Earlier today, Kyle wrote about right-wing pastor Chuck Baldwin’s recent assertion that it is a “biblical requirement” that every person own an assault weapon like an AR-15 and that Christians who don’t do so “have denied the Christian faith.”
Baldwin’s comments were eyebrow-raising, but fit in a pattern of the Religious Right’s attempts to rewrite American history and reinterpret the Bible to argue that not only the Constitution but God Himself requires unrestricted access to weapons of war.
We’ve put together a video showing some people who have made this argument, from Gordon Klingenschmitt, who insists the Bible says “all the citizens ought to be armed so they can defend themselves against left wing crazies,” to Family Research Council official Jerry Boykin, who has said that when Jesus returns he’ll be carrying an AR-15.
And of course the video includes David Barton, the Religious Right’s favorite purveyor of bogus historical arguments, claiming that the Founding Fathers called the Second Amendment “the biblical right of self defense.” (Barton also believes that the Second Amendment guarantees every citizen’s right to own a fighter jet.)
As Americans debate gun law reform after the mass shooting at a Florida school earlier this year, the Religious Right’s influence on the conservative movement’s rhetoric about guns is often overlooked. But as the NRA’s Wayne LaPierre made clear when he spoke at CPAC this year about the unrestricted right to bear arms being “granted by God to all Americans as our American birthright,” the Religious Right’s language on guns has become a pervasive part of the Right’s rhetoric around the Second Amendment.
