I follow John Tyner’s blog, <Insert title here>, and he had a recent post on guns and churches and permissions. Tracking back to John’s source, The Volokh Conspiracy (which is another excellent blog that I intermittently follow), this is the gist of a recent law case.
- There is a church in Georgia state.
- The minister wants to wear a gun in church.
- The church and, presumably, his parishioners, have no objections.
- BUT, the law generally forbids possession of weapons at churches or church functions.
- A case is filed.
The court hears the case but decides that the priest cannot carry a gun because:
Prohibiting the carrying of firearms in a place of worship bears a substantial relationship to that important goal by protecting attendees from the fear or threat of intimidation or armed attack.
John Tyner goes on to say:
A private entity wants to allow guns on their own property, but the government says, “no”. The people’s right to keep and bear arms can be infringed because of the possibility of “private bias or coercion”; that is, the government can take action because a crime might be committed, in the absence of any evidence of said crime.
And I completely agree with him. HOWEVER….
This does not stop the rational (i.e. non-US) readers of this piece to ask: why the hell would someone want to wear a gun in a church anyway? Now, I may be an old-fashioned atheist, but I thought that a church was a place of worship and sanctuary, a place of peace and reflection. The comments at Volokh suggest that the carrying of weapons may be valid when certain religions find they are the victims of violence from other religions but, if that’s the case, surely you have a bigger problem that needs addressing, one that involves law-makers and policies outside church grounds before infringing upon it?
The idea that one group may commit violence on another group on the basis of religion is not new. Only last year, a gang of three youths was charged with arson and attempted arson of some Christian churches in the Klang Valley area of Malaysia and there are numerous flare-ups of the same in Indonesia. Please note that the response in both countries has NOT been for the priests and ministers to carry guns to mass. Good gods, every interested party has understood that this was a problem of wider compassion, education and understanding, not shooting the first nut-case that wanders into a nave with a Zippo™ lighter in his/her hand. Apparently not so in Georgia, which prefers to shoot first and ask questions later. (And I mean, Georgia??? There’s a hot-bed of inter-religious hatred, with the potential for terrorism and counter-strikes necessitating bearing lethal weapons in a house of worship, in Georgia*??? The country south of Russia, I could almost understand; the state in the southern United States less so. Maybe the guys there are wearing underwear a couple of sizes too small.)
To my mind, there’s really only one bona fide excuse to carry weapons into a church and that’s when the inevitable Zombie Apocalypse occurs. It’s a tried and true piece of fact that, whenever great horrors beset humankind, the place everyone runs to is the local (stone-built) church. I’ve seen enough cinema to know this to be true. But, again, may I humbly suggest that should you be caught in the middle of a Zombie Apocalypse, whether or not you violate the First Amendment by reloading your sawn-off shotgun in the vestry is, by then, academic?
* Yes, I have visited Atlanta, Georgia, on several occasions, and thoroughly enjoyed each trip. Thanks for asking.
