No Guns in Sacrament Meeting—We Mean It This Time!!!


Just_A_Guy
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14 minutes ago, MormonGator said:

I'll shave and cut my hair if they let me carry a grenade launcher. 

A grenade launcher? No need. Go with Someone that has some real firepower.

19  ¶ And he smote the men of Beth-shemesh, because they had looked into the ark of the LORD, even he smote of the people fifty thousand and threescore and ten men: and the people lamented, because the LORD had smitten many of the people with a great slaughter.

(Old Testament | 1 Samuel 6:19)

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2 hours ago, MormonGator said:

I'll wear a white shirt when I can bring an M16 to church. 😉

You CAN bring an M16 to church, however, you MAY not bring one.  Additionally, you can and may bring an M16 TO church, just not IN church.  I look forward to your selfie in your white shirt😀😀

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1 minute ago, person0 said:

You CAN bring an M16 to church, however, you MAY not bring one.  Additionally, you can and may bring an M16 TO church, just not IN church.  I look forward to your selfie in your white shirt😀😀

I'll wear a white shirt when you get that tear drop tattoo you promised me you'd get. 

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3 hours ago, MormonGator said:

And they call ME the heathen?! 

😝

Only those who are excessively polite or who don't know you all that well would call you a heathen. Those who know you better would use a completely different set of adjectives. :)

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7 hours ago, MarginOfError said:

Lawyer: Do you accept the premise that the leaders of the Church convey the express will of God?

person0: I do.

Lawyer: Do you accept the premise that the prohibition of deadly weapons on Church owned property was the express will of God?

 

And at this point, the trap is laid.  If you answer yes, then the corollary is that any carnage that followed was the will of God, and the Church is absolved of responsibility.

If you answer no, then you've indicated that, despite claiming that Church leaders  convey the will of God, that you don't actually believe that. In which case, why are you risking the safety of yourself and your family by going to a location that is in peril due to known errancy of God's spokesmen?

My wife pointed out that I failed to address this (my bad).

In the situation you proposed, I would answer that I do not accept the premise that leaders of the Church always convey the will of God, but that in certain situations they do, such as when speaking from the pulpit during General Conference, or when claiming a direct revelation from God.  Not sure where the trap is, I could point to official statements by the Church that make it clear that sometimes leaders do and say things and sometimes policies are enacted that are not based on doctrine or revelation, but that the doctrine is what is true.  That doctrine asks me to 'turn my heart to my fathers' through temple worship, which requires a recommend, which requires truthfully stating in the affirmative that I make an effort to attend all meetings.

Quote

Mistakes of Imperfect People

And, to be perfectly frank, there have been times when members or leaders in the Church have simply made mistakes. There may have been things said or done that were not in harmony with our values, principles, or doctrine.

I suppose the Church would be perfect only if it were run by perfect beings. God is perfect, and His doctrine is pure. But He works through us—His imperfect children—and imperfect people make mistakes.

In the title page of the Book of Mormon we read, “And now, if there are faults they are the mistakes of men; wherefore, condemn not the things of God, that ye may be found spotless at the judgment-seat of Christ.”
(Come, Join with Us - Elder Uchtdorf - Oct. 2013 General Conference)

Additionally, it would be unnecessary to prove that the Church is the only True Church, it would only have to be established that I am truly and sincerely psychologically convinced (which I am), that as the teachings of the Church explicitly indicate, it is the only True Church.

Anyway, what I am really hoping is that everyone remains safe, despite the new policy, and that eventually, it is reversed under the radar, but if not, I will still follow it.  I did some more research and discovered that the change was enacted in specific response to the new law in Texas that permits carrying a firearm into religious institutions.  My guess is that whoever passed down the decision is trying to prevent a situation where someone gets shot at church because someone else mistakenly perceived a threat.  Admittedly, that would have a much higher negative PR effect, and be much more widely published than the types of situations I am concerned about.

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KScience, just so you know the United States and the United Kingdom count murders differently according to the information I found.  In the United States we count murders that are unsolved and have no convictions, but the United Kingdom does not.  If a murder has no conviction or is unsolved they do not count it in the United Kingdom.  This also makes comparing the murder rate like comparing apples and oranges in these two countries.

