the Legacy of My Fathers

Islam Martyrs Nigerian Christians Because They Have No Guns

March 10, 2010 at 2:54 pm (Politics) (Christian, conservative, gun control, guns, Islam, Politics)

Many countries in the world ban guns. The result is often not greater safety from violence. But Muslim extremists can buy them on the black market or make them themselves to use against the “infidels”.

MUSLIM GANGS ATTACKED AND BURNED three villages near Jos a few days ago. It took me a few days to become aware of this latest Muslim atrocity here, where our media mostly ignore foreign news and call things like this “sectarian violence”. Not so in British papers. (Read here.)

Jos sits in a border zone between Islamic and Christian regions, where Christians and Muslims compete for fertile farm land. So the attack was partly about stealing land. The Christian victims—some accounts say as many as 528, including many children—were mostly hacked to death with machetes, burned, and a few shot.

That’s because Nigerians can’t legally own guns. That doesn’t stop thugs and Muslim fanatics, a few, from hiding them. And a black market does a brisk business in home-made weapons and AK-47s. (Article here.)

When God said, “Thou shalt not steal” and “Thou shalt not murder,” He gave every human being the unalienable right to own and defend both life and property, even, if necessary, to take the life of an attacker. Laws that take away arms cannot take away God-given rights, nor does government dole them out.

The Christians in the villages near Jos had a right to defend themselves, but the government took their weapons. Taking away guns doesn’t stop bloodshed; it encourages it. The attackers just relied on machetes and fire instead. But some also shot their victims, proving that Muslims, some of them, can be trusted to break  the law in order to keep their weapons. Obviously the slain Christians did not keep guns.

This reminds me of a story from the book of Esther in the Bible. A wicked man had horn-swoggled the king into making an unwise decree that, on a certain day, the people of the Babylonian Empire could rise up against the Jews, killing and plundering them. Since the king himself under their laws could not rescind a royal decree, the king published an edict allowing Jews to kill and plunder any attackers. The result was the occasion of much rejoicing among the Jews, and one of their festivals is celebrated today in honor of this victory. If you protect the right of people to defend themselves and their property, the result will either be peace or at least a chance of victory for the innocent.

Advocates of gun control in the United States believe that taking away people’s rights will deter violence. What happened in Nigeria the other day proves otherwise. The same thing has born out in recent American statistics. In 2009, fearing the Democrats and Obama would push through gun control, Americans bought a record number of firearms. With the economy down, the so-called experts predicted a rise in violent crimes. Instead they went down to a significant degree. This was partly due to tougher law enforcement in our nation’s larger cities. But the real story is the drop in murder. This was a direct result of more guns. Killers were stopped before they could kill.

Rest assured, world-wide Islam would like nothing better than to see private Americans and Europeans disarmed. Issuing more concealed and open carry permits would discourage terrorism in public places. It would tell them, “You don’t get to do what you want to do here.”