"Winsome'' Moderator Hits Below The Belt - Part 5

All right, well let's continue. Let's do it. Let's just continue. We're going to power through. I know that this is boring to some of you, but I'm committed now.

We're 32 minutes in and we just got to let these two finish. So let's jump right in.

Oh, if you follow me on Gab, and even if you don't, get on there. Scoot on over to gab .com and take a look at my feed.

My three -year -old, so adorable. My three -year -old son caught his very first bass today and he was so excited and just, he wanted to keep it.

It's a little too small to keep, so he didn't keep it, but I should have probably just done it. But a bunch of pumpkin seeds and one small bass.

He was so excited. Let's dive into this now that the important stuff is out of the way.

That argument would depend on the government having a vested interest in stopping that, in deciding where that boundary is.

And I think for many people in the American context, the open question is, can I trust the federal government to tell me what kinds of guns are okay for me to own and what kinds aren't?

Because as soon as I entrust that decision to someone else and allow them to define how big a magazine I can have or what kind of rifle counts as a hunting rifle versus a not one,

I'm ceding a lot of ground, at least in the American context, that the constitution gives to the people. This would have been a great argument if he didn't just already give that argument up.

I mean, it's like, yeah, I agree with everything he said there, but he's also kind of undercut his whole thing by saying, oh yeah, obviously you can't have tanks and assault weapons.

Well, that's an open question. And it's like, yeah, but in any case, let's just continue. I made my point many, many times already.

And that's why it's the question about how Christians should think about it. I know this isn't going to happen, but it's what

I think Christians should want to happen. That's the point. And I think if you had a Christianized nation where people were saying,

I really want to know what does Jesus think about AR -15s, I do still find it very hard to believe that people would go away with the

Bible if they didn't have the constitution in their background and go, is this an area where American life has been more discipled by a mixture of history and opposition against people with accents like mine and all sorts of things in the history as well.

Actually, no, wearing red by and large. But whether or not that's overshaped the

American narrative on it in contrast to people who went, oh, I'm going to read the Bible. Because even just war advocates across history,

I don't think most of the Augustine, Aquinas, the guys you're quoting, maybe it's a failure of imagination on my part.

I cannot imagine the sort of lethality that is currently possible with an AR -15 and Thomas Aquinas saying, yeah,

I think you should have guys taking deadly weapons into church, or yeah, I think you should have it.

I don't think that's an application that just war advocates who made it so difficult for the state to go to war, they said you can, and I disagree with them on that, but they said it's so hard.

The bar you have to clear is so high. I think that the bar we have in this country is very, very low in comparison.

And I think that Christians, constitutional arguments and government intransigence and concern about state power are not withstanding.

There's so much muddled thinking here. I honestly wonder what's going on in this guy's mind.

There's so much confusion. Because he just tried to introduce three different topics and treated them as if they're all the same.

Because this is about gun control laws and the right to bear arms. That's what Gospel Coalition says it's about.

Now he's talking about, then he was talking about pacifism and saying that Christians shouldn't be going to war,

Christians should never kill an image bearer no matter what. Nevermind that people used to be made in the image of God in the

Old Testament as well, and somehow death penalty was okay and killing was okay back then in certain circumstances.

It's not like we just got the image of God just a few years ago. We always had the image of God and yet somehow, so his pacifism is, and then now he's bringing just war into it.

And he's saying, I think that America's go to war too quickly. Yes, so do I. I totally agree.

Yeah, the bar for what we go to war with in this country is insanely low. It's sinfully low in my opinion.

And so yeah, I totally agree with him. But these are totally separate issues. Whether or not you're allowed to own an

AR -15 and whether or not we go to war too easily in the United States or death penalty and stuff like that.

These are completely separate issues. He's wrong about all of them, except for the fact that we do go to war too quickly, but then he conflates them all together and somehow he wants it to make sense to you.

