Stereotypes? We don’ need no steenkin’ stereotypes:

New Bethel Church is welcoming “responsible handgun owners” to wear their firearms Saturday, June 27 at the church. An Internet ad for the event says there will be a handgun raffle, patriotic music and information on gun safety.

Church pastor Ken Pagano says guns must be unloaded at the event and private security will check visitors at the door.

Marian McClure Taylor, executive director of the Kentucky Council of Churches, says Christian churches work to prevent violent harm and promote peace, but most “allow for arms to be taken up under certain conditions.” [AP, via The Courier-Journal]

Indeed, the phrase “responsible handgun owners” must be locked firmly within a pair of loving quotation marks — perhaps for humorous purposes, but that would assume that the AP’s article-spawning algorithms possess a funny circuit or something of that nature.