this little church in South Carolina needed that night was a person with a gun. That would’ve put a quick end to a devastating nightmare. And I’m not saying that the people there, the victims, have any culpability at all in the situation whatsoever for being unarmed; they don’t obviously, that would be an absurd notion, and that’s not my point at all. But my point is that it is quite tragic and quite the fault of liberal Democrats that they were unarmed. It is quite the fault of liberal Democrats that our culture has been trained NOT to fear evil, not to have a high regard for evil and not to regard the need to be always vigilant and armed, prepared to defend. It is quite the fault of liberals that our culture has been trained, to put it bluntly, not to carry a weapon. And worse, in some places, like the great state of New Jersey or New York and other liberal Democrat bastions, it’s the law, you’re not even permitted to carry! How insane! We’ve been trained that a gun isn’t necessary and that, in fact, it is an aberration, not normal, and indicative of a violent personality and dangerous to everyone, especially kids! And we’ve been trained that carrying is enough of an offense even to outlaw it. When in fact, all it is, owning and carrying a firearm, it’s a reasonable person taking reasonable steps to preserve life and property, of himself and others. And that’s why I really struggle living in a place where you can’t carry because I’m being forced to be defenseless and forced to have no viable option for defending my family. As I’ve said, thanks to liberal Democrats, in states all over the Union, our right to keep and bear arms has been all but completely abolished by prohibitions on the right to carry. Is that crazy or what? Do you hear what I’m saying? You essentially can’t have a gun because you aren’t allowed to carry it around at all. I mean you can own it, but you can’t carry it around for self-defense. How absurd is this? That’s no civil right! And that makes us complete victims, helpless victims, targets of any shooting incident that some lunatic decides to initiate. We become fish in a barrel, unable to defend ourselves or our wives or our own children even in our own neighborhoods or wherever else we may go. And that is so fundamentally contradictory to what I know to be true as a man, my moral obligation and natural, innate impulse to defend. My pastor even just talked this past Sunday about a man’s basic obligation, to provide for and protect his family. And it’s getting to the point in America where we are being restrained from doing that, we are being handcuffed by firearms regulations and excessive limitations so that we cannot maintain even a modicum of a sufficient personal defense against antagonistic, violent criminals who want to hurt the people around us. I mean, we can’t even defend our churches on our own, as able-bodied, law-abiding citizens who bear arms legally. They have, listen, the Democrats, the liberals, they have successfully disarmed America. And now we are getting slaughtered by maniacs.

Let me read to you a passage from the book of Nehemiah that better encapsulates what I mean about the natural virtuous impulse of a man to defend his family and defend the innocent. Nehemiah was leading the Jews in rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem and restoring the city after the Babylonian exile. The Jews were commissioned by the chief magistrate to go back to their homeland and rebuild, and yet they faced fierce opposition and death threats from local tribal authorities. So what did Nehemiah do in the face of grave threats against the wellbeing of his people? He said, “Turn in your weapons,” right? “Register your daggers and support sword control as a positive social movement!“ No, he was a man, not a wimp. He said to the men of Israel in chapter 4, verse 14, “Do not be afraid of them. Remember the Lord, who is great and awesome, and fight for your brothers, your sons, your daughters, your wives, and your homes.” One of my favorite verses for sure! And later on in the same passage, the Scriptures note how the workers labored with one hand and held their weapon in the other, and the builders kept their swords strapped to their sides at all times. Totally and completely awesome. And thoroughly biblical! Now do you see why this is such a sticking point for me, for so many conservatives, for so many men and so many law-abiding citizens? And so many Christians?

Do you see now why I’m so adamant about this issue? Can you cut my some slack? Do you see now it isn’t about being a macho-man gun-slinging boor? It’s all about acting like an authentic man, like a dignified man, and living like an American and taking a just stand for the rights of the innocent and defenseless. And the government with it’s excessive gun control laws is literally preventing me and others from being the men and citizens we ought to be, preventing us from being able and competent to protect our families in any and all circumstances. I have no means of personal defense when I’m out with my wife and kids. What we take as completely normal nowadays I am making the case is completely and utterly bizarre and insane. I know I keep using that same word, insane, but no other suitable word comes to mind to describe this situation we are facing in this country. And with all the additional ludicrous gun rules and regulations, I barely have the option of defense even at home. That puts everyone all in the exact same tragic predicament as those people in the South Carolina church that night. How degrading and pitiful to the people in this lawful republic, that we are reduced to defenseless victims? That is despicable to me, and completely counterintuitive to my identity and role and responsibility, my Christian duty even, as a man and as a husband and a father. Do you get it now? This is such a hot button issue for conservatives because it cuts right at the core of what it means to be a man and an American. I can’t, listen, I can’t defend my family because of sniveling, whining liberal Democrats who make stupid laws that disarm the population. My wife can’t defend herself while she is out and about because of dumb Democrat laws. This gun control nonsense is completely counterintuitive to the identity of every law-abiding American, man AND woman, with any semblance of common sense or any sense of their moral, civil duty. Owning and carrying a firearm is perfectly legitimate, reasonable and logical, for men and women, and something that should be done by every sensible American who wants to be ready for any situation, as long as they still retain that right.

