The Privilege to Bear Arms

 

Written July 2022

Yesterday was the Fourth of July. It was a beautiful day here. We watched a boat parade along the lake – mostly large, electric pontoon boats festooned in bunting and American flags. One had rubber blow up eagles in the front and a blow up Uncle Sam in the back. On the Fourth we are all patriots, or so it seems. The sounds of fireworks going off all day make animals cringe under furniture and made me think of the sounds living in a war torn land – but of course we are not. This is America, land of the free, and we celebrate our freedom by making the sounds of war pretty with sparkling color, once it’s dark. For the rest of the day it’s just the sound of simulated gun fire we seem to enjoy.  And, of course, in the midst of all this, someone took a real gun into a parade and killed several people. Happy Birthday America.

We had a discussion about gun rights, 2^nd Amendment. An acquaintance had posted something on Facebook about their right to carry a hidden weapon into Target. It doesn’t cause the non-carrying people any harm, and if gunmen comes in with evil intent, it’ll save them. And if that non-carrying, anti-gun person says anything to the gun carrier – well, they will be reminded that via the Second Amendment, carrying that gun is their right as an American, and don’t you dare try to take that away from me.

Another person was talking about all the guns they proudly owned, and just let “them” try and come on our property to take them.  Let who? The police. Why would the police be coming on your property? To take my guns. They are going to, you know.  Why would I know that? Because these anti-gun people are going to try to get all our guns removed, but we are prepared, we won’t let them. It’s our Second Amendment right.

“The right to bear arms”. Some people chose to respect that right, and others love to flaunt it and a few abuse it. But regardless, every single day you read of someone using their “right” to kill fellow Americans. Angry, frustrated, probably in many cases, mentally ill people abusing their “right” and taking the lives of others. Why can’t we see that to the rest of the free world this is a crazy, American puzzle? Why do we so willingly arm our people to kill our people? Why can an 18 year old buy a semi-automatic weapon, walk into an elementary school and kill second graders? Only in America.

I think we have lost sight of what any of our Bill of Rights really mean. We have confused privileges, opportunities, with some type of biblical right to do whatever we want.  All of the freedoms stated in those first 10 Amendments have limitations, or did have. We limit freedom of speech – some hate speech is even prohibited, but certainly we can’t yell “fire” in a crowded space – or other harmful utterances. I doubt very much our founding fathers meant for us to have unlimited gun rights, particularly if we arrived at a place where we had better civil protection (police), and certainly they never imagined the evolution of the gun. I also don’t think they would be impressed with those standing on their “right” as a reason not to limit what guns can be placed in the hands of troubled 18 year olds – or 50 year olds.

I think of the young man who brought a gun to a protest last year. Why bring a gun? Well, it’s his right. OK, so he brings the gun to the protest because it’s his right to carry it – but that assumes he thought there would be trouble a gun could help him handle. And, it did. Someone is dead and the young man was found innocent at his trial because he believed he was “protecting himself”. Certainly he was met by a riled up crowd. But they didn’t have guns, he did. And he used lethal force to meet their hands and fists and sticks. It’s his “right” isn’t it?  But if he had not brought a gun across state lines to that protest. If he’d decided that there are better ways to show your disagreement of what they were protesting, there would have been no death.

“Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” Well, yes. You don’t see deer packing heat to protect themselves. But it’ people carrying guns who kill people. Take the gun away and there will be a lot fewer people killed. Certainly people die of knife wounds, and fists, and feet and whatever else has been imagined, but if you walk into an elementary school with a knife and hands and feet you won’t kill a roomful of children before you are brought down. A lot less people would die.

But, no, our “right to bear arms” trumps those children, and all the other people killed by gun violence through the years. Mrs. Winchester was haunted by the ghosts of all the people her family’s guns had killed. She tried to make amends by giving the ghosts a place to live, or find them rest. And maybe she was a little wacky. The main point is she was haunted by the power of the weapon her husband’s family had created and spent her fortune trying to distance herself. What are we doing?  A lot of rhetoric, but children and parade goers are still dying. What an American legacy.

 

July 2023

For the few months of this year we had more shootings than we had days (CNN recently reported 400 by mid-July). Obviously, since I wrote this, things are not getting better. In countries with stricter gun laws, where gun ownership is seen as a privilege, not a right, there are considerably fewer mass deaths. And after each incident here there is talk of doing something – but very little action. I wonder what Jesus would say about all this?