Does The Bible Say Anything About Guns or Gun Rights?

The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution gives Americans “The right to keep and bear arms,” but guns cannot do not kill…people with guns do, but is there any reason to believe the right to bear arms means the right to have own automatic weapons that can murder dozens of people within seconds? In the very first murder we see that no gun was involved. Cain killed Abel (Gen 4:8), proving it isn’t necessary to have a weapon to kill someone. Homicide data from FBI reports (in 2013) indicate that firearms were responsible for about 2/3rds of all homicides in the U.S., so the belief that more people are killed by baseball bats or other blunt objects (which account for 3.9% of homicides) or knives (13.4%), is patently false. But again, guns don’t kill because murder starts in the heart. It’s not a gun issue; it’s an issue of the heart. A gun never killed anyone; it was always someone pulling the trigger or not handling it with care. Drunk drivers kill a lot of people every year, but do we say, “We need to get rid of cars because they keep killing people.” Most people are able to own and drive a car, but even the government restricts the top speed of cars because too much speed can kill. No, it’s the person behind the wheel that kills; not the car. There is no reason that we should not have a way of protecting ourselves, but how far is too far? The military and law enforcement have automatic weapons, but they’re intended to save lives, since “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed,” and life should be protected because “God made man in his own image” (Gen 9:6). Obviously, the use deadly force against someone who is taking other people’s lives is justified, and so are their use of automatic weapons, but no human has that right outside of defending one’s own life to take the life of another.