Anti-Gun Group "Gets Religion" for Latest Gimmick

On Sunday, October 20, the anti-gun Children's Defense Fund (CDF) set up a sideshow in front of the Washington National Cathedral during which blacksmiths melted, hammered and ground "weapons" into hand-held garden tools, for what it called "a modern-day interpretation of the biblical passage about beating swords into plowshares."

Notwithstanding the big posters of AR-15s that CDF displayed at the event, the "weapons"--all provided by the District of Columbia's gun control-supporting police chief, Cathy Lanier, and which the CDF said had been "confiscated off the streets"--consisted of several miscellaneous rifle and shotgun barrels and the barreled receiver of a bolt-action rifle, all of somewhat ancient vintage and uncertain manufacture.

The idea that CDF was peddling on Sunday is that teenage gangsters will stop shooting one another if old rifle parts are turned into one-handed cultivators that gun control supporters can use to keep weeds away from their trailing petunias.  "Each weapon will be connected to its new purpose, creating a narrative that will travel with the new tool," a handout at the event read.Since it appeared that no D.C. police officer was present to maintain custody of the barreled receiver during the CDF's event, it appears that the firearm's transfer to the anti-gun activists was illegal. And, as we noted last week, there have been other occasions this year in which D.C. police have bent the rules to help gun control supporters campaign against the right to keep and bear arms.

Lest anyone wonder how a "narrative" could pacify violent juveniles and young adults in rough, inner-city neighborhoods, the handout said "The new owner of the tool will be able to 'show and tell' how the tool is being used, thus preventing a cycle of violence and creating a cycle of peace."

CDF didn't explain how vacuous verbiage about narratives and cycles could mean anything to murderers, but a CDF volunteer explained that even if making a few garden tools wouldn't reduce killings, it would at least "allow people to feel like they are doing something."

If that creates doubt about the CDF's intentions, one need only consider where the group held its "plowshares" event. The Cathedral is in northwest D.C., much farther away than the White House from "Southeast," where the vast majority of the murders in D.C. take place.

The CDF didn't have to go all the way to "Northwest" to find a church, of course. Plenty of God-fearing souls live in Southeast, so it has a lot of houses of worship. However, there's one thing that Northwest has that Southeast doesn't: money. Lots of it. And the CDF is like some of the countless United Nations Non-Governmental Organizations on this seemingly-endless list, raking in money from wealthy people who want to feel like they are doing something.

It's easy enough for people to review Isaiah 2:4, to determine for themselves whether it supports the notion of turning swords into plowshares merely to make a political statement, or so that a few people can feel like they have done something. In the meantime, violence continues in Southeast and some other inner city neighborhoods not because people there have too many "swords" or too few "plowshares," but because they have too few jobs and too many gang members that have no respect, nor any regard, for the lives of their fellow man.

Those are problems that no gun control activist group can solve. Nor do they care to. As far as anti-gunners are concerned, the "problem" is gun ownership. CDF's views on that subject are detailed in an article linked here.

After CDF's Sunday event was over, the Cathedral hosted a performance of Verdi's Requiem, to commemorate the 200^th anniversary of the great Italian opera composer's birth. The Requiem Mass is conducted for the dead, of course, and the CDF must have thought that having its event on the same day as the Requiem would help bolster its claim that nearly 3,000 "children" are killed with guns each year.

The claim is false, of course. The correct number of such deaths is under 400 yearly. To get a figure as high as 3,000, the CDF counts deaths among juveniles and young adults ages 15-19, including many gang-related shootings.

We are unimpressed and unpersuaded by the CDF's attempt to cloak its entirely secular, political cause of reducing freedom and expanding the rule of some men over others in a religious shroud.  We would simply advise our readers to look at CDF's long antigun history and judge them by their works, not by the religious company they conveniently keep.