Church promotes AR-15 raffle days after Las Vegas massacre

Matt Sessums was stopping at his local Walmart Supercenter in Oxford, Miss., when he did a double take.

Outside both entrances of the store were tables set up to promote a raffle for a nearby church. The prizes? Two AR-15 rifles.

Tickets were $10 each or three for $20. Manning the tables, Sessums said, were two adults and three children, who looked to be around the same age as his 10-year-old daughter.

“I see this one little girl in particular, you know, pointing to the thing about the AR-15 raffle and getting people to buy tickets,” Sessums told the Washington Post. “It just kind of blew my mind that little kids were participating in something like that.”

Sessums texted his neighbor Kris Belden-Adams, who was already planning to go to Walmart to buy a birthday gift for one of her kids to take to a party. When she arrived, she was struck by the same sight.

“I had a kid approach me: ‘Would you like to join a raffle? We’ve got two AR15s.’ And I’m like, whoa,” Belden-Adams said.

It hadn’t even been a week since the Las Vegas masacre, Belden-Adams thought.

“We have flags still halfmast for the Las Vegas shooting here in Oxford,” she said. “I thought it was in bad taste at this time to be auctioning an AR-15, the same weapon used in Las Vegas. Or one of them.”

When she got home, Belden-Adams looked up the raffle’s sponsor — the Oasis Church of All Nations — and sent them a message through Facebook expressing her concerns about the timing. According to posts on the church’s Facebook page, proceeds from the AR-15 raffle would go toward its Transformations Life Center, “a 12-month long drug discipleship program for those addicted.”

Belden-Adams wrote in her initial Facebook message to the church that she supported the cause but found the timing of the raffle concerning, given current events.

A man who identified himself as Danny Budd, director of the Transformation Life Center, soon responded.

“We understand your concern however, we’ve had a very positive response to the Ticket sell and no negative response,” Budd wrote to Belden-Adams, according to an image of the exchange. “We believe in the Second Amendment and the First Amendment. For some, there would never be a right time to raffle any fire arm. We respect your concern and message.”