Greg Harton

Keeping the faith in guns

Ican vaguely recall that childhood Sunday school lesson in which the Israelites, having escaped bondage by wielding AR-15s against the abusive and tyrannical pharaoh’s army, felt immediately more safe when God delivered ammo from heaven to feed their rifles.

Even God set limits, though. Any ammunition not fired off before the end of each day turned into plastic, which of course is what led our world into having too many single-use plastic bags.

Also vaguely, I remember some portion of that story being retold in the Charlton Heston version of The Ten Commandments, the one in which Edward G. Robinson played the NRA lobbyist. It eventually came to pass that Heston was president of the pro-gun organization, a position he earned after he tried, unsuccessfully, to convince director Cecile B. DeMille that Moses would have used his open-carry sidearm to kill the Egyptian who was beating one of the Hebrews.

Perhaps I’ve gotten some of the details a little off, so forgive me. My memory of that passage, though, was activated last week when Sarah Huckabee Sanders, former spokeswoman for President Donald Trump, future memoirist and rumored someday-ish Arkansas gubernatorial candidate, took to Twitter with her own biblical recollections.

“Democrats say we have guns in America because of ‘corruption.’ No, we have guns because it’s our God-given right enshrined in the Constitution,” Sanders opined. She did not go on to speak of anyone getting her gun only when they pried it from her “cold, dead hands,” as Heston so famously declared, but the drift was largely the same.

Sanders’ papa is a preacher, so you’ve got to figure she’s studied up on the subject. Unfortunately, she didn’t cite the chapter and verse to which she was referring. I doubt it was in the red-ink parts.

Old Testament? Maybe.

I have no doubt, as someone who fully exercises my own Second Amendment rights, that our Constitution protects a right to own firearms. But a “God-given right?” I don’t remember the story of Jesus open carrying in the Garden of Gethsemane, even when he knew the government was coming to arrest Him. I might have been camping and missed that Sunday morning’s lesson.

So this is what we’ve come to, declarations that my God is better armed than your God? I’d be just as appalled if Rachel Maddow suggested God would smite people who own guns.

Speaking of smiting, gun advocates in recent days have risen up against their neighborhood Walmart stores, their faith in the Bentonville retailer shaken by President and CEO Doug McMillon’s policy changes about ammunition and guns. McMillon announced an end to the company’s sales of ammunition that can be used in guns popular with mass shooters. He also said the company was “respectfully requesting that customers no longer openly carry firearms into our stores or Sam’s Clubs in states where ‘open carry’ is permitted.”

Gun advocates in Texas have since marched into stores with their guns — handguns and long guns — to test the retailers’ response. None of these worshippers of the Golden Gun have been asked to leave, they say.

I’ve always thought open carry was like bank robbers running to a fluorescent orange automobile with the words “Getaway Car” emblazoned on both sides and on the vehicle’s roof so the police helicopter can see it from a thousand feet up. Why advertise?

As for testing Walmart’s resolve, these advocates often do a lot of hallelujah-shoutin’ about law-abiding citizens who ought to be left alone. I agree with them a lot of the time. How “law-abiding” is it to disrespect the clearly stated wishes of a private property owner that customers not openly carry guns in their stores?

Thou shalt just shop elsewhere, saith the Greg.

Greg Harton is editorial page editor for the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Contact him by email at gharton@nwadg.com or on Twitter @NWAGreg.