14 DAY TRIAL // Jessa Duggar has long entered an official courtship with Ben Seewald and it’s one of the major story lines on the new season of TLC’s 19 Kids & Counting, one of the biggest reality series of the network right now. Because of how religious the Duggars are, you’d never expect to hear the name Duggar and the word controversy in the same sentence.
Yet it has happened.
Almost one month ago, Ben posted on his Facebook a photo of Jessa holding a machine gun, with the caption “My AWESOME girlfriend. #DontmesswithJessa,” but it’s just now gone viral, causing a very heated debate online.
The Duggars, who are very religious, have never made a secret of how very much anti-abortion they are, which is why they have come to have no less than 19 children. They’re also very passionate supporters of the second amendment, which clearly stipulates that individuals have the right to keep and bear arms.
As such, it should probably be no surprise that Jessa shared their beliefs. Still, Radar Online notes, the photo of her holding a machine gun, which you can also see above, has sparked a very heated debate: on the one hand, there are those who believe someone so religious shouldn’t pose so casually with a weapon that can take lives in the blink of an eye; on the other, there are those who applaud Jessa for standing up for their right as Americans to bear arms.
Another thing Radar points out is how much the head of the family, Bob Duggar, stressed that all his children are trained in gun safety on the show. He believes that not guns kill people, but people who aren’t properly trained in their use.
“We believe it is important for children to learn safety about guns and knives. To learn how to use them properly and to learn not to use them to hurt others but to use them as a tool,” he said at one point, when talking about how gun ownership was “one of our constitutional rights.”
Because of the wave of violent incidents that have cost many innocent lives, the issue of gun control remains a hot topic all across the US. Whether she was deliberately trying to make a statement or not, Jessa stumbled right in the middle of it with this photo.
However, because perhaps she wasn’t really out to make a statement, it would probably be pointless to expect her to address the controversy the pic has generated. The same applies for the rest of the family – unless, of course, the whole brouhaha is turned into a story line for the show, which means it will be another while until we get to see it on TV.