Tuesday, April 8, 2014

Graham to give keynote at NRA prayer breakfast

The National Rifle Association has tapped North Carolina-based evangelist Franklin Graham to give the keynote address at a prayer breakfast during its annual convention of meetings and exhibits this month in Indianapolis.

At least one liberal group is using the selection of Graham to revisit and criticize some of his comments following the 2012 incident in which a deranged gunman massacred young schoolchildren at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut.

Media Matters For America points to a 2012 interview on an American Family Association radio show, in which Graham said the slaughter "is what happens when society turns its back on God."

But most of Graham's comments on the show focused on his concern about the prevalence of violent images on TV, in music, and on video games.

"The violence that we see now on TV and what we hear in music -- it's so graphic," he said. "In arcades . . . there (are) murder simulators and you can have an electronic gun in your hands and you can point that at a video character and pull that trigger and you can see the bullet impact their flesh and blood flies and body parts fly."

The National Rifle Association is meeting April 25-27. The prayer breakfast, with Graham speaking, starts at 7 a.m. on the last day.

Graham heads both the Charlotte-based Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and Samaritan's Purse, a charity relief agency based in Boone.

-- Tim Funk 







6 comments:

LockandLoadfortheLord said...

Nothing embodies Christianity better than a gathering of people who'll spend days talking about the importance of lethal weaponry and bullet fragmentation. Sprinkle in some not so subtle racism and you've got yourself some of that good ol' time religion. When Jesus comes back to earth he'll be packing!

Larry said...

Love the comment above, they must know so much about religion and be so open to those who embrace it, or maybe they are just still trying to pay back their parents for some imagined wrong. Either way it is sad they live the way they do.

Archiguy said...

Well, it makes perfect sense. Franklin talks a lot about Jesus. Jesus was clearly such a lover of violence according to scripture. You just know if guns had been invented back then, Jesus would have been packing a Glock at Gethsemane and all the Disciples would have been carrying 38 Specials. Probably concealed.

NRA supporters love their guns, more than most people, and don't want ANY restrictions on obtaining or owning them. Guns are used for violent activities, like killing people. They kill around 40,000 Americans a year, and the NRA seemingly has no problem with that. Presumably, neither would Jesus. Some folks just need killin', amiright?

Voila! Synergy. Franklin is actually the perfect guy to speak to a bunch of gun-nuts. Heck, he's pretty nutty himself.

Anonymous said...

No one should be surprised by news like this. It's simply Franklin reverting to the Franklin many of us remember...

"But mostly, he (Franklin) likes to shoot machine guns. When a friend asked him to help chop down some trees recently, Franklin arrived with a machine gun mounted on a tripod at the back of his jeep and proceeded to cut down the trees with bursts of gunfire so loud that neighbors called the sheriff."

Yep, that's a "Godly man" - at least, according to the NRA's guidelines.

Larry said...

Strange how folks who do such good are targeted by folks like the Archi and silicon crowd.

I would love to see what they have done to make the world better, or at least see a day where they are not making it worse.

Anonymous said...

Muhahahaha. Is this the same guy that said: "Putin is doing the right thing by beating, and arresting gays for breaking the law."



Why would the NRA want a clown associated with them. Oh, never mind.