Nobody but nobody today would wonder about an inmate today being shot in a jail if such a prisoner had a loaded gun on his possession. (The Smith brothers had TWO such loaded weapons)
(I tell you what, any prisoner today who was armed with a gun and took out two people as he was being shot wouldn't receive a martyr's crown)
If Smith was walking in the true Savior's footsteps, where was Smith's "put down your sword" theology when a criminal accomplice gave a Nauvoo prisoner a lethal weapon? Smith didn't put the revolver down. (Note: had it been discovered & the mob held off, criminal charges could have been added to the charges Smith was already being held on.)
And for some reason, Mormons didn't celebrate June 25, 1994 as the 150th anniversary of Smith's arrest for the charge of incitation of a "riot"...later changed to a charge of "treason."
So...
(1) Smith already had a separate pre-trial hearing for a separate charge of "adultery."
(2) He was arrested for inciting a "riot."
(3) Before his death, he was charged with "treason"
(4) He could have been charged with carrying an illegal weapon...sorry, even today's concealed permits wouldn't work for inmates then or now!!!
(5) Smith was an Illinois polygamist and laws existed on the books in the 1840s to prosecute him for this.
(6) Smith was also charged in the early 1840s as a before-the-fact accomplice to attempted murder of the Missouri Gov (Boggs). [That charge was later dropped]
(7) Earlier in his life, Smith underwent a trial for "glass looking" in New York -- and was found guilty
(8) He was rightly accused of bank fraud in Kirtland, Ohio...but then left the state (ever hear the term, "as phoney as a $3 bill?" -- well, Smith was running out of money...as one Web site once put it, "What to do? Hold a tent revival? Call an emergency capital fund drive? No none of that, Instead, he declared that the Lord, through Melchizedek Priesthood, had commanded him to open a bank, a bank to be called an 'Anti-Bank' to skirt Ohio laws. And it came to pass, thus sprang the $3 Mormon tender...In those days, the US government didn't print money, states chartered local banks to do that...in Ohio there was an anti-bank movement...far too much money floating around...the Mormons started the Kirtland Safety Society Anti-Bank, which minted currency. Because it was an Anti-Bank it required no charter, or so they maintained, because it was not a bank but an anti-bank, thus keeping with the anti-bank movement. The Mormon tender was backed by one dollar for every hundred printed. So there was once a $3 bill, purposed equal to $3 of US currency, only the signatories were Joseph Smith and Mormon bank president Signey Rigdon with Warren Parrish shill to disburse the stuff.") See Joseph Smith's 'Anti-Bank' [Wow! All Congress would have needed to do was to "follow the 'prophet's" example, print $3 bills with the names of Nancy Pelosi and Barney Frank as signatories!!!]
Furthermore, had Smith lived today and tried the same shenanigans, he would have been charged with:
(9) Possible statutory rape of a servant girl who the Smith family took into their home (Smith later married her)
(10) Destruction of Property (printing press)
(11) A conspiracy to engage in the cover up of his Spring 1844 actions as mayor
(12) He could have also been impeached as Nauvoo mayor had not the riot Smith started on Mainstreet extended into his personal jailhouse.
Smith's first wife, Emma, essentially said this way before you did: "It was secret things which...cost Joseph and Hyrum their lives, and it will cost you and The Twelve your lives as it has done to them." (Source: Solemn Covenant, by B. Carmon Hardy, Univ. of Illinois)
Do Lds agree with Emma Smith on this, "It was the secret things which...cost Joseph and Hyrum their lives... (Or do they want to critique Emma?)
Imagine Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. He realizes he's going to be arrested.
So what does he do? Does he rebuke sword-wielding Peter and heal the soldier's ear had he been Smith-like? (No) Instead...
#1...before the soldiers arrived, the Mormon-like jesus would have hightailed it out of the garden across the river in order to not face consequences for his actions...
#2...then he would have had to be goaded back into town by a letter accusing him of cowardice (in Smith's case, the letter was from his first wife)...
#3...Instead of the true Jesus being helped along in carrying the cross by Simon of Cyrene, the Mormon-like jesus would have been "helped along" in carrying his cross by Cyrus of Nauvoo, who smuggled a weapon to the Mormon-like jesus...
#4...the Mormon-like jesus, instead of when threatened, would have actually joined Peter in cutting off ears with swords in hand and probably slitting throats...
#5...the Mormon-like jesus would have injured or killed three people...
#6...instead of having the famous line, "he who lives by the sword dies by the sword," I guess we have "he who lives by the smuggled pistol, dies by the rifle" -- but it's not very "Messianic" when we realize that what the true Jesus was teaching Peter has been turned on its head in the person of Joseph Smith.
#7...and then to top it all off...had the true Jesus acted like the Mormon-like jesus, we would have many millions more who would never even know that Jesus' "sword" words actually constituted a rebuke of Peter...
#8...and, in fact, we do see millions of the Mormon-like jesus followers now concluding: You know what, in a similar situation, I would have done the same -- and this entails not just taking up swords to cut off ears -- but actually still generations later defending criminally illegal actions of...
...(a) weapon smuggling into arrest situations;
...(b) possessing weapons in arrest situations -- and calling it "jesus-like";
...(c) using those weapons to try to kill multiple people.
[Yeah, just try mentioning you favor that the next time you try witnessing to a law enforcement officer or prison corrections officer]
Yeah, that's the portrait we want of the cross: A Roman soldier hammering a nail into the Lamb of God, and the Lamb of God responds by pulling a sword out of the soldier's sheath and proceeds to wound or kill three of them. (end sarc)
Joseph Smith then reacts by pulling his gun out of his pocket, opens the door and attempts to unload all 6 shots -- 3 misfire, he shoots 3 and kills 2. He then leaps up on the window ledge to try to cry the Masonic signal for help ("Oh lord my God, is there no help for the widow's son?") -- but falls in a hail of bullets -- at least one from the door & at least one from the windows outside...hit 4 times he dies...only being able to get out the initial part of the Masonic distress signal, "Oh lord my God..."
What could possibly go wrong?
Meet the New Boss......