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Personally I do not care if other good people ignore what this new policy says about firearms.  It is a feel good provision that will do nothing to stop someone who wants to maliciously hurt others.  If you feel the desire to carry a firearm in church and have the proper training to do so no one is going to search you and very likely no one will know.  Do whatever the LORD reveals to you on the subject.

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1 hour ago, Still_Small_Voice said:

Do whatever the LORD reveals to you on the subject.

I agree with this. I would further posit that when the First Presidency makes a change to the Handbook and announces it publicly, that's the voice of the Lord that we're hearing.

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Expect to hear more* shortly.  Our stake president just conveyed direction to find a forum to teach our members about the new policy regarding firearms/weapons, and to point out the new, stronger language.

 

* by "more" I mean, expect to hear the wording of the policy in your units. At the least, it is beginning to sound like this is being announced in all of the U.S.

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6 hours ago, Vort said:

I agree with this. I would further posit that when the First Presidency makes a change to the Handbook and announces it publicly, that's the voice of the Lord that we're hearing.

Maybe.  I think you give credit to how much available time they have on their hands, when they might be a little busier than that.

Either that or the Lord changes his mind REALLY REALLY often, sometimes in the span of less than 3-4 years.  He would even give opposite ideas that contradict each other and change that quickly!!!

Sometimes policy is just that, policy.  Sometimes it comes from the bureaucratic group of individuals at the top trying to figure out how best to interpret what the Lord wants or how to deal with how things are going in society.  I suppose one could imagine that the First Presidency WROTE the entirety of the Come Follow Me Manual or the New Youth Program that will be coming out soon.  More likely they got ideas on certain things and left it up to the bureaucratic arm to figure out how to do it.  They may speak certain things, but it's the bureacrats that write up the details in many instances (though in some there ARE times when the small details are written out by the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve...though normally it's left more to a Seventy to be in charge of with their office staff).

Just my opinion.

The Handbooks are not scriptures, they are more of how things are run in the Church.  It's to keep the house in order, rather than to be a house of chaos.

I have no idea on the gun issue to be honest.  It could be directly from revelation.  It could have been a major thing even.  The Lord could have descended from the heavens and said...you shalt not have any guns in my church, because this is a very pressing issue that needs to be addressed more than anything else right now.

Or, someone may have felt an impression that enacting a certain policy right now would be the best course of action.

OR, it could have simply been after much discussion with various groups in the bureaucracy and the leadership that they made the decision to have this written out in the Church Handbook.

It may have been to many complaints or situations that have arisen and finally someone said...enough...if people don't take a hint one way, we'll make it far more explicit in another way.  It could boil down to a very small group of people (and not necessarily the entire First Presidency even) who decided on this change and got it approved.  Then to make sure everyone is aware of it the public relations department got everything in order with announcements and otherwise.

Various ways that things happen in relation to changes in policy.

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On 8/28/2019 at 1:15 PM, person0 said:

Absolutely.  I am being expected to forsake a God given right established by the constitution which is upheld by the scriptures themselves.  If they are not providing adequate protection to coincide with and justify their policy and I or my family are harmed when we might otherwise been able to be protected, I would have no qualms in pursuing legal action.

 

My other question about this is would you have to prove that in that situation you would have indeed been able to pull your gun out and actually hit the perp? In a stressful situation how many would actually turn into a wobbly Barney Fife who couldn’t hit the side of a barn? (raises hand)

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5 hours ago, JohnsonJones said:

I suppose one could imagine that the First Presidency WROTE the entirety of the Come Follow Me Manual or the New Youth Program that will be coming out soon.  More likely they got ideas on certain things and left it up to the bureaucratic arm to figure out how to do it.  They may speak certain things, but it's the bureacrats that write up the details in many instances (though in some there ARE times when the small details are written out by the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve...though normally it's left more to a Seventy to be in charge of with their office staff).

Well, sort of.  Dr. Dan Peterson once shared a very cool story - I am kicking myself for not keeping the link.

He was on a committee tasked with revising the Gospel Principles manual.  Instructors, general authorities, folks from the correlation committee.  There was a process in place - the committee made changes, it went up the chain a few rungs.  Back down for further edits.  Up and down the chain, getting closer to completion every time.  When complete, the whole thing went to the 1st presidency and Qof12 for final comments, back down, back up for final approval.

