Is this weird? (Gun question)
MeesoThorny
Shipmate Posts: 3
in Hell
I found out our priest wiles away his time "dry firing" his guns. He does this every evening. Is this, normal, acceptable priest behavior? It seems so strange to me that a priest would spend any length of time fantasizing about killing others every evening. It makes me uncomfortable.
Comments
(taken from here: https://www.strikeman.io/blogs/news/what-is-dry-firing-is-it-bad
So the real question would be, why does your priest shoot a gun at all? If it's a sport (like archery) to him, I don't see it as a problem. I myself would love to have the chance to improve my archery, which is abysmal. And there's no need to be fantasizing about anything, even taking out a rabbit. My shooting fantasy (and it would BE a fantasy) would have to do with hitting the target at all, let alone in the inmost circle...
What clergy do in their spare time - like what anyone does in their spare time - is their business, up to a point.
Depends on whose UK ears. Some of those of us who live and work in the countryside might think it was normal.
I’ve got a friend who spends inordinate amounts of time swinging his shotgun to point at hanging golf balls - improves muscle memory and aiming instincts and makes him a better shot.
All fair enough IMO
He does this because he’s a “prepper” and he’s paranoid. He says he used to be a pacifist but now sees himself as a “defender”. He believes our little town is a very dangerous place. He does not keep the guns in a safe.
I don’t think it is psychologically healthy, balanced behavior.
This, to me, does indeed seem weird and dangerous. From whom does he intend to defend his town and people?
Without wishing to guess his denomination, I would hope that his superiors are aware of his predilections.
I think the preceding posts answer this very reasonable question...
He believes that his life is always in imminent danger and he needs to be ready to defend it. No, not Idaho.
I Am Not A Doctor, and so I'm neither diagnosing, nor recommending.
My wife has a friend who was married to a man who had a PhD is Psychology. He taught at the university. Turns out he really loved his guns too. It started out collecting guns. Then every night he would clean them. He actually started making "love" statements to them--her description, She eventually realized her life was in danger and divorced him. He had his guns taken away from him. Later, he committed suicide. She is not able to explain this more because she has developed dementia.
To the example of the priest. It does sound as if he has mental issues. This should be relayed to the Bishop.
If I were a member of a congregation whose priest behaved in this way, I'd be failing in my duty to others if I didn't *take it upstairs*, so to speak.
This is not in any way to criticise @MeesoThorny , who may well be in a difficult position, and I'm NOT fishing for details!
Oh dear Jesus no. Regardless of the guns, I think the bishop has got to know about this ASAP.
Definitely definitely contact the bishop please. And I would honestly find a new church. There’s got to be another one nearby that does not have a priest like this.
The new incoming priest of the church that I used to go to… I looked up his profile on Facebook and found that a couple of his likes included Franklin Graham in the NRA. I immediately found a new church that I’ve been very happy with for the last few years. This is scarier than that, to me.
Why ever not?!? 😳
Has he got a wife and family? Are they potentially in danger? Or is he in a denomination that requires celibacy of its priests?
I don't think this question has actually been answered yet, though the exact location isn't necessary - just the country...
BTW, I was taught never to dry fire a firearm because it wears out the pin mechanism. But that could be an error on my dad's part.
@mousethief We have an Orthodox priest who comes down from Spokane for Divine Liturgy here. I wonder if he drives or not. I do know of one other priest who did drive, but he was in a remote area.
I accept that this probably wouldn't be OK in the UK, where we tend to be strict about gun ownership. But if one lived in a place where there was more acceptance of guns, shooting and hunting then it's tough to see this as a particular problem.
When I lived in Norway for a short time many years ago, there seemed to be a lot of guns. I can imagine people on farmsteds practicing finding targets with unloaded guns, particularly if ammunition is expensive.
It might be good if they directed their attentions to a proper gun range and/or assured everyone that there was no ammunition at home. But the whole narrative of "preppers" and whatnot sounds like it could be a slur or rumour to me.
“Preppers” are a thing here in the US, and the term is not considered a slur; what we have to go on is what MeesoThorny has specifically said that the priest himself has said:
This isn’t just a hobby.
I'm not suggesting anything is happening deliberately, I don't know. My own mother has a reputation for misinterpreting information and adding 2 and 2 and making 60.
https://youtu.be/Ut04HnBssHI?si=DR8vkVA86lVPfNAE
(Yes, this is the guy from An American Werewolf in London.)
All we have to go on is what the poster said.
OK. Applying my own life experiences, including knowing at least one person who is a presently former priest (it’s a long story involving him leaving the Episcopal church for a breakaway “continuingAnglican” church, becoming a priest, and then joining the Roman Catholic Church, which doesn’t acknowledge his ordination—okay, maybe not that long a story after all) who has exactly the same kind of attitude about guns, sees himself as a defender and protector, is definitely paranoid, and quite possibly has a far scarier attitude as when I was googling him a couple of years ago, I found him on the right-wrong social media site Gab, promoting actual Qanon propaganda. So… yeah, it’s not only plausible, if it weren’t for the fact that my former friend is no longer considered a priest, I’d wonder if it was him. When his old blog was readable by the public (it’s friends-only these days), he would post paranoid screeds about the impending collapse of the US and western civilization. The whole “seeing oneself as a protector“ thing is also something that he posted about, with the idea that there are sheep, wolves, and sheepdogs, that the average non-gun person can be considered a sheep, and needs to be protected from the ravening violent wolves they’re naïve about, and the people who choose to be strong and violent and constantly on guard, to protect the foolish sheep, are like sheepdogs. And so on and so on and so on. He used to be (or seemed) a decent sane person once way back when we were in college in the 80s, got into Rush Limbaugh in the 1990s, and … well, we haven’t been friends since the early 2000s. But I have definitely met at least one priest who is into guns, paranoid, and a prepper who expects the black helicopters to come for him someday.
If someone is doing it as part of their training so that they are prepared to repel marauding gangs in some dystopian future, there's a lot more to be concerned about, but it's not the dry firing per se that is the concern.
If the dystopian future is never going to happen then I don’t see the difference. And if it is going to happen then the target practice seems like a bloody good idea to me!
But yeah it’s perfectly fine for him to own a gun and to practice using it in hiding dry firing to develop the skills needed to defend themselves.
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