Fascinating comment from Ing underneath today’s Quote of the Day: Banning Guns ≠ Burning Bibles Edition:
The state requires everyone to register their bibles and pass a criminal background check before they can own one . . .
Then there are laws restricting the use of index tabs for quicker study. No automatic scripture-finding without a tax stamp and a 6-month wait.
Say that quite a while ago, there was a ban on “Saturday night bibles” — you know, the cheap little abridged pocket versions those street-corner evangelists can whip out at the least provocation.
More recently there was a ban on “assault bibles” — you know, the ones with weatherproof black covers, carrying handles, a high-capacity concordance, and tabs for rapid-fire scripture finding.
It was allowed to expire because it had no measurable effect on Christianity, and in the meantime, these modular, flexible bible systems have become the most popular type in the country, but recently a few nut jobs have misinterpreted scripture so badly that there’s talk of banning them again. Because bibles like this belong only in the hands of professional pastors.
You can’t carry a bible in public without a special permit. In some states, you can only transport it in a locked case, if you’re traveling to church and back with no deviation. And in a few places, you can’t transport a bible at all.
And then there’s a vocal minority that wants to confiscate all bibles and make it illegal for anyone except professional, government-paid clergy to own one.
NO ONE would put up with this kind of assault on the First Amendment.
Guns and bibles are not the same thing, true. Yet both are inanimate objects that have great significance and power; both can save lives or inflict terrible harm, depending on whose hands they’re in. And BOTH of these objects are equally protected by the Bill of Rights in the US Constitution.