A Question of National Security or a Non-Story?
ABC News recently ran a story on “Jesus Guns”. It was reported that the Michigan-based sightings manufacturer, Trijicon, prints references to New Testament chapters and verses next to the serial numbers on its scopes. Trijicon has a contract to provide up to 800,000 of these rifle scopes to the US military. According to ABC News, these scopes are used by the US Marine Corps, the US Army, and US allies in Iraq and Afghanistan, and for the training of Afghan and Iraqi troops.
(watch the video)
Secret Jesus Bible Codes on U.S. Military Weapons
Brian Ross looks at the biblical verses written on firearms.
Jan 19, 2010 12:02 AM Video from Nightline ABC News
The response to the story was swift. Army officials said that they would investigate whether Trijicon had violated federal procurement rules by stamping the Biblical references on the scopes. Britain, New Zealand and Australia, U.S. allies who have purchased the scopes, were considering what, if any, action to take. Then Trijicon announced that it will no longer imprint the verses on the sides of scopes intended for the U.S. military, and will also provide kits to remove the Bible verse numbers from existing scopes.
Stephen Bindon, Trijicon president and CEO – “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”, he said. “We want to thank the Department of Defense for the opportunity to work with them and will move as quickly as possible to provide the modification kits for deployment overseas.”
Reaction to the report on various opinion websites, blogs and social-networking sites was varied. From outrage that a defense contractor could possibly endanger the lives of military personnel by sending the wrong message (that the U.S. is on a religious crusade) to disgust that ABC News would “waste time” covering such a “trivial” topic.
Is it as Mikey Weinstein, the President and Founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), the first organization to report the existence of
“Jesus Guns” says: “It is nothing short of a vile national security threat that, despite our nation’s efforts to convince the Muslim world we are not pursuing a holy war against them, our military and its contractors time again resort to unlawful fundamentalist evangelical Christian practices, even on the battlefield.” Or should a finger be pointed at ABC News for shedding light on what many perceive as a trivial matter resulting in the creation of a problem where there had been none?
The “Jesus Guns” report initially struck me as a bit trivial and also inflammatory. However, the bottom line is that Biblical codes branded on weapons used by the US and its allies in Iraq and Afghanistan could certainly add to the perception that the impetus for our military’s presence abroad is based on religion rather than national security. And if that perception results in the further endangerment for our troops then yes, it was a story worthy of coverage.
