Sunday, July 13, 2008

Not One of the Gifts of the Spirit

I kid you not: "An Oklahoma church canceled a controversial gun giveaway for teenagers at a weekend youth conference.Windsor Hills Baptist had planned to give away a semiautomatic assault rifle until one of the event's organizers was unable to attend." [Emphasis added.]

UPDATED JULY 15: They've changed their minds; the gun-giveaway is back on again. Money quote: "Windsor Hills Baptist apparently has a history of worshipping God through firepower, and last year ran a shooting competition as part of its annual shindig." Now, that is some snarky reportage! Bravo.

11 comments:

Jeff said...

Holy fucking shit.

Anonymous said...

From the article:

“I don’t want people thinking ‘My goodness, we’re putting a weapon in the hand of somebody that doesn’t respect it who are then going to go out and kill,'” said Ross. “That’s not at all what we’re trying to do.”

I'm sorry, but you cannot determine whether a teenager is sufficiently responsible to own a gun during a weekend conference. The fact that you (might) have them sit through the lectures on gun safety and proper maintenance is not guarantee that they'll put the principles of those lectures to practice after the conference. Teens (and people in general) are perfectly capable of following all the rules and being the model of responsibility when being supervised or they otherwise know it's in their best interests, only to behave in a totally different manner once they're by themselves.

This is not to say that I'm opposed to teens having access to and even owning guns. I just think that the leaders of a weekend conference are qualified to determine whether a particular teen is ready for that kind of responsibility.

Anonymous said...

Erm, that sentence should read "...aren't qualified..."

Andy said...

Jeff: Technically according to the Book of Common Prayer, that is exactly the right response to this.

Gino said...

giving a gun away?

not good.

i'm a big 2nd ammendment believer,support shooting camps and other activities, but still i dont think this is a good idea.

N. English said...

Having a wife from the Ozarks, I can say things are a little different and I wouldn't be too shocked. To an Oklahoman, it's just another rifle (you can use it for hunting). Seithman, replace the word "gun" with "car" and you have an idea of how unshocking this might appear to someone from Oklahoma.

Not sayin' it's right, it just is.

Andy said...

I wish my church would give away a Honda Civic Hybrid with navigation system! (Damn, I think I just coveted my neighbor's automobile.)

Neel Mehta said...

I question the wisdom of teenagers even handling such a weapon, much less owning one.

Especially the boy teenagers. They tend to abuse anything they can get their hands on.

Aethlos said...

i was born and raised there. it's not only true... it's profoundly worse than you can imagine. oklahoma is a sprawling toilet...

Anonymous said...

You have got to be KIDDING me!!! That is definitely NOT one of the gifts of the Spirit! AACK!

Anonymous said...

N. English: I don't think the leaders of a weekend-long youth conference are qualified to decide whether someone else's teen is responsible enough to drive or own a car, either.