{"id":3337,"date":"2010-01-22T00:35:07","date_gmt":"2010-01-22T08:35:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/?p=3337"},"modified":"2015-06-27T19:16:22","modified_gmt":"2015-06-27T22:16:22","slug":"trijicon-offers-to-remove-bible-verses-from-sights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2010\/01\/22\/trijicon-offers-to-remove-bible-verses-from-sights\/","title":{"rendered":"Trijicon Offers to Remove Bible References from Sights"},"content":{"rendered":"

Trijicon, the maker of the gun sight that has a Bible reference<\/a> on it, has volunteered to remove the references and cease marking future sights to be used by the US and foreign governments.\u00a0 It will also provide free kits to remove the markings from those sights that have already been deployed.\u00a0 The company issued a press release<\/a> that was picked up by Fox<\/a>, CNN<\/a>, and other<\/a> news organizations.<\/p>\n

The offer to pre-empt an official call for their removal, while unexpected, is actually an excellent public relations decision both from a business and faith perspective.\u00a0 It avoids a “confrontation” over contracts and religious controversy, and it\u00a0permits Trijicon to be viewed as both forthright and amenable to its customer, even if it does not have to be.\u00a0 While some Christians in similar situations may dig their heels in, there is no moral imperative that requires Trijicon to refuse to accede to the feelings of its customer.\u00a0 Their offer alleviates the concerns of the military and diffuses the public scandal.<\/p>\n

For its part, the stern government reaction (as noted by General Petraeus<\/a>, at least) undermines those who have claimed this was an unConstitutional collusion to promote Christianity.\u00a0 US and foreign government officials have repeatedly said that the sights, which were bought commercially “off the shelf” (known as “COTS”), were purchased without any knowledge that they had any religious reference on them.\u00a0 Instead, they were purchased because they had the reputation for being an outstanding piece of equipment.<\/p>\n

Thus, Michael Weinstein and his Military Religious Freedom Foundation can, in some part, claim victory for ‘forcing’ the ‘government’ to remove the references from its sights.\u00a0 It is a somewhat hollow victory, however, because while the MRFF capitalized on the publicity, Michael Weinstein insisted on making unsupported accusations that someone\u00a0violated\u00a0the Constitution and federal law.\u00a0 As those accusations are now demonstrably unsubstantiated, Weinstein can celebrate the result, but is also left looking foolish for making his usual grandiose accusations.<\/p>\n

Despite this and Trijicon’s response,\u00a0Weinstein\u00a0continued to make wild and unsupported accusations (which, ironically, have not been carried by the press):<\/p>\n

Trijicon’s outrageous practice of placing bible verse citations on military-issued gunsights for weapons was an unconstitutional disgrace…It is nothing short of a vile national security threat that…our military and its contractors time again [sic<\/em>]\u00a0resort to unlawful fundamentalist evangelical Christian practices, even on the battlefield.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As already pointed out, Weinstein continually contradicts himself about whether or not Trijicon, as a private company, can “violate” the Constitution.\u00a0 (For those that don’t remember, the Constitution restricts only the government<\/em>.)\u00a0 While that double-speak was expected, it was shocking to see Weinstein denigrate\u00a0the US military<\/em> by accusing it of taking\u00a0part\u00a0in a\u00a0“national security threat,”\u00a0particularly since he has provided no evidence to support that statement.<\/p>\n

Finally, Weinstein continues to display a bias against Christians as he, once again,\u00a0has produced no\u00a0evidence\u00a0that fundamentalism or evangelical Protestantism played any part in this incident.\u00a0 However, this is consistent with Weinstein’s practice to date of assigning<\/em> a Christian label to someone based on his<\/em> definitions.\u00a0 Thus, regardless of the actual<\/em> theological beliefs of the persons involved, Michael Weinstein has made the unilateral decision that they are “fundamentalist evangelical Christian[s].”\u00a0 For someone who so often relies on examples of historic religious prejudice, he doesn’t seem\u00a0averse to demonstrating it himself.<\/p>\n

Trijicon has reportedly\u00a0produced impressive weapons accessories for years.\u00a0 It has also included Biblical references on those products for decades.\u00a0 The US military, and those of foreign nations, purchased those products for their renowned reputation.\u00a0 Though there is no evidence of any public complaint before today, Trijicon took the ‘high road’ and offered to remove the references.<\/p>\n

Despite Michael Weinstein’s delusional conspiracy theories, there is no evidence that it was a surreptitious effort by either Trijicon or the US government to do anything other than provide US Soldiers with the best equipment available.\u00a0 Though the intensity of the negative reaction, even\u00a0by\u00a0US military leaders,\u00a0was disappointing, Trijicon ultimately made an admirable decision that reflected well both on its business practice and its faith.<\/p>\n

Update<\/span>:<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

CNS News now carries a slightly tongue-in-cheek article covering Weinstein’s latest unsupported accusations<\/a>, and includes the comment:<\/p>\n

Thanks to the MRFF, the obscure sets of numbers and letters like 2COR4:6 and JN8:12 are now widely known to refer to New Testament verses.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A\u00a0Washington Post “On Faith” column written by Michael Kessler debunks Weinstein’s claim<\/a> of violations of federal law and the Constitution.<\/p>\n

Update, 28 March 2010:<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

A military blog shows pictures<\/a> of the references being removed, as well as the final product.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Trijicon, the maker of the gun sight that has a Bible reference on it, has volunteered to remove the references and cease marking future sights to be used by the US and foreign governments.\u00a0 It will also provide free kits to remove the markings from those sights that have already been deployed.\u00a0 The company issued a press release that was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[88,23,4,1424,19,85,2,5218,7,10],"class_list":["post-3337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government-and-religion","tag-army","tag-bible","tag-churchandstate","tag-conspiracy","tag-government","tag-mikey-weinstein","tag-military","tag-military-religious-freedom-foundation","tag-mrff","tag-religion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3337"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3337\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}