And in light of the present discussion and situation, I would make the case that it is even a moral obligation, especially if you are a dad responsible for your own family members. Or if you pastor a church and are responsible for hoards of people and their safety. You better get something in place to protect the people around you. Because the violence doesn’t stop at the church threshold as, tragically, we can see here. And if you’re in a place where you aren’t legally permitted to carry, i.e. a liberal utopia dictatorship, then at least own one. Go out and buy one. It’s your civil duty and moral obligation to the people around you, especially those who are weaker and dependent on you. I repeat, it is your duty to have and own and even carry, for as long as you can, whenever you can, for as long as they permit it. Failing to do so means failing to take adequate precautionary steps for the safety of others in a fallen world where evil violence is a sad but natural reality that we must come to grips with and face head on. So go buy a gun. Listen, go out, get your firearms ID and go purchase a firearm. Wives, let your husbands go get a gun. Quite letting the liberals neuter your man by scaring you into abdicating, giving up, this fundamental right that belongs to him and you and your family.  And ladies… arm yourselves, you’re as able-bodied as any man and equally in need of proper defenses. It is reasonable and logical. Go to your local police station, get your ID, buy a firearm, stick it in a safe, and pray you never, ever have need to use it, other than for some fun target practice. And then be the peaceful, law-abiding citizen you are obligated to be.

And look, I readily admit, this all sounds so foreign to us, but in reality having your gun with you should be as natural and commonplace as carrying your wallet and your car keys. I got my keys, my iPhone, and my sidearm. Wasn’t it that way for ages in this country, and still is in some places and in some states, isn’t that normal? It’s not violent, it’s normal. And yet liberals have created a culture of disarmament, a culture of zero defenses against hostility by breading like social rot this cancerous notion that having or carrying guns is somehow evil or savage or inherently dangerous. But it is NOT carrying weapons that precisely results in the excessively brutal savagery we’ve seen, like in this church in South Carolina. Liberals have successfully emasculated the entire society and socially disarmed us without ever even passing an official law repealing the 2nd Amendment. Americans, to their shame and own demise, don’t really carry anymore, nor do they even care that they don’t or that they’ve completely lost that civil liberty in many states. Nor do they care that they are on the road to losing the right to bear arms altogether. Like a frog being boiled in a pot of water with the heat slowly turning up and he doesn’t even know he’s being cooked alive. We are a society of disarmed victims now, and the liberals are responsible, and we never even saw it coming. Tragic for sure.

And to be perfectly honest, every church likewise should be armed, in some way, even in non-carry states. Either have the people themselves carry, or hire undercover, armed guards. To reiterate, we are at the point where we can’t even protect our own churches with our own people because of limitations on the 2nd Amendment. So churches are forced to higher armed guards. What county are we living in for crying out loud? We shouldn’t need guards to protect our houses of worship! The men in our churches should be competent and armed enough to do that for ourselves, thank you very much, that is if we were permitted to do so. But alas in many places we are not. So those churches are prudent who decide to actually go out and get real armed protection. And I know churches that have done this, and the congregation would do well to know about it and show great appreciation to their pastors and leaders who have such safety mechanisms already in place to protect the people on sight, including women and children. Pastors need to preach on it and advertise from their pulpit, “Hey, we are proud to announce that this a safe environment, steps have been taken to ensure proper defenses should any violence break out, and we are staying vigilant with men here carrying firearms safely and legally. And culprits beware, this is not the church for you to walk into and start shooting up; you will face a severe and lethal backlash for sure and you won’t have much success. So head somewhere else.” That would be the most effective deterrent to violent criminals coming in for sure.

I mean, isn’t this what happened in Aurora, Colorado where the movie theatre shooting occurred back in 2012? Oh, you didn’t know that did you? That’s because the liberal media didn’t report all the details… because the details make a clear case for the effectiveness of right to carry laws in diminishing and discouraging violent crime. Here’s the big under-reported detail from the Aurora shooting: of all the movie theaters within 20 minutes of the killer’s home, the one he targeted was the only one, listen, the ONLY one that prohibited the right to concealed carry. That’s right. How tragic and how eye-opening! There were plenty of other theaters with larger audiences, even closer to his home, showing the same Batman movie that night, except all of them allowed the concealed carry of handguns, which is still legal in Colorado. And yet the killer understood the social deterrent created by concealed carry well enough, apparently better than liberals, so well in fact that he decided to make his attack on the one theater in his vicinity where guns were prohibited by the business owner, the one place where he could recklessly kill 12 people and wound 58 without a single shot being fired back in retaliation to stop his bloody rampage. And get this, a lawsuit was later filed against that theater in court, with the claim that the movie theater had primary responsibility for the attack for not having proper security guards there to provide for the safety of its customers. Seriously? That’s why the theater is held liable? No guards? Um, I don’t think so. The theater is liable because they had a no weapons allowed policy. How about pressing charges against the theater for endangering the lives of all of its customers because it prohibited firearms, which were legal everywhere else. That’s why that guy came in guns blazing, that’s why people died and there was no defense, because that private business decided to render its customer defenseless upon their entrance into the facility.

People carrying isn’t a deterrent to crime? Give me a break, don’t believe the hype. You strap guns to law-abiding citizens and let the criminals know, well, they’re keeping to themselves or going elsewhere. That’s proven, and any dope can figure out that logical conclusion, even evil masterminds. So churches, listen up! Follow suit, get the guns in the building, pray you never need to use them, and preach it from the pulpit. And don’t fail to protect the good stewardship of lives and souls that the LORD has entrusted you with.

Let justice roll down like waters, America, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream! Sadly, we need to learn from the situation in South Carolina. This was a tragic loss of the lives of 9 of our dear brothers and sisters in Christ, and yet we must remain vigilant and pray and take the responsible steps necessary to help prevent this from happening again elsewhere in our local churches and neighborhoods. We gotta learn from this folks, as hard as it is, we gotta learn from this. We need to take a stand against this vicious cycle of tragic shootings, and teach people the lost virtue of self-defense. Liberalism is to blame here for much of the bloodshed we’re seeing, for sure, and we’re not afraid to say it. And we’re gonna continue to advocate for the safe and responsible exercise of our 2^nd Amendment right by everyday Americans. No doubt, lives are depending on it. And as for the liberals? Well, we’ll hold their feet to the fire.