References to Bible verses engraved on gun sights have placed the manufacturer, Trijicon, directly in the crosshairs of liberal and civil rights advocacy groups. As the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan drag on, there has been a sudden outcry about what Michael Weinstein of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation told ABC News some military personnel have dubbed “spiritually transformed firearm[s] of Jesus Christ.”
Sometimes we are our own worst enemy. In America, the quest for politically correct behavior has created numerous self-inflicted wounds.
ABC News broke this story Jan. 15, stirring a hailstorm of criticism and outrage. Military leaders feigned dismay and concern. Some claim it could give radical Islamists the impression we are waging a crusade and some are concerned about the safety of the troops while others proclaim it to be unconstitutional and a violation of the military’s prohibition of proselytizing by soldiers.
“This is probably the best example of violation of the separation of church and state in this country,” Weinstein told ABC News. “It’s literally pushing fundamentalist Christianity at the point of a gun against the people that we’re fighting. We’re emboldening an enemy.”
“The use of military equipment with hidden Bible references sends the false message to Muslims worldwide that we are at war with Islam,” Nadhira Al-Khalili, legal counsel for the Council on American-Islamic Relations told Fox News on January 20. “In addition, these sights are a potential recruiting tool for anti-American forces, endanger our troops and alienate our Muslim allies. They should be withdrawn as soon as logistically possible.”
The truth is Trijicon has placed these tiny references to Bible verses on sights for more than 20 years, and it never created a problem, until now. The references such as “JN8:12” are inconspicuously added to the end of the serial number. Without close inspection, they appear to be part of the serial number. The Advanced Combat Optical Gunsight (ACOG) is used on thousands of weapons in service around the globe.
Trijicon has agreed to remedy the situation.
“Trijicon has proudly served the U.S. military for more than two decades, and our decision to offer to voluntarily remove these references is both prudent and appropriate,” Stephen Bindon, Trijicon President and CEO told PR Newswire. Further, Trijicon has agreed to not place the references on any future orders for the U.S. military.
As it now stands, we are using guns which could be construed by our enemies as the Crusader’s weapons of Holy War. Amazingly these same rifles were merely the effective weapons of a secular war, before ABC News broke this story. Once again the liberal media strikes in its attempt to placate their irrational fear of Christianity.
Christianity shouldn’t be spread at gunpoint. And the U.S. must avoid the portrayal of any religious motivations for war. But, it is ridiculous to imagine that minute inscriptions, placed at the end of a serial number on a gun sight would suddenly cause our enemy to perceive us as holy crusaders. The truth is that our enemy believed long ago that we have religious ambitions — and this perception has nothing to do with gun sights.
“Jihadists already accuse American Soldiers — not just American military equipment — of waging ‘holy war’ against them. I doubt that they would be less violent in their attacks on Americans if our non-Muslim military personnel had no religious faith at all,” Elaine Donnelly, president of the Center for Military Readiness told Military.com.
Others such as David Chater, correspondent for the Arabic-language news network Al Jazeera, adamantly disagree: “It is a rallying cry for the Taliban. It gives them a propaganda tool,” Chater reports on Al-Jazeera.
This statement may now be true, but it was our own media who provided the Taliban with this tool in their effort to remove all public evidence of the Christian faith.
Our enemy wasn’t aware of nor concerned with these Biblical references prior to ABC’s report. Beneath the façade, the true issue is not the safety of our troops or our foreign policy. Rather it is the transformation of our own culture which is at stake.
Nathan Shull is a 35-year-old finance junior from Seattle. Follow him on Twitter @TDR_nshull.