"Open Carry" Your Handgun to Church

It was over a year ago, early April 2008, when then candidate Barack Obama was secretly recorded at a northern California fundraiser and he made some candid off the cuff remarks on small town America to his well heeled audience. To wit:

“Our challenge is to get people persuaded that we can make progress when there's not evidence of that in their daily lives. You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are going to regenerate and they have not.”

“And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

And everyone piled on top. Obama was not only skewered by his principal opponent, Hillary Clinton, but also by the McCain campaign (which, as we found out later, was simply defending their base).

And guess what? Just downriver from small town in Pennsylvania we find a small town in Kentucky, with a small church and a small congregation whose pastor is celebrating the 4^th of July (on June 21st) and the 2^nd Amendment to the US Constitution by inviting his flock to bring their handguns to church with them. To “open carry” them, meaning to strap on their gun belts and carry their beloved guns openly in holsters.

From US News:

“A Louisville church is encouraging people to wear unloaded guns in their holsters to an "Open Carry Church Service" later this month, our sister paper, The Courier-Journal, reports. Participants will be able to enter a raffle to win a free handgun, hear patriotic music and listen to talks by operators of gun stores and firing ranges.”

Did I just hear a huge verification of Barack Obama’s often vilified statement on small town America clinging to their guns and their religion?

To their credit, some local religious leaders are openly criticizing this plan, causing the pastor, Pastor Ken Pagano of New Bethel Church, to backpedal slightly and ask that the guns that the congregation brings not be loaded.

Because as we all know, guns don’t kill people, bullets kill people.

I have always wondered which kind of handgun the Lord and Savior of the World, Jesus Christ would have preferred. Would He have been a fan of the old style Roscoe? Or would He have packed a Nine? I just can’t fathom it. Mainly because when I think of handguns, and the sole purpose of handguns, to kill people, I just don’t see Jesus “open carrying” anything but a Remington deer rifle.