14 DAY TRIAL // If you're big on guns and ammo or if maybe you're simply the kind of person who likes to browse through the news while sipping their morning coffee / cup of tea, you might have heard that a brand-new assault rifle made its debut earlier this week.
It's called The Crusader and it is the work of Florida-based gunmaker Spike's Tactical. It fires .223 and 5.56 ammunition, and can be upgraded to 300 AAC Blackout by changing the barrel. As for the price tag, Spike's Tactical is asking for $1,395 (€1,254) a piece.
The ultimate selling point, however, has nothing to do with the assault rifle's specifications or its cost. It's details in the weapon's design that gunmaner Spike's Tactical expects will get customers' attention, especially if they happen to be devout Christians.
There's a Bible verse etched on this rifle
Spike's Tactical The Crusader has a Bible verse engraved on one side of the magazine. “Blessed be the Lord my Rock, who trains my hands for war, my fingers for battle,” the verse reads.
What's a quote from the Bible doing inscribed on the side of an assault rifle? Well, Spike's Tactical put it there to make sure no Muslim terrorists would ever dare touch the weapon and use it to kill innocent people. It's kind of like a spiritual safety switch making the assault rifle Muslim terrorists-proof.
If you think Spike's Tactical stopped at adding just this one Bible verse to the weapon, think again. There's a whole lot of religious symbolism included in the design of this assault rifle.
The safety selector that controls the trigger has the following three settings: “Peace,” “War” and “God wills it.” The gunmaker even inscribed the Latin translations, i.e. “Pax Pacis,” “Bellum” and “Deus Vult,” just to add to the sense of spirituality when pointing the gun and people and firing it.
Then there's the cross of the Knights Templar that's also engraved on one side of the assault rifle and that was put there to remind people of the Crusades the Catholic Church sanctioned in the Middle Ages. This Christian symbol explains why the assault rifle goes by the name The Crusader.
Do we really need such religious weapons?
Supposing this entire affair isn't just a marketing ploy to get people talking about the rifle, one cannot help but wonder why Spike's Tactical felt the need to drag religion into its gun manufacturing business.
As mentioned, the gunmaker insists that the only reason it added the Bible verse along with all the one Christian symbols to this assault rifle was because it wanted to make sure no Muslim terrorist could ever pick it up and use it against innocent people.
“We wanted to make sure we built a weapon that would never be able to be used by Muslim terrorists to kill innocent people or advance their radical agenda,” Spike's Tactical spokesperson Ben Thomas explained in an interview.
Well then, are we to understand that the gunmaker doesn't mind other terrorists using the assault rifle? Or that it's OK for mass shooters to wield it as they see fit just as long as they are not Muslim?
It might be that terrorism is a real threat in this day and age, but this does not make it OK to put Bible verses and Christian symbols on guns in an attempt to cash in on all the violence that's going on.
Gun violence is already a problem in the US, with the country accounting for 31% of all mass shooters reported on a global scale between 1966 to 2012 and specialists saying gun ownership laws are partly to blame for this, erm, “achievement.”
Do we really want to add religious symbols to weapons and make wielding and shooting a firearm seem like a spiritual experience rather than murder? I think not.
