Today a pastor in Texas died in a shooting. But it’s not so straightforward:
On Sunday morning, the pastor of [Starrville Methodist Church] discovered a man in the bathroom holding a red bank bag that belonged to the church.
The pastor drew his firearm and ordered the suspect to stop, [Starrville Methodist Church] said. The suspect moved toward the front door, then lunged, disarmed, and fatally shot the pastor. [CNN]
So the fellow didn’t bring his own firearm to the party. Never mind that the encouragement of everyone carrying a firearm by conservatives led to this tragedy – this is what really bothers me:
The case will be investigated as a capital murder and presented to the Smith County District Attorney’s Office, Smith said.
The pastor clearly menaced the man with a gun, and while it may stretch credulity to suggest the guy was clearly engaged in self-defense, it obviously was not planned in advance; indeed, in the struggle over the gun it may have been accidental, even self-inflicted.
But this isn’t just over the death of a pastor. It’s also vengeance over the revelation of the flaws in a religious tenet of the conservatives. Everyone needs a gun for self-protection! they proclaim. This was common to read back when I was still subscribing to REASON Magazine, and just six months ago, when a MAGA-friend sent me mail that sounded like a right-wing website regurgitation, the same assertion was part of that mail.
But it does little to assure self-protection to own a gun, as I noted here.
But this is not acceptable to the doctrinaire far-right conservative; this very occurrence is a kick in the teeth of said doctrinaire conservative, and therefore, rather than accept that this may be nothing more than manslaughter, they proclaim they’ll be investigating it as capital murder.
Rather than considering this may have been a foolish pastor who should never have had a gun in the first place.
