Guns ‘N’ Jesus

PARKVILLE, Md. —  It seemed like a good idea, opening a gun shop.

He’d been 17 years in the service: Army and Reserve, National Guard and Air National Guard. He held his first M-16 at 19 and thought it was “pretty neat . . . a tool like anything else.” He began collecting and selling at gun shows and contemplating a business. And over the months a “little voice inside” murmured, “Name it Christian Soldier.”

“If I would have chosen any other name,” Rob Shiflett says, “I would have done a disservice to God and to Christ.”

He’s a stocky man with glasses, a mustache and a serious air. He stands behind a long case of semiautomatic pistols--Glocks and Heckler & Kochs and Sig Sauers--and buffs the glass counter with a pink cloth. Above, a small orange sign reads, “Let the revolution begin.”

The question of whether Jesus blesses the warrior is as old as Christianity and a testament to the endless interpretability of the Bible. Constantine, the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity, attributed his military victories to his new faith. One historical account tells of a Christian symbol appearing in the sky above the emperor with the words “In this sign, conquer.”

From the Crusades to the 19th-century hymn “Onward Christian Soldiers” to a small gun shop in this Baltimore suburb, Jesus has been claimed by many as a general in human battles, military and political.

Shiflett, 37, became a born-again Christian eight years ago. And everything about the way his year-old shop got started suggests to him that a higher power was involved. For a year he struggled to locate a rental space. When he finally prayed for help, something up there seemed to snap its supernatural fingers.

He found a place owned by a woman who was “praying for a Christian to rent her store.” Then, when he suggested the name “Christian Soldier” to his pastor, the pastor approved. And though one friend told him, presumably without irony, “I think you’ve shot yourself in the foot by using that name,” Shiflett felt he had to do it “to pay homage to God.” Besides, the name was catchy.

The lettering on Shiflett’s shop window is flanked by two large symbols of the Christian fish, the one you sometimes see on car bumpers.

Christian Soldier gets your regular gun-buying crowd and more. It gets those interested in military paraphernalia, Shiflett’s specialty. And it gets Catholics and Methodists and Lutherans, he says.

“Christians like to do business with other Christians,” he explains. “I’ve marketed a crowd that I didn’t really think was out there.”

He’s angered others.

“It was a marketing ploy,” Ginni Wolf, education coordinator of Marylanders Against Handgun Abuse, says of Shiflett’s store name. “It sort of puts the stamp of approval of God on this type of business.”

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A gun shop is not an unusual sight on Harford Road. Christian Soldier is one of three on this stretch that extends northeast from the city, flecked with fast-food stops and local stores. It is across the street from St. Ursula Roman Catholic Church and elementary school and two blocks from St. John’s Lutheran Church.

“I certainly don’t think advocating the use of violence is something that we, as Christians, condone,” says the Rev. David Asplin of St. John’s Church. “Indeed, we work against it and for justice based upon reconciliation--that’s what Christianity is all about.”

Asplin and others contend that the name Christian Soldier links religious teachings with destructive weaponry.

Shiflett points out that gun ownership does not amount to violent intentions. He doesn’t even hunt but collects for occasional target practice and the beauty of the firearm. He works full time as a paramedic for the Baltimore County Fire Department in addition to running the store.

“Most people who own guns are nonviolent individuals. Firearms don’t make a person bad,” Shiflett says. “Whether they’re going to be bad or not doesn’t depend on what kind of metal they hold in their arms.”

He wears the “Cadillac” of guns in his right hip holster: a Sig Sauer 9-millimeter compact pistol, 7 by 5 glossy steel inches of semiautomatic “protection.” It’s necessary for guarding valuable merchandise, he says.

He buzzes the door lock, and a big guy steps in: “Let me see what new toys you have.” The customer ambles around Shiflett’s small shop.

Christian Soldier stocks Army fatigues and military-theme T-shirts, helmets and cloth badges and ready-to-eat meals left over from Desert Storm (kosher, best if used by November 2001). A table displays several automatic rifles, elegant in design and sinister in length.

Christian Soldier keeps odd hours. As a paramedic, Shiflett works 48 hours in each four-day shift with the next four days off. He runs his life in eight-day weeks, crams in time at the store and reserves one day a week for quality time with his wife and three daughters. He’s also a flight medic in the Air National Guard and gives up a weekend each month or so to that.

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As a boy, Shiflett once visited his uncle’s National Guard unit, temporarily stationed down by a lake during the 1968 riots in Baltimore. The men had set up pup tents and opened mess kits. They had uniforms and rifles and were frying Spam over open flames--Shiflett was 7 and mesmerized.

He had a GI Joe back then, 12 inches tall. When you pulled the string, it said, “Medic, get that stretcher up here, hurry.”

Shiflett knew what he wanted. After high school he spent three years in the Army, then settled down and began studying emergency medicine. He met his wife-to-be in his apartment complex.

Although he wasn’t born again when he met Terry, he says now that their shared belief “is the bottom line, the most important part [of the marriage]. That’s what holds it together.” The turning point was a powerful sermon by a visiting preacher who made the Bible live for Shiflett. “All of a sudden I realized, ‘Wow, this is real stuff.’ ”

“I think he always had a very spiritual side to him,” says Terry Shiflett, 39, who was born again when she was 21. “He’s always willing to tell somebody about the Lord.”

Marylanders Against Handgun Abuse founder Matt Fenton contends the name Christian Soldier is too bold.

“Why do they say that Jesus is on their side?” he asks of Shiflett and others on the opposite bank of the gun control debate. “I’m not saying I’m enlisting Jesus in my crusade on firearm safety.”

But Shiflett, perhaps, could not do otherwise. His religious and political views are inextricably bound.

“The primary reason for firearms ownership was to keep government from becoming too large, too powerful, too obnoxious in individuals’ lives,” he says. “The most important part of the whole Constitution is, one, initial belief in Christianity, and, two, the 2nd Amendment, which was the right of people to own and bear firearms.”

It makes a neat package.

“Christianity goes hand in hand with being a good American,” he says.

Sure, there are those who disagree, but the noise helps business. He keeps a lacquered plaque of a recent Baltimore Sun article on his wall, and a pile of contentious letters to the editor in a folder in the shop.

Underneath it all, Shiflett says, he simply wants to sell guns.

“If you’re looking for someone who wants a holy war,” he says, “it’s just not here.”