Editorial: Gunsight scripture well off target

File photo / Patrick Gower

Opinion

The website of the American precision gunsight manufacturer Trijicon mentions its dedication "to promoting Trijicon product sales ... and related services" to its clients, who include the US military and the New Zealand Defence Force.

No harm in that: making money by keeping the customer satisfied is good business the world over.

What the website does not mention is the company's commitment to promoting the word of God with biblical citations engraved into its Acog gunsight housings.

That would be the God they worship in Wixom, Michigan, where the company has its corporate headquarters, or perhaps in Fredericksburg, Virginia, where they manufacture what they call their "Brilliant Aiming Solutions".

This is not to be confused with the God who occupies people's thoughts and prayers in Iraq and Afghanistan and Pakistan and other places where soldiers are using these aiming solutions in the field.

The citations - they are not full quotations, but text references in the form JN8:12 or 2COR4:6 - may seem cryptic. But if their significance was ever lost on Muslims in those troubled zones, some of who have to carry weapons equipped with the sights, it isn't now.

It is hard to credit the crassness that motivated Trijicon to send such messages into fields of battle where the international community has been fighting the religious fundamentalism and sectarian violence that have caused so much strife.

Commendably, Prime Minister John Key has ordered the inscriptions removed from our soldiers' equipment and from future orders, giving a lead that the US military seems likely to follow.

It may take a cancelled contract to convince Trijicon of how stupidly they have acted. In the meantime, they might like to contemplate Psalm 60 (or PS68:30, to use their code) which exhorts us to "scatter the people who delight in war".