News

San Antonio man uses legally-owned firearm to defend his home from burglar

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A message from Females with Firearms
A message from Females with Firearms (firearm pictured: Steyr AUG M3 A1)

Another day, another defensive handgun use to stop a criminal from committing a crime.

Daily Wire reports:

A would-be San Antonio intruder died at the scene of the home he was trying to break into Thursday morning after being shot by the homeowner.

Police said the criminal was a man in his 40’s attempting to burglarize the home at around 9:30 a.m. The homeowner, a man in his late 70’s, and his wife heard a commotion and went to investigate.

Police spokesman Doug Greene told KSAT12 that “the homeowner and his wife warned the man to leave, but when he broke the front door handle, the homeowner fired a shot through the door, striking the man in the chest.”

“He was really trying to make a strong effort to get into the house,” Greene said. “They felt the need to defend themselves and their property.”

Paramedics arrived shortly after the shooting and performed live-saving measures but were unable to revive the suspect.

Police told reporters that the homeowner is not expected to face any charges in the incident. Detectives also said they recovered a vehicle near the scene that may have belonged to the suspect, but they are still working to accurately identify the man.

The homeowner’s neighbor, Carl Rick Jr. told the reporter that he wasn’t surprised the homeowner made it out without a scratch.

“They picked the wrong man because Bill was ex-Special Forces Lt. Colonel. He was at one time dropped behind enemy lines in North Vietnam.”

It’s very important that everyone remember what the second amendment is used for in the United States. The second amendment allows law-abiding people to purchase firearms in order to defend themselves from criminals.

Although there is opposition to gun ownership in certain circles, the academic literature is quite clear and decisive. Legal ownership of firearms reduces rates of violent crime. Whenever laws that allow law-abiding citizens to carry firearms for self-defense, violent crime rates decrease. Whenever laws are passed that restrict law-abiding citizens from owning and carrying firearms for self-defense, violent crime rates increase.

The peer-reviewed research

Whenever I get into discussions about gun control, I always mention two academic books by John R. Lott and Joyce Lee Malcolm.

Here is a paper by Dr. Malcolm that summarizes one of the key points of her book.

Excerpt:

Tracing the history of gun control in the United Kingdom since the late 19th century, this article details how the government has arrogated to itself a monopoly on the right to use force. The consequence has been a tremendous increase in violent crime, and harsh punishment for crime victims who dare to fight back. The article is based on the author’s most recent book, Guns and Violence: The English Experience (Harvard University Press, 2002). Joyce Malcom is professor of history at Bentley College, in Waltham, Massachusetts. She is also author of To Keep and Bear Arms: The Origins of an AngloAmerican Right (Harvard University Press, 1994).

Upon the passage of The Firearms Act (No. 2) in 1997, British Deputy Home Secretary Alun Michael boasted: “Britain now has some of the toughest gun laws in the world.” The Act was second handgun control measure passed that year, imposed a near-complete ban on private ownership of handguns, capping nearly eighty years of increasing firearms restrictions. Driven by an intense public campaign in the wake of the shooting of schoolchildren in Dunblane, Scotland, Parliament had been so zealous to outlaw all privately owned handguns that it rejected proposals to exempt Britain’s Olympic target-shooting team and handicapped target-shooters from the ban.

And the result of the 1997 gun ban:

The result of the ban has been costly. Thousands of weapons were confiscated at great financial cost to the public. Hundreds of thousands of police hours were devoted to the task. But in the six years since the 1997 handgun ban, crimes with the very weapons banned have more than doubled, and firearm crime has increased markedly. In 2002, for the fourth consecutive year, gun crime in England and Wales rose—by 35 percent for all firearms, and by a whopping 46 percent for the banned handguns. Nearly 10,000 firearms offences were committed.

[…]According to Scotland Yard, in the four years from 1991 to 1995 crimes against the person in England‟s inner cities increased by 91 percent. In the four years from 1997 to 2001 the rate of violent crime more than doubled. The UK murder rate for 2002 was the highest for a century.

I think that peer-reviewed studies – from Harvard University, no less – should be useful to those of us who believe in the right of self-defense for law-abiding people. The book by economist John Lott, linked above,compares the crime rates of all U.S. states that have enacted concealed carry laws, and concludes that violent crime rates dropped after law-abiding citizens were allowed to carry legally-owned firearms. That’s the mirror image of Dr. Malcolm’s Harvard study, but both studies affirm the same conclusion – more legal firearm ownership means less crime.

Commentary

When talking with a non-Christian, make truth – not behavior – the main issue

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Bible study that hits the spot
Bible study that hits the spot

Pastor Matt posted about something that I think all Christian apologists believe, deep down. (H/T The Poached Egg)

He writes:

Typically, the church has defined loving one’s neighbor as in line with Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37) and Christ’s teaching in passages such as Matthew 25:31-46, in which we are commanded to love the imprisoned, the homeless, the hungry, etc. as if they were Jesus himself. Of course all believers should do so whether by volunteering at a soup kitchen or donating money to ministries like World Help.

But there is more to loving one’s neighbor these days than caring for the poor, as important as that is.  Those of us who live in a first world western country now dwell in a post-Christian society.  Our neighbors are inundated with naturalism masquerading as good science and sound philosophy.  Non-Christians believe the faith is intellectually vacuous.

It shocks many people when those trained in apologetics point out that atheists cannot answer questions like, “How did the universe come into existence?” “Why is our planet so finely tuned for life despite all the odds against it?” “How did life begin?” “Why do humans have consciousness?” “How is there truth or right and wrong without God?” “Why did the disciples die horrible deaths as impoverished traveling peasants rather than deny the resurrection of Jesus?”, etc.

