Hyung Jin ''Sean'' Moon during the 2023 Rod of Iron FestivalZach Roberts/NurPhoto via AP
In July, former President Donald Trump was nearly assassinated by a 20-year-old man wielding an AR-15-style rifle. That near miss hasn’t stopped the Rod of Iron Ministries from holding a raffle this coming weekend for a special Trump-branded AR-15 at its fifth annual “Freedom Festival.”
Billed as the “largest open carry rally in America,” the festival draws attendees to celebrate the Second Amendment and hear from headliners that will include former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn, radio host Sebastian Gorka, former US Rep. Allen West, former Trump ICE Director Tom Homan, and Pizzagate conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec. Anyone who registers early for the free tickets can enter the raffle to win the Trump gun.
The Rod of Iron Ministries was founded by Hyung Jin ”Sean” Moon as a militant breakaway from the Unification Church founded by his father, the late Sun Myung Moon. A graduate of Harvard Divinity School, Pastor Sean Moon’s sermons and social media videos espouse a particular End Times theology that predicts a future overthrow of the American government. He believes the AR-15 is an instrument of God’s divine justice—the “rod of iron” invoked in Revelation 2:27.
Moon often wears a crown of bullets, carries a gold-plated assault weapon, and rides a Harley in a helmet with a creepy skeleton facemask. (Moon also seems to have musical aspirations: He raps under the name King Bullethead and will also perform at this weekend’s Freedom Fest.)
With the help of a $5 million loan from their father, Moon’s brother Justin founded the Kahr Firearms Group in 1995. It started off manufacturing mostly small arms designed to tap into the growing market for American-made concealed weapons as states began to relax their gun laws. It has since expanded, and now Kahr is a sponsor of “Freedom Fest,” which will be held at its TommyGun warehouse in Greeley, Pennsylvania.
Both Moons have cultivated significant MAGA ties, including with the Trump brothers, Eric and Don Jr. Kahr Firearms now offers several Trump-themed weapons, and the company’s products are frequently promoted in Don Jr.’s weapons-themed outdoor magazine, Field Ethos. When the firearms company opened its TommyGun warehouse in 2016, Eric Trump gave a speech.
Given Sean Moon’s obsession with the downfall of the current American government, it’s no surprise that he was involved in the “Stop the Steal” movement to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. He was at the US Capitol on January 6, and while he didn’t go in, he was close enough to get tear-gassed.
The Rod of Iron pastor has never seemed especially concerned with appearances or suggestions that his ministry is a cult. “We’re used to that type of persecution,” Moon told Rolling Stone’s Tim Dickinson in 2022, noting that followers of his father’s church are known colloquially as “Moonies.”
Under Sun Myung Moon, the Unification Church gained some renown for conducting mass weddings for its believers. (One at Madison Square Garden in 1982 joined 2,075 couples.) In 2018, the Rod of Iron updated this tradition by holding a mass wedding and vow-renewal ceremony in which couples carried (unloaded) assault weapons similar to the one used just days before to mow down dozens of staff and high school students in the Parkland, Florida, mass shooting.
This year won’t be the first time the Freedom Festival has given away a Trump gun. But considering the Rod of Iron’s reverence for Trump, I wondered whether the Freedom Festival organizers might have had second thoughts about raffling off a weapon favored by the former president’s would-be assassin. “That wouldn’t affect the decision to do this, not at all. I don’t think we’d see the connection,” Tim Elder, the church’s director of world missions, told me. “It’s not the AR’s fault. It’s the guy that was pulling the trigger. It’s his fault. We’re not going to blame the AR for that incident.”
But if the AR-15 is an instrument of God’s justice, what does it mean if it’s used to try to assassinate Trump? “We see that God’s hand is on this man,” Elder said simply.
The festival starts Friday, with an appearance by Flynn and a screening of his eponymous new movie.
