As if you needed yet another reason to steer clear of Mormonism besides the crazy theology and the cult culture…..
LDS Church makes it clear: No guns in its meetinghouses
If ever there were a question about its stance toward guns in meetinghouses, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has removed all doubt: Unlike visitors, firearms are not only not welcome, they are strictly forbidden.
In fact, the Utah-based faith now “prohibits” all “lethal weapons” from its properties, unless carried by current law enforcement officers. Previously, the church deemed it merely “inappropriate” to have firearms in its buildings.
On Monday, church spokesman Daniel Woodruff confirmed that stricter wording had been added to Handbook 2, an instruction manual for local lay leaders, and is posted online for members and nonmembers to read.
Yep, it is right there on their website:
The language is pretty broad. Lots of things are potentially lethal weapons. As an example, knives and hatchets are common in the Boy Scouts and the Mormons are one of the largest Scout organizations around, or at least they were, so will common camping/outdoors tools be banned from their “churches”?
This is going to be an area where the leadership is going to be at odds with the regular members, who will likely, in spite of being taught slavish obedience to some old guy chosen to be the leader by outliving his rivals, just keep on carrying anyway regardless of the rulebook. Utah has one of the highest, perhaps the highest, rate of concealed carry permits per capita of any state in the Union.
Since around 30% of Utah’s residents are under 18, that leaves an adult population of around 2.2 million so the percentage of Utah’s adult residents that have a concealed carry permit is closer to 32.5% or basically one in three adult Utahans has a concealed permit. The state is around 55% Mormon so you can do the math here and see that there are at least one million Utah Mormons with concealed carry permits. Based on what I know about Mormons, and unfortunately I know quite a bit, I am going to go out on a limb and assume many of these concealed carriers in Utah, Texas and around the country are going to simply ignore this new mandate and keep in carrying in their “churches” to protect the families that are such an important part of Mormonism.
One of the central tenets of Mormonism is that they are led by a “prophet”, like in the same sense that Moses, Isaiah and Ezekiel were prophets. This is pretty handy as it allows the church to make policy changes that they can claim are the will of God and then change those as needed, like saying that polygamy was a new and everlasting covenant but then God apparently changed his mind and said they couldn’t marry 12 wives. Or the part about blacks being cursed by God and their dark skin being the mark of Cain so they weren’t allowed to be Mormon “priests” but then God changed His mind again. In recent years, the once staunchly conservative Mormon religion has been moderating their positions to be more palatable to the mainstream culture, at the same time it has been downplaying their differences with Christianity rather than playing those up as they did in the past. This new rule banning guns at their meetinghouses is just more cultural virtue signaling to help appeal to prospective converts. Hopefully it won’t lead to some crazed mass shooter targeting a Mormon meetinghouse because he thinks they will be disarmed.