It doesn't make sense. And then he asks, well, maybe it's just a lack of imagination on my part. I can't imagine anyone would read the

Bible and think having an AR -15 is okay. What are you talking about? What are you talking about?

I mean, we've got passages in the Bible. If you don't have a sword, buy a sword. That was the AR -15 of their day.

What are you even talking about? What does he even mean by that? There's no AR -15s in the

Bible, obviously, but where does he... I find it hard to believe that anyone could read the scriptures and become a pacifist.

That's insane to me. And I could show you receipts on that one. I mean, tons of laws that require the death penalty, tons of battle, tons of situations in the

New Testament that talk about weapons of war and things like that. And then, of course, we have the time when things become more and more

Christian over time. And then you don't even need quite as many swords anymore or chariots anymore because there's going to be less war.

It's going to be more peaceful. And eventually, you're not going to need them at all because we're going to have total peace, no sin in the world at all, and that's going to be wonderful.

But that's not yet, though. That's not yet. And so, yes, obviously, when everyone's a

Christian and there is no more sin, sin has been completely destroyed, death has been put to death, obviously, we won't need an

AR -15 anymore. But that time is not right now. This guy's thinking is so muddled.

That just war thing, it's just like... First of all, that's not what the debate is about. But second of all, you can believe both things at the same time.

Yes, of course, we go to war too easily. That's insane. The amount of wars that we've gotten into is just totally insane.

It's ridiculous. And at the same time, owning an AR -15 is completely fine for a

Christian. And at the same time, there are certain situations when a Christian ought to kill. And at the same time, death penalty is good.

And at the same time, it's like, man... I think Christians should not be okay with that.

So am I hearing, I think you said this, are you kind of challenging whether we're reading the

Bible through the lens of the Constitution or the Constitution through the lens of the Bible? Yeah, I definitely think that's a challenge worth making.

But I think that's true generally. I think that's all true, right? I've got to do the same as an English person. I think we've got to do it.

And you read the Bible through your economy and what jobs are okay for Christians to do and those sorts of things.

I think we all do that. But I was making probably a narrower point, which is I think that the concern about ceding power to the state, which the

Constitution is given to the individual, to me is a constitutional argument. And it's right that Americans are having that conversation.

But I think Christians can, to an extent, circumvent that intramural constitutional American debate and say, well, hang on a second, if the outcome of that is that we're saying that Americans can and should...

In fact, I think in some of Bob's argument, there's a sense it's not you're allowed to, but there's almost a moral imperative to own a gun that could come in and kill everybody in this building in the space of a few seconds.

I just feel like at some point, and Christians have to say, well, hang on, if that's where we've got with the constitutional argument, don't we need to take a step back and say, have we prioritised correctly the two?

I'm not saying that only Americans read the Bible through their culture at all. I hope that I wouldn't be that naive.

But I do think in this particular case, it's like having a queen for head of the church in Britain.

It's just one of those things that I think when you're in your own nation, you go, oh, you know, our idolatry of the National Health Service or whatever it might be, you would notice things in my culture as well and say, are you guys sure about that?

Right. We'd notice them like national healthcare systems where people are stolen from in order to pay for the healthcare of others.

Like we'd notice that stuff. And then we'd bring you to the specific scriptures that it violates and say, hey, this is a violation of that.

And also, there's all this other pragmatic reasons why you wouldn't want to do that as well. That's what we would do.

You, on the other hand, have said something about pacifism. And then you said some ridiculous claims about how

Jesus never was violent ever kind of thing. And it's like, you made a bunch of stuff up that was totally irrelevant.

And so, well, hang on. Well, hang on. You should own an AR -15. I mean, fuck, a Christian can never defend himself. And it's like, that's crazy on the face of it.

That's crazy. That's the difference. So one of the heavy things that he threw out were those statistics, the statistics of the

United States. I don't think anybody listening is going to hear that and not have their hearts break. How do you, in your position, how do you hear that?

