Jesus is so proud of you

While some gun shops and ranges have been drawing in the rubes by declaring themselves "Muslim-free zones," a Florida gun manufacturer has hit on the ultimate in anti-Muslim marketing: a semiautomatic rifle that no Muslim would ever dare touch, because it has a Bible verse inscribed on it. Spike's Tactical, of Apopka, Florida, knows what the market needs, and what the market needs is the "Crusader" model AR-15, with a laser-etched Knights Templar cross on one side of the magazine well, and a Bible verse -- Old Testament, of course -- on the other. Psalm 144:1, "Blessed be the Lord my Rock, who trains my hands for war, my fingers for battle." Apparently they couldn't fit the whole cool Ezekiel 25:17 bit from Pulp Fiction on there.

[contextly_sidebar id="SV5ja4R3qKTsk4tpEZxXaMzSMgf89srU"]

Company spokesman -- er, "brand ambassador" -- Ben "Mookie" Thomas, a genuine former Navy SEAL, told the Orlando Sentinel he came up with the idea all by himself last February, after seeing news footage of ISIS guerillas stealing American weapons abandoned by Iraqi troops:

My boss asked me what kind of input I had into making a rifle in terms of performance and whatnot and what have you, and I'd just been watching the news that morning as ISIS was murdering innocent people, and particularly they were using American-made and American-purchased weapons that had been in Iraqi hands. And I was furious, and just off the cuff I said, "I'd like to have a gun that if a Muslim terrorist picked it up a bolt of lightning would hit him and knock him dead."

We'll just leave aside for the moment that these rifles are only being sold for civilian use, and that it's rather unlikely that the Iraqi Army would be snatching up the magical Muslim-proof guns. Not that the idea hasn't been tried before. Remember those nifty gunsights that the American military was buying a few years back that had a coded Bible verse stamped on them?

[contextly_sidebar id="BivIz7E1lLDnspiKUA2CPe09W6wLUvF2"]

Mr. Thomas was careful to explain the design elements that required very careful planning in developing the $1,395 boomstick:

We wanted to make a gun that people of like minds would purchase. How do you control that? How do you kinda control who your customer is? It was very difficult to put this together in a way that we believe doesn't come across as bigoted. We have friends who are Muslims, I've lived in the Middle East, most Muslims are good people. I think we're just expressing a shared outrage that America's feeling about the fact that Islamic terror is coming to the United States, we believe it is, it is here ... we're just speaking out to say that we're aware of it, and we're gonna do what we can about it.

And what they can do, of course, is make a few bucks with a "brave stand" against the false religion of Islam, which is full of crazy superstitions, by making a gun that has magical words and markings on it to ward away evil Muslims. Now Christian defenders of the faith can cling to their gun and their religion in one handy death-throwing package.

Hasan Shibly, executive director of the Florida branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, pointed out that of the 205 mass killings in the U.S. so far in 2015, only one, the attack against military recruiting sites in Chattanooga, was perpetrated by a Muslim. Of the "Crusader" rifle, Shibly asked, "Is it designed for Christian terrorists? ... We need to have a conversation on gun violence. There has been utter silence from gun manufacturers. It's time for them to stop trying to make a buck on this." Hahaha, nice try, there, Mr. Shibly! Making a buck off irrational fear is what the gun industry is all about!

Even so, Shibly offered to meet with Thomas for the sake of telling him that CAIR opposes religious extremism of all flavors, adding, "They don't have to do outlandish things for us to engage them," and presumably resisting the urge to make a gagging gesture.

In addition to the Bible verse, the Crusader's safety selector has three settings, in Latin:

“Pax Pacis” (Peace), “Bellum” (War), and “Deus Vult” (God Wills It). Peace is the gun’s safe position while “War” is the gun’s fire position.

We'll assume that "God wills it" is reserved for the ambitious owner who -- with proper licensing, of course -- modifies the rifle to full-automatic.

Sadly for people who want the full anti-Islam shooting experience, it appears that the Idaho company that made "Jihawg ammunition" -- bullets with a "special ballistic paint infused with pork," designed to magically send Muslims to hell -- has gone out of business. So apparently it is possible to lose money screaming about Muslims, at least once the initial publicity dies down.

[HuffPo / Orlando Sentinel / Breitbart / Ammoland]