If we are to help bring our neighbors to saving faith, we must first destroy their false ideas of what Christianity is and is not.  That means we must preach the Gospel (2 Cor. 5:21), knock down specious views of the faith and present the truth of what we believe.

Apologetics is not just an intellectual exercise for nerds like me or a debate to be won on college campuses but an increasing tool in loving our neighbors.  For if they do not understand the faith, they will likely not come to faith and that is what the God we love wants and how we must show love to our neighbors.  So, let’s study not just to win arguments but to love others.

That reminds me of 2 Corinthians 10:3-5. Our job is to beat up on false ideas and speculations.

Pastor Matt’s point is critical, I think. Just stop and think for a minute about your non-believing co-workers. Do they know that the universe began to exist? Do they know that the initial conditions and the cosmological constants have to be finely tuned to support things like galaxies, stars, planets and elements heavier than hydrogen? Do they know how much information is in a protein, and how many proteins would be needed to make the first living cell? Do they know what it takes to make a planet that can support life? What facts from the gospels and the Pauline letters pass the tests for historicity? What is the best explanation of those minimal facts?

These are the facts that we share when we discuss spiritual things with people. They are not Christian facts, they are public, testable facts. And yet, almost no one in the culture who is not already a believer is curious to find out these things on their own. But without the evidence, how are they supposed to take the first step towards a relationship with God through Jesus Christ? It’s not possible. This is a propositional faith, and we know it’s true by evidence. To share the evidence with someone so they can decide is as loving as sharing the evidence about retirement planning, or the evidence about nutrition, or the evidence about fitness and exercise, or the evidence about career planning. When you love someone, you tell them the facts, and then they decide. Evangelism is the same thing.

Here’s something from a recent post by J. Warner Wallace, where he talks about doing apologetics with people who have not yet decided whether God exists or not.

The Undecided

In many ways, this group holds the most promise. People who are undecided usually fall into two categories. Some have never really given the issue much thought. They’re neither for nor against; they’ve simply been living unaware. You may be the first person to introduce them to the issues you are trying to share. If so, remember the importance of a first impression. What you say or do will have an impact on the work of those who follow you. The second group of “undecideds” are people who have given the issue some thought, but are just beginning to make their decision. For this group of people, your defense of Christianity may very well be the deciding factor. The responsibility you and I have with the undecided is daunting, but it’s a privilege to play a small part in their decision.

OK, so I want to make a point about this. So often, I see Christian parents and leaders trying to focus on changing people’s behaviors, and not by giving them evidence. Instead of trying to convince them about what’s true, they tell them Bible verses, or maybe tell them they are going to Hell. But given what Matt and J. Warner said, I don’t want us to be focused on changing outward behavior. I want us to be focused on showing people what is true and showing our work – how we arrived at these true beliefs. You are doing Christianity wrong if you focus on getting behaviors from people by shaming them, overpowering them or scaring them.

So in my case, I’m not trying to get non-Christians to act like Christians when they have no reasons to be one. I’m trying to get them to settle on true beliefs – so that each of them and God can shake hands and be reconciled, responding to his drawing them of their own free will. Then, they can decide how they are going to act. And how they act might be even better than what we had in mind for them when all we wanted was for them to quit swearing and eat their vegetables. The Christian life is bigger than just making people do what we want them to do.

News

North Carolina State University loses court battle to silence Christian students

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Alliance Defending Freedom: for religious liberty and the conscience protection
Alliance Defending Freedom: for religious liberty and protection of conscience

Friday – that means you get good news, courtesy of the Alliance Defending Freedom.

Excerpt:

As part of a settlement with a Christian student group, officials with North Carolina State University have revised the school’s solicitation policy so that it no longer unconstitutionally censors the free speech of students. In light of the policy change, Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys representing the student group, Grace Christian Life, withdrew their lawsuit against the university on Tuesday.

Last month, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina issued a preliminary injunction that halted the university’s former policy, which required a permit for nearly any kind of non-commercial student speech or communication anywhere on campus.

“Students of any religious, political, or ideological persuasion should be able to freely and peacefully speak with their fellow students about their views without interference from university officials who may prefer one view over another. NC State did the right thing in revising its policy to reflect this instead of continuing to defend its previous policy, which was not constitutionally defensible,” said ADF Senior Counsel Tyson Langhofer.

ADF-allied attorney Edmund LaCour of Bancroft PLLC served as co-counsel in the lawsuit, Grace Christian Life v. Woodson, and argued before the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina in favor of the preliminary injunction that the court granted. The settlement essentially incorporates the terms of the injunction and requires the university to adopt a policy that protects the First Amendment freedom of all students to engage in speech throughout the campus without prior permission from the university.

The university only selectively enforced its permit policy and did so against Grace Christian Life, a registered student organization, when officials told members of the group that they needed a permit to speak with other students in the student union.

You can learn more about the ADF by reading about them on their web site.

Well, that’s your good news for Friday. ADF is one of the best Christian organizations for solving the real problems that Christians actually face. I really am grateful for their work defending religious liberty. Somebody has to hold the line against the efforts by those on the secular left to deny basic rights to Christians, such as freedom of speech, freedom of association, and conscience protection. It seems like it is open season on Christians, these days. Hardly a day goes buy where some organization or other (often taxpayer-funded!) is trying to intimidate Christians from exercising their Constitutional rights. Well, if nobody shows up to fight a battle, then the other side wins. If we don’t have groups like the ADF showing up to fight for us, we will lose these legal battles. Make sure that you honor those who are fighting for you and for your freedom to be who you are.