He had the opportunity to pull a bit of a practical joke.  On the specific section he was working on, he included something funny.  Going from memory here, it looked something like this:

Quote

 

Have the class read Acts 20:9-10: "And there sat in a window a certain young man named Eutychus, being fallen into a deep sleep: and as Paul was long preaching, he sunk down with sleep, and fell down from the third loft, and was taken up dead. And Paul went down, and fell on him, and embracing him said, Trouble not yourselves; for his life is in him.

Questions for class discussion: Have you ever given a talk so boring that someone died?  Did you need to raise the dead in response?  Discuss how you handled the situation. 

 

He figured the reviewers would get a brief chuckle out of it, delete it, and move on.  He was astounded when the entire draft came back for further review, but his joke section had passed review untouched.  He felt surely the reviewers were having fun with HIM now.  This happened for another review cycle or two - the joke section went unnoticed and un-cut.  The final review was about to go up, and if it passed, it would head up to the Qof12 for final approval - and his joke section was still there!

Dr. Peterson talked a little about what was one of the most difficult struggles he had faced that year - to say something, or let it slide and see how far it went.  He decided to call the final reviewers' attention to the section.  They chuckled briefly, and cut it.  And that was that - it never made it into the final version we all have in our buildings these days. 

 

Edited by NeuroTypical
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25 minutes ago, carlimac said:

My other question about this is would you have to prove that in that situation you would have indeed been able to pull your gun out and actually hit the perp? In a stressful situation how many would actually turn into a wobbly Barney Fife who couldn’t hit the side of a barn? (raises hand)

Good question.  Not sure if that is even provable, but I'd be willing if it were possible.  It would be very easy to 'prove' for veterans with military experience and the like.

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41 minutes ago, carlimac said:

My other question about this is would you have to prove that in that situation you would have indeed been able to pull your gun out and actually hit the perp? In a stressful situation how many would actually turn into a wobbly Barney Fife who couldn’t hit the side of a barn? (raises hand)

It's a valid concern.  There's an axiom in the community: "You'll shoot better on your worst day at the range, than you will on your best day in a real life and death situation".  Adrenalin dumps, and fight/flight reactions, and blood moving to different areas of the brain when life is on the line, and the loss of fine-motor control that goes with it - people in this situations often encounter this stuff.  Some people freeze up, some people experience extreme emotion.  Another axiom: "You don't rise to the occasion, you fall back on your training."

Yes, everyone who carries should think about that stuff.  And train for it too.  Call it the light of Christ, call it evolutionary biology, but a human making an intentional decision to do serious/fatal harm to another human goes against our biology and our psyche - even if we're a good guy and the other guy is inches away from killing our loved one.

Edited by NeuroTypical
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10 minutes ago, NeuroTypical said:

Well, sort of.  Dr. Dan Peterson once shared a very cool story - I am kicking myself for not keeping the link.

He was on a committee tasked with revising the Gospel Principles manual.  Instructors, general authorities, folks from the correlation committee.  There was a process in place - the committee made changes, it went up the chain a few rungs.  Back down for further edits.  Up and down the chain, getting closer to completion every time.  When complete, the whole thing went to the 1st presidency and Qof12 for final comments, back down, back up for final approval.

He had the opportunity to pull a bit of a practical joke.  On the specific section he was working on, he included something funny.  Going from memory here, it looked something like this:

He figured the reviewers would get a brief chuckle out of it, delete it, and move on.  He was astounded when the entire draft came back for further review, but his joke section had passed review untouched.  He felt surely the reviewers were having fun with HIM now.  This happened for another review cycle or two - the joke section went unnoticed and un-cut.  The final review was about to go up, and if it passed, it would head up to the Qof12 for final approval - and his joke section was still there!

Dr. Peterson talked a little about what was one of the most difficult struggles he had faced that year - to say something, or let it slide and see how far it went.  He decided to call the final reviewers' attention to the section.  They chuckled briefly, and cut it.  And that was that - it never made it into the final version we all have in our buildings these days. 

 

Taken from a website i don't particularly like and won't link to:

Peterson, "I remember some of mine I had put in jokes sometimes.  We all did.  [We would] come and discuss on Sunday morning, [and] critique each other’s proposed lessons.  Mine was Life Applicational Questions.  ‘Do you think it would be a good idea to be a wicked Judahite king? What steps can you take toward this?’