How does that land on you? And how does that inform your defense? It's, I can't even believe that he's being asked this question.

And this is something that, it's below the belt. It's not winsome at all.

And it's like, it serves, rhetorically, it serves the liberals' purposes very well.

Because here's the thing. Now he's got to go on record and say, because he's winsome, he's not going to do what he needs to do.

Now he's got to go on record and say that, well, I actually am a human.

I'm not a demon. I actually, those statistics, I hate those statistics. And now he's going to start defending himself.

Because the way that question was asked, it's like, you're expecting this to be a challenging question.

It's like, when somebody hears that a lot of murders have happened, what is he going to say?

It doesn't affect me at all. I don't care about the murders. He just wants you to be on record defending yourself about the fact that you're not, maybe you're half human.

You have half emotions. You don't care that much, but you care a little bit. It's like when someone tries to force you to deny being a racist or deny being an anti -Semite or something like that.

They just want to get you on the record, on the defense of the charge of you're an anti -Semite.

Because that's all it takes for some people. Look, if you weren't an anti -Semite, why would anyone question you? And so what he needs to do is say, that is a ridiculous question, number one.

That's a ridiculous question to ask me how hearing statistics about murders affect me, how they land on me, how they make me feel.

That's a ridiculous question. It's insane that you would even ask it. But as far as how the statistics relate to this issue, and then you go into your standard defense of whatever you said in the opening statement.

But now he's got to juice the emotions, right? Now he's got to get the emotions going. And I've fallen victim to this myself.

And I've looked back at some of my old content recently, where I kind of bend over backwards to talk about how a certain police shooting made me feel or whatever and things like that.

And that was a mistake that I made. I'm not going to get mad at him for doing this. This is a very sleazy thing that liberals often do.

But that was a mistake I made. I mean, I don't have to prove to you that a shooting makes me feel bad.

Or I have to prove to you that seeing somebody get killed, whether it was justified or not, makes me feel disgusted.

Like, I don't have to demonstrate that to you. I'm not on trial here. It's insane that anyone even asked that question.

I don't know. To me, that makes me so mad. It's just such a sleazy tactic. You know what

I mean? I don't know. I don't know. They do this all, liberals do this kind of thing all the time, of having gun ownership.

Well, he's absolutely right. I mean, the statistics, America is the most violent country in the world when it comes to gun deaths.

And that's a tragedy. And I think it should grieve Christians. And the question, he's asking the right question, which is, what then should we do in light of that?

You can see he's uncomfortable. And who wouldn't be? Because that's not a winsome question.

I would assume that if they thought he didn't care about people's lives, they wouldn't have invited him to this.

And now he's kind of in this place. You can even see him. He's kind of like, he was holding his hands like this. Like, this is like a self -soothe, right?

He's like, you know, like, it's just a ridiculous question. Honestly, it's a ridiculous question. Peace, if we care about the flourishing of human beings, if we care about Jesus's way being cared about in our world, in our society.

And so I don't think we can ignore those questions. But we can't ignore the questions, but we can call out the faulty premise.

Because my case actually had nothing to do with pragmatism here. My case actually had nothing to do with death rates and murder rates and statistics, fake statistics, real statistics.

I would challenge a lot of those statistics that you just gave me. But that's all irrelevant to my case, because my case was completely biblical.

And so how does it hit me in the context of this debate? It doesn't, because it actually has nothing to do with my case.

My case isn't that guns are totally safe and nobody will ever get killed, and that's why guns are great.

If that was my case, then those statistics would have been devastating to my case. But that wasn't my case.

My case was about the scripture. My case was about the duty to protect. My case was about those things.

And actually, what you just told me with all these statistics, whether they're real or not, which they're probably not, has nothing to do with the validity of my case.

Suggesting, I think that - They're going to think you're a monster. This is the thing.

This is why I urge you not to fall for this trick where they force you to get defensive.

They're going to think you're a monster. Andrew Torba from Gab has mastered this, right?

