It’s not uncommon for anti-Mormons to acknowledge that Joseph and Hyrum Smith shouldn’t have been murdered by a mob but then, in the very next breath, to deny that they were martyrs. After all, didn’t they have smuggled guns with them in Carthage Jail? And didn’t they fire back at their attackers, killing two of them?
First of all, while I wouldn’t be even remotely sad if the Smiths had managed to take out a couple of the lawless swine who assaulted them, assuming that they were both locked up in a prison cell and wholly defenseless, the evidence that anybody other than Joseph and Hyrum died that day in Carthage is extremely weak if not altogether nonexistent.
Secondly, I can’t think of any persuasive moral reason to expect Joseph and Hyrum to stand idly by while their friends John Taylor and Willard Richards — who were simply visiting them there in the jail — were murdered.
In any case, here’s a good article on the subject by Danel Bachman:
https://rsc.byu.edu/archived/joseph-smith-prophet-man/22-joseph-smith-true-martyr
Posted from Brockwood Hall, Cumbria, England
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