Tony Keddie, “Second-Amendment Exegesis of Luke 22:35-53: How Conservative Evangelical Bible Scholars Protect Christian Gun Culture,” in Misusing Scripture: What Are Evangelicals Doing with the Bible? edited by Mark Elliot, Kenneth Atkinson, and Robert Rezetko (Routledge, 2023), 260:
The words of the Second Amendment, a late eighteenth-century text, invite many questions from contemporary interpreters: “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.” Note the words “individual” and “self-defense” do not appear in the amendment, which is focused on “militia” and the “security” of the “State.” In her book Stand Your Ground (2017), Caroline Light has shown lethal self-defense was not viewed as an individual’s universally protected right at the time the Constitution was written. She discusses, for instance, the records of the 1806 trial of Thomas O. Selfridge on the charges of manslaughter that reveal early American judges turned to English common law and early liberal political theories to understand when self-defense was warranted. On the whole, they believed it was an individual’s duty to retreat in the face of an attacker. The only exception was the castle doctrine, which emerged in England in the 1600s (2017, 18–38). In keeping with the saying “a man’s house is his castle,” this doctrine permitted a property-owning man to use lethal force to repel someone who has invaded a space considered his private property. This selective exemption protected white male hegemony; its protections did not extend to those without property or those with restricted legal rights—namely women, enslaved Africans, African Americans, and Native Americans (Dunbar-Ortiz 2018, Light 2017). As these groups gained legal enfranchisement in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the duty to retreat was abandoned and the castle doctrine was gradually expanded for white men.
The Amateur Exegete 
“The Gun Lobby’s interpretation of the Second Amendment is one of the greatest pieces of fraud – I repeat the word fraud – on the American people by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime. The real purpose of the Second Amendment was to ensure that state armies – the militia – would be maintained for the defense of the state. The very language of the Second Amendment refutes any argument that it was intended to guarantee every citizen an unfettered right to any kind of weapon he or she desires.”
Conservative Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger
Very simply, the “Christian Right” will do whatever they can to keep themselves in a position of power and influence as long as possible. As you can see, they couldn’t care less about our children being killed in schools, or citizens shot in supermarkets, movie theaters or anywhere else. Their favorite political party, the GOP, hasn’t lifted a finger to do a single thing about gun control and you won’t hear a “Christian” preacher on any radio station speaking out for gun control. And, as one can easily discern, they are just bonkers over their “Christian” president; the 34-time convicted felon, adjudicated sexual assaulter, serial divorce and wife cheating, white guy. This demonstrates more than anything else what they can tolerate in order to advance their phony mythology and political agenda.
I am even now hearing interpretations of scripture that the “Christian Right” appears prepared to assert included other “Christians” only and not all people. Jesus’ words “As you do to the least of us you do to me” is, by their standard, only directed at other “Christians”, leaving aside that fat that there were no “Christians” during Jesus’ time, and he himself, of course, was a Jew.
(The quotations around “Christian Right” is for the added emphasis, they are neither “Christian” nor “Right”.)
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