00:01 JOHN: What fuels my passion for guns and self
defence?
First and foremost, is my Christian faith.
00:08 COMM: John Correia is not your average preacher.
The former Naval officer is the senior pastor at West Greenway Bible Church in Glendale,
Arizona, and uses the bible to justify America's rights to bear arms.
00:24 COMM: A guided tour of the different firearms
that I own, that would take a while.
A running joke is that if you know how many firearms you own, you probably don't own enough.
00:33 COMM: And the love of guns runs in the family.
The Evangelical Christian from Phoenix lives with his wife Laura and their three children,
James, 15, himself an NRA apprentice instructor.
00:47 COMM: Sarah, 12, who has her own shotgun.
00:52 COMM: And 8-year-old Abby, who was recently
given her very own pink cricket .22 rifle for her birthday.
01:01 COMM: John currently owns more than twenty
weapons, including three break action shotguns, a Glock 19 handgun and a AR-15 rifle, the
weapon used in both the Sandy Hook and Colorado theatre massacres.
01:16 COMM: Every Sunday 38-year-old John delivers
sermons before a congregation.
01:21 COMM: I wish that everybody got along, I wish
that everybody was nice, but they're not.
And until we get into that perfect world where Jesus comes again, we need to be able to protect
ourselves.
in Luke 22:36 I believe Jesus said, he said let the one who has no sword sell his cloak
and buy one.
01:35 COMM: And John's views appear to go down well
with his congregation.
01:38 JUSTIN: When you're in a small church it's
important for the pastor to have more accessibility than just being a figure on stage talking
to you about what the bible incorporates.
And if you know John, then you know that he is passionate about firearms, you know that
he's passionate about cooking, you he's passionate about his family and I love that about him.
02:00 COMM: However, as John's wife Laura acknowledges,
his passion for guns has not been to the taste of all worshippers.
02:07 LAURA: There have been some people that have
left because they don't like his stance on guns, they don't like it being brought up
ever in church, they don't like the fact that he'd go out to shoot with fellow members of
the church.
02:17 COMM: Laura grew up with a negative view of
firearms, but changed her mind after John decided to buy a weapon for home defence.
02:24 LAURA: How do I feel when I'm shooting a gun?
I feel very competent, I feel safe, but in a more protective way, I feel powerful against
somebody who might try and hurt me.
02:36 COMM: John, who has been licensed to carry
a concealed firearm in Arizona since 2006, carefully restricts his children's access
to firearms, and only let them use them under careful supervision.
02:51 COMM: And the family regularly attend the
local gun range.
02:55 ABBY: My friends at school and other places,
they think guns are really dangerous and you should never own a gun.
I think that you - it's okay to own a gun as long as you know how to use it and when
it's okay to use it and where its okay to use it.
03:10 JAMES: It's a lot of fun, it's y'know, kind
of hard to describe why it's fun, I mean why do kids think tag is fun?
it's just running around.
I don't know, it's just fun.
You get to see what you did to the target.
03:23 SARAH: My friends at school, um they don't
really know that I have guns, we don't really talk about it much.
but my friends at church, they're fine with it.
They like guns.
But yeah, my school friends don't really know.
03:37 COMM: While high school shootings like Sandy
Hook have created a backlash against gun ownership in parts of the state, they've made John even
more determined to pass on his gun knowledge to his young family.
03:49 JOHN: If you look at the murder, the rampage
that happened at Sandy Hook, that young man, murdered his mother.
To steal her firearms, to then, to then transport them in the cause of a felony which is another
felony.
Took them on a school campus, murdered 25 more people, and when did he stop?
04:07 JOHN: He stopped when the police cars pulled
up.
He took his own life, because good men with guns were there to stop him, and as soon as
they were, he stopped.
A rifle in the hands of a good man is good, a rifle in the hands of an evil man is evil.
04:22 JOHN: What does God think of guns?
It's just a tool.
04:25 COMM: And John will continue to spread his
faith in God, and firearms, to his devoted flock.
04:30 JOHN: If you said John, Jesus came and said
give up your firearms today, and you can show me definitively that's it's Jesus, I'd give
them up.
Because my commitment to Christ comes first.
But i don't think he does, I think he says, John, you're a bearer of the image of God,
and so protect that, protect it in smart ways.
And firearms today are the best way to do that.