Pistol-packing preacher.

Kenneth Blanchard of Prince George's County, Maryland, is known as the "Pistol Packing Preacher," the title of a motivational compact disc he produced primarily for black and Hispanic audiences.

He is, according to Maryland writer James L. Pate, "among a growing number of black activists who are increasingly vocal against gun control."

Blanchard, an assistant minister with the Mount Sinai Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., firmly believes that "gun rights are civil rights" and that "self-defense is a divine right." Churches that "allow evil men to deny the right to self-protection by hosting [gun] buybacks and turn-ins" should, he suggests, be opposed.

Journalist Pate, in a special report published in the April 3rd Washington Times under the caption "Preaching for God and guns," quotes Blanchard: "Ignorance can be fatal. Knowledge is power. We must educate our people, not feed them feel-good gun-control garbage." Blanchard scolds Maryland's Democratic Party for exploiting blacks on the gun control issue, contending that "Democrats in Maryland want to keep people in fear and ignorance" and noting that "our country has more than 40,000 gun laws on the books and not one has ever saved a single child's life. It's a travesty and a sham."

After a five-year stint with the Marine Corps, Blanchard joined the operations directorate of the Central Intelligence Agency and was deployed on anti-terrorist operations in the Middle East and elsewhere. After returning to the U.S., the CIA loaned him to the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Georgia to teach firearms and personal security to rookie agents. Married to a former law-enforcement agent, the father of two also serves as a government consultant on security and anti-terrorism issues.

During a recent speech to a group of Boy Scouts, Blanchard underscored the importance of gun safety and urged the youngsters to develop "discipline between the ears." While "shooting firearms is an equal-opportunity sport," and "you don't have to be fast, or particularly agile or tall or muscular," he advised that it is crucial to "first master safety and learn the discipline, because if you mess with a gun without any training, there are only two places that you're likely to end up and that's in the graveyard or in jail."

Asked to reconcile his position on selfdefense with Christ's admonition to turn the other cheek, he told Pate that "Jesus was not some pacifist wimp, as many like to portray him, but a really tough guy. His advice to turn the other cheek did not mean to lie down and give up, but to be cool, careful and calculated. It means to control your emotions and actions through inner, spiritual strength, to not react in anger or rage, but carefully." Blanchard often cites verses from the Gospel of Luke, where "after the Last Supper, Jesus told his homeboys that they must be ready to defend themselves, and that if you don't have a sword, sell your clothes and buy one." The sword, he stresses, "was for defense, not offense," but it was also "not a steak knife, but a fighting tool."