I am addressing this article/commentary in particular. The commentary purports to say that American evangelicals are hypocritical. The commentary makes some bizarre statements that have no basis in fact, such as, “Americans who insist on the right to bear arms in case they need to overthrow a tyrant in the White House”. There are statistics that show that countries such as Jamaica which has a high murder rate also has highly restrictive gun control, or Canada which has a low murder rate and rational gun control. This commentary is about ‘the right to bear arms’, it is not about registration or controls.
Further, the article is about a shaming of sorts of ‘American evangelicals’. As such, it is a target article/commentary that is not built on factual data, but on opinion. And so, it furthers it’s target by claiming, “…same Americans who insist on the right to bear arms in case they need to overthrow a tyrant in the White House, will condemn any form of public protest on the basis of Romans 13.”
The ‘right to bear arms’ is actually born by the UK, Australia, Canada, etc… However, the target, the US and American evangelicals, are being called out. Why?
To illustrate his point, Frost uses ‘a quote’ by ‘a former US Republican leader’ from 2012.
Homicide rates in the US have gone down 40% since 1996, that is a statistical fact. Could they be lower? Yes! But ‘how’ is not properly addressed, because the ‘how’ should be based on the ‘why’. And there are far too many multiples of why as can be seen in spectrum of statistics, Chicago being the most obvious. What I objected to was the commentary’s obvious opinionated slant. As such Mr. Frost chose to attempt to slander/shame me personally which hardly aligns with his home page statement of ‘grace’, ‘open conversation’, and ‘positive’ dialogue. And therein perhaps is the true hypocritical value…
If one were to truly look at the source of rebellion in the US today, it is not the Matthew Davis’s. If one were to look at the actual ’cause’ that drives the murderers in the US and globally, that would truly be an open conversation rooted in a positive dialogue embracing grace, instead of an attack on the US, American Evangelicals, and – myself, which really serves nothing but personal self lauding and grandizing.

Helena – on a factual point, the US has 13% of its population born outside the US (i.e. immigrants), in Australia it is 28%. You can’t claim gun violence is driven by immigration.

Claiming the problem of homicide is due to illegal guns, and stricter gun laws would not address this, is also illogical. In the UK we also have criminals, what we don’t have is easy access to guns, and we do have very strong punishment if you break gun ownership laws. UK criminals could get hold of guns, but they know that if they do own them they will end up in prison for a long time, so they don’t. Which is one reason why you don’t get thousands of people killed each year by people with guns.

Yes, evil will always exist, but if evil can walk into a shop and arm itself with semi-automatic weapons before it goes on a killing spree a lot more innocent people will be killed than if the best weapon it can find is a kitchen knife.

And your response is to attack me personally? How incredibly Hollywood!

You’re a confident person. Even when you don’t know what you’re talking about you still feel impelled to comment authoritatively.

No I do not, nor have I lived in Australia. Whether or not the US has more murders than Australia is not the point, we also have more immigrants, and our immigrants are not the select educated semi-wealthy that Australia brings in. Most of the murders in the US are perpetrated by gang members who obviously don’t own ‘legal’ guns. The most recent event has yet to be decimated – ISIS, or even FBI, the facts are still being investigated. If you were to take events of this nature as indicative of gun laws, then the Paris attacks … every ISIS attack, terrorist attack around the world would be lumped into that murder category. Evil will always exist. Taking away the sword will not change evil. Nor will it stop it.

Did or do you live in Australia Helena?

America has about 100 x more murders than Australia. (Currently)

Percentages only are comparable when the starting points are comparable. The Las Vegas shooting ALONE was more than all related homicides in all of Australia in 2016.