'Jesus guns' and Biblical madness

The Trijicon rifle sight "scandal" is the first really big much-ado-about-nothing story of 2010. The mainstream media is trying to whip up hysteria with reports on "Jesus guns", "biblical weapons", "rifles boast biblical citations", "Jesus scopes" and the like. All of this because Trijicon sights bear encoded references to bible verses, these cryptic references causing the easily offended to be offended. Stop the presses!

So cryptic are the messages that even though Trijicon has been using them for years, no one has noticed. Now that someone has noticed various militaries are in a mad scramble to do something about it lest non-Christians - Muslims in particular - get their knickers in a knot. Thus the inscriptions will be removed. Good, this will preclude anyone killed by a gun mounting one of the sights departing this Earth thinking he was killed by a Christian crusader.

Removing the inscription is a step in the right direction but it doesn't go nearly far enough: Christian symbolism is rife amongst western forces in Afghanistan. New Zealand will fix its Trijicon sights but what about its flag, which, like the Australian and UK flags, contains the superimposed crosses of Saint George, Saint Andrew and Saint Patrick. Surely these overtly Christian symbols, as opposed to covert biblical references, should be removed so as not to offend Muslims. But their respective coats of arms will also need to be tidied up: all feature Maltese crosses.

And then there are the Danes, whose flag is dominated by a whopping great cross, with the country's coat of arms also bearing a cross. Surely this must motivate the Taliban to kill Danes extra-dead.

This kerfuffle again shows Muslims that they should get upset about even imagined slights and insults.

Meanwhile, the US-based Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) has called on Robert Gates, the US defence secretary, to withdraw the equipment immediately from combat.

"Having biblical references on military equipment violates the basic ideals and values our country was founded upon," Haris Tarin, MPAC Washington director, said in a statement.

"Worse still, it provides propaganda ammo to extremists who claim there is a 'Crusader war against Islam' by the United States."

Yeah right, like people who go on a rioting rampage over cartoons or false rumors of a Koran being disrespected aren't always going to find something to be upset about regardless.