My favorite was one that I actually told on numerous occasions where they really wanted Life Applications and no history.  I was doing the passage in Acts where you have Uticus up in the rafters at Troas.  Paul drones on and on so long that he falls asleep, and falls out of the rafters. He’s taken up dead it says and Paul has to restore him to life.  So I thought, ‘Alright, have a class member read Acts–whatever the passage is.  Now, have you ever killed anyone with a Sacrament Meeting speech?  How did it make you feel?  What steps could you take in the future to avoid this?’  The funny thing is that it passed Correlation."

Wotherspoon, “That part did?” [chuckling]

Peterson, “It did, I can only assume that people chuckled at every point and it made it.  When I saw the final draft, final gallies, it was still there!”

Wotherspoon, “No way!  Wow.”

Peterson, “I went through a real crisis of conscience there.  I thought, ‘I would love to see this go into the manual! But I finally called them and said, ‘I’m not sure that you’d want that particular bundle of questions there.’  [and they said] ‘Oh good grief! good grief! We’ll take it out!  We’ll take it out!’  And I thought ‘it would have been great to see that in Tagalog, Chinese, German, and Spanish all around the world.”

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It makes me sad that there are so many members that think they need to have a gun to feel safe.  I have never ever carried, nor have I ever had the desire to carry.  How many mass shootings have there been?  How many have been stopped by people with a concealed weapon?  Next to zero.

If someone open fires in sacrament meeting, the chance of you hitting an innocent person when trying to shoot the gunman are tremendously high.  Then the next thing that happens is that people won't know if you are part of the mass shooting either.

The best option is to rush the person and tackle the person.

I am not anti-gun.  I don't care if they are in the church or not.  But I feel sad for those who think they need to carry.  It is not a lens through which I would want to view life.

God knows what is going to happen.  If God wants that gunman stopped, that gunman is going to be stopped.

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16 minutes ago, Lost Boy said:

It makes me sad that there are so many members that think they need to have a gun to feel safe.  I have never ever carried, nor have I ever had the desire to carry.  How many mass shootings have there been?  How many have been stopped by people with a concealed weapon?  Next to zero.

If someone open fires in sacrament meeting, the chance of you hitting an innocent person when trying to shoot the gunman are tremendously high.  Then the next thing that happens is that people won't know if you are part of the mass shooting either.

The best option is to rush the person and tackle the person.

I am not anti-gun.  I don't care if they are in the church or not.  But I feel sad for those who think they need to carry.  It is not a lens through which I would want to view life.

God knows what is going to happen.  If God wants that gunman stopped, that gunman is going to be stopped.

I don't need your sadness, but thanks.  I carry a firearm almost everywhere.  I also wear a seatbelt.  I have fire extinguishers.  To date, I've never used my seatbelt or fire extinguishers, but I've used my firearm.  

I'd rather have all the tools at my disposal and not need them.

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7 minutes ago, Grunt said:

I don't need your sadness, but thanks.  I carry a firearm almost everywhere.  I also wear a seatbelt.  I have fire extinguishers.  To date, I've never used my seatbelt or fire extinguishers, but I've used my firearm.  

I'd rather have all the tools at my disposal and not need them.

By that logic, shouldn't you carry a fire extinguisher as well to sacrament meeting? 

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Just now, Lost Boy said:

By that logic, shouldn't you carry a fire extinguisher as well to sacrament meeting? 

Maybe, if it made sense.  HOWEVER, my goal is safety.  I feel fairly comfortable extracting my family from a fire that starts at the meeting house while we're there, given the safety precautions we have in place, to include sprinklers AND fire extinguishers.  

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8 minutes ago, Lost Boy said:

By that logic, shouldn't you carry a fire extinguisher as well to sacrament meeting? 

No, because at Church there are fire extinguishers placed around the building; and I know where to go and get one if I need one.

Surely you aren’t suggesting we also build our meetinghouses with gun cabinets bearing the inscription “in case of mass shooter, break glass”? ;) 

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Guest MormonGator

It's a tough issue. People want to protect our families, even in churches. I'd rather people like @Grunt because of his military training and @mirkwood because of his job carry guns 24/7 because they are properly trained and can react to a mass shooting event better than I can. Even with all the training in the world, I won't be at  their level and honestly, most of us won't either. 

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