Andrew Torba gets dragged in the media constantly. Oh, he's an anti -Semite. Gab is a haven for hatred.

He's a racist, whatever, things like that. And every day he gets dragged in the media, even on mainstream media,

MSNBC, stuff like that. And what Andrew Torba has learned very quickly is that they're going to do that regardless, right?

And so you don't even pay it any attention. You don't have to jump when they say jump.

You don't have to say how high. What do you want? You want me to dance? You want me to do this? You want me to do that? You want me to say this? They're going to do their thing.

They're going to think you're a monster, whether you defend yourself or not. They're going to think Trump's a racist, whether he defends himself or not.

Remember when they tried to get him to denounce David Duke or whatever, and he had done it like three or four times, but the media said he had never done it.

They're going to think you're a monster no matter what. So don't even give it the time of day.

Yeah, anyway. Interesting to me that this question in some ways is specific to each country and to its history, right, to each country's history.

And in America in particular, because the Second Amendment has been such an important part of our founding and our history and the way that the framers understood the right to bear arms as being an essential human right.

Now we're at a place where, well, arms have technologically advanced since that time. And so we do have questions of what about AR -15s and what about assault weapons, right?

Those kind of what about questions are important questions. I'm saying I don't think that those questions deny or erase the fundamental reality that the citizen's right to bear arms is important and should be the primary thing rather than entrusting that to the government.

And I think that's the basic American experiment that is, the statistics prove two things at once, right?

They certainly prove that if you allow gun ownership broadly in a society, you're going to have to face the reality of more violence.

But when the response, the only answer to that is let's restrict that, and allow the government then to be in control of who owns guns and where.

I think in our country, we decided early on, that's not the way we want to go. I think it's an open question, should we want to go that way?

And Andrews, actually, the point you just made was interesting is if as a society becomes more Christianized, right?

If we see gospel influence more broadly in society, how would it change the way we think about that question? It wouldn't change it at all because we're talking about fundamental rights.

So this is the thing, like part of that answer was good, but part of that answer was a disaster. So as the nations become more

Christians, and look, this is what I believe is going to happen, right? I believe that more people are going to become Christian. We're going to have more peace.

We're going to have more holiness. We're going to have less crime, less violence, less everything. Your rights actually don't change.

Like what the scripture says you're allowed to do and all that doesn't change. Like that would be like saying, that would be like saying, well, you know, we have the capital punishment, but Andrew, you made a great point that like, as the nations become more and more

Christians, like, you know, maybe we should reconsider capital punishment because we're more Christian now. No, no, no.

That's not how this is going to work. It actually doesn't change at all. So I would imagine that as the nations get more

Christian, there'll be less murders, right? There'll be less rapes. There'll be less murders and less death penalty offenses, right?

And so that means there'll be less death penalties carried out in aggregate because most people will be

Christians and not going to be doing this kind of stuff, right? But it doesn't change what the just penalty for murder is.

So as the nations become totally Christian, the just penalty for murder is the same as when they were all pagans.

And it's the same thing with owning a weapon, right? Like if you have the right biblically to own a weapon, if that's something that God says the state doesn't get the right to control, that doesn't go away as the nations become more

Christian. Like he had some good stuff there, but you can tell that the demeanor of this debate has totally shifted.

Like he started off so strong and then Andrew put him on the defensive and then the moderator put him on the defensive.

Prove to me that you care about lives. That's basically what his question was. In a winsome way, that's what he asked him.

He says prove to me that you're not a moral monster and that you care about gun deaths.

And so he's obviously on the defensive here. He's like, Andrew, great point. Maybe we should reconsider our fundamental human rights as the nations

Christianize. What are you talking about? We should reconsider our fundamental rights as the nations

Christianize. Are they fundamental rights or not? Or are they just situational rights? That was pretty crazy.

I gotta go though because I have something to do. Man, I was hoping to get further. I only got like six minutes in.