MRFF Demands Swift Action on ‘Jesus Rifles’

Mikey Weinstein of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation is demanding prompt removing of the Bible codes on rifle scopes used by the American armed forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, and placed surreptitiously on the scopes by an evangelical contractor, Trijicon. The manufacturer, Trijicon, after agreeing to remove the Bible codes, appears to be stalling.

From ABC News:

“Shame on them forever for their impossibly slow, plodding and utterly backwards plan for correction of this national and international disgrace,” said Mikey Weinstein of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF). Weinstein, whose advocacy group promotes the separation of church and state in the military, said the MRFF has received numerous messages from troops deployed in Afghanistan complaining that the Gospel inscriptions on Trijicon rifle scopes place them at added risk.

Jesus Rifles — The Resurrection

By Chris Rodda

Everybody remember those Jesus Rifles? The rifles being used by our troops in Iraq in Afghanistan that have Bible verse inscriptions on their sights? The sights whose manufacturer, Trijicon, was going to be sending the military modification kits for to remove these inscriptions? Well, this isn’t going exactly as expected.

As ABCNews.com reports, the U.S. military, in its infinite wisdom, has decided to remove the inscriptions from the sights that are in storage first, and then wait to remove them from the sights on the weapons currently in use in Iraq and Afghanistan, after the deployed units that are using them return home, a plan that completely ignores the biggest reason that the inscriptions urgently needed to be removed.

The whole Jesus rifles issue began because the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) was receiving emails and phone calls from soldiers, either already in Iraq and Afghanistan or soon to be deployed, who were worried that having Bible verse inscriptions on their weapons was a danger to the troops. While religious inscriptions on our military’s weapons is certainly a constitutional issue regardless of whether those weapons are here in the U.S. or with the troops who are deployed, the primary concern with the Jesus rifles was that they are all over Iraq and Afghanistan, providing fodder for propaganda that we are crusaders fighting a holy war. These rifles are not only being used by our own troops, but are being used to train the Afghan and Iraqi forces, as the photos in my previous post clearly show. A typical example of the emails MRFF was receiving is also included in its entirety in that post.

Now, jumping forward two months to the present, MRFF is still receiving emails and phone calls about the Jesus rifles, now from deployed soldiers asking when the hell they’re going to get the promised modification kits. Rather than try to describe these recent emails, I’m just going to post one of them in its entirety, as I did in my previous post.