Live by the Gun, Die by the Gun

“I think it’s worth it to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights.” – Charlie Kirk (April 2023).

The Bible includes an often-cited passage in Matthew 26:52: “People who live by the sword will die by the sword.” There were no guns in those days, but the meaning holds. Live by the gun, die by the gun. The way you shape your life may very well shape your death.

Charlie Kirk lived loudly by the gun. As founder of Turning Point USA and a self-described Christian nationalist, he taught that the Second Amendment was sacred — as holy as scripture. He dismissed gun deaths as an acceptable “cost” of freedom. For him, guns weren’t just policy; they were theology. And in this, Kirk wasn’t unique. He echoed a chorus within American Christianity that baptizes weapons in the name of God.

But the Second Amendment is not the blank check Kirk and his followers claim it to be. Ratified in 1791, in an era of muskets and pistols, its full text reads: “A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” Legal scholars have long debated whether this was a collective right for states to defend themselves, not an indiscriminate right for every individual to stockpile weapons. Much like the Bible, the Constitution is often twisted until it says what someone already wants it to say.

And then there’s this idea of a “God-given right.” The irony is sharp. The same people who preach Jesus’ love seem more convinced of an angry, vengeful God who hands them permission to carry steel and lead. They quote liberty but live by vengeance, ignoring the scriptures that cut the other way: “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord” (Deut. 32:35). “The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still” (Ex. 14:14). “Our struggle is not against flesh and blood…” (Eph. 6:12). Jesus himself said, “Blessed are the peacemakers.”

Yet in pews and pulpits across the country, love is replaced with condemnation, peace with division. The gun becomes the true object of faith — a protector more trusted than God, an idol of iron upheld as holy.

So was Charlie Kirk a martyr for God? No. He was a martyr for guns. And in following his example, too many Christians are trading the greatest command — to love — for the worship of violence. Where, then, is the love they claim to believe in? Many of us have yet to see it.