What does the Catholic Church and the bible say about guns?

QUESTION?

I listen to you on Virgin Most Powerful Radio "religiously" and I have a question regarding owning weapons for self-defense.  I live in Los Angeles and am getting concerned more and more with everything going on with civil unrests, protests, etc.

What does the Catholic church say about me and my husband owning guns/shot guns for self-defense? By all means I pray to God we never have to use them but we have seriously been considering getting something to protect us.

ANSWER!

A Catholic man has the duty and positive obligation to defend his family to the point of deadly force if necessary, that’s Catholic teaching (cf. CCC 2263-65). Look at the obligation men have to their families: "If anyone does not provide for his own relatives, and especially for his own family, he has disowned the faith and is worse than an unbeliever" (1 Tim 5:8). This means that a man is called to Protect and Provide for his family, spiritually and physically.

Resisting and thwarting an attack is not to be confused with taking vengeance, which is the exclusive domain of God (Romans 12:19).

In John 18:10-11, Jesus order's Peter to put his sword into its sheath, he did NOT mean to put "your sword into its sheath" FOREVER. That would have contradicted what he told his disciples only hours before. "And let him who has no sword sell his mantle and buy one" (Luke 22:36). Swords were not simply decoration, the bible says: "..he is God's servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the SWORD in vain; he is the servant of God to execute his wrath on the wrong doer" (Romans 13:4).

For those who think God treated Israel differently from the way He will treat us today please consider what God told the prophet Malachi 3:6 "For I the Lord do not change..."

The Catholic Church even has a patron saint of shooters: St Gabriel Possenti - http://www.gunsaint.com/stagnaro.asp