The chapter opens with statements from the United Methodist Church, Presbyterian Church (USA), and Quakers condemning gun violence. Fugelsang argues that right-wing US Christianity has elevated the Second Amendment above Jesus’s teachings on nonviolence, creating a “warrior Jesus” who bears little resemblance to the compassionate figure of the Gospels. Beginning in the 1970s and 1980s, televangelists and organizations like the Moral Majority framed gun ownership as a God-given right, contributing to a shift in which “spiritual warfare” was increasingly interpreted in more literal, militant terms by the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

The United States leads the world in civilian gun ownership, with approximately 120 firearms per 100 people—more than double Yemen’s rate despite that nation’s ongoing civil war. This is associated roughly 49,000 gun-related deaths annually, with firearms becoming the leading cause of death for American children and adolescents in 2020. Fugelsang highlights the tension in some “pro-life” Christian positions that oppose gun safety measures that might reduce these deaths.

Gun advocates frequently cite Luke 22: 36, where Jesus instructs his disciples to “sell your cloak and buy a sword” (237). Fugelsang argues that this verse is taken out of context, explaining that Jesus was fulfilling Isaiah’s prophecy that he would be “numbered with the transgressors” (238), so the disciples needed to appear as criminals rather than prepare for armed conflict.