Guns and Control

It is the habit of the left to seek greater control, always, of course, for the public good. It further has the tendency to use catastrophic events to push through often unwise legislation, even as the ruins are still smoldering.  

But this latest crisis has little to do with government action or inaction but rather an unavoidable reality, which is the existence of evil, and evil individuals that commit atrocities - as occurred at Sandy Hook Elementary last month.

In the aftermath of the mass killing, the Democratic Party, liberals, and their patrons in the media, even while the bodies were still warm, sought to politicize the event, exploiting the powerful emotions at work, not to heal or enlighten, but to advance an agenda, and chip away at the Constitution.

But is there a bill somewhere that would have prevented the deranged Adam Lanza from his homicidal rampage? Or thwarted the massacres at Aurora, Tucson, and Virginia Tech?  And, finally, is there a link between Lanza and the right of free citizens to defend themselves?

The effort to polemicize the issue though is predictable, and the reasons are partisan as well as ideologic.  Gun owners tend not to vote Democratic, but gun control advocates do. The deeper issues, though, are more subterranean.  For the left is uncomfortable, not necessarily with guns but who has them, which is to say, the individual or the state.

The left holds that the ability to inflict violence is the province of the state; individuals with the capacity to defend themselves crosses a line for them, for such awesome power outside the state is anathema, incompatible with leftist ideology and DNA.  The left is uncomfortable with any significant power, let alone the power to commit lawful violence, existent beyond the state and within the hands of citizens. 

For those who see not individuals but unthinking masses herded by an all-wise ruling class, such independent action and power vested outside the government is repugnant.  Whether the Constitution allows it or not.  It is not guns, per say, for the left, but who owns them and are legally permitted to use them.

Every year people die in swimming pools, falling off ladders, and crossing the street.  Many also die from bee stings, peanuts, and toasters.  Then there is that notorious killer, the bicycle, and, lest we forget, the kayak and the canoe. Yes, vicious killers all.  But these do not interest the left. Car and motorcycle deaths or inner city homicides (where there are strict gun control laws), all of which number in the thousands each year will also not be discussed.  These do not promote an agenda.  Nor do they possess the narrative qualities the left seeks.  It is not about death and dying but about power and control and the role of the citizen and the role of the state and how much autonomy the left is willing to grant the individual.

The target of the left is ultimately the Constitution itself, the Bill of Rights or much of it, and specifically here, the Second Amendment. The left is uncomfortable with centers of power outside the sphere of government; as the left is hostile toward the church and family (the traditional, intact, married family, that is; not the broken, dysfunctional, and dependent family, which it adores), two bedrock institutions of the civil society that exist apart from government; so, too, the left bears unbridled disdain for gun owners who may exercise power beyond the realm of the state, the power to inflict violence if necessary in their own self defense.  Power for the left must be contained within the central government and its deputies, not disseminated through the civil society, where the state does not dwell.

But this right is inalienable as is the right to life, for if our lives are threatened than the right to defend our lives is also required by our Declaration of Independence, hence the right to bear arms as encoded in the Constitution through the Second Amendment.  The two are necessary complements, the right to life and the right to defend one’s life.

The Second Amendment is critical to any understanding of the nation and its founding spirit.  It exists because of the value placed by the framers on life and individual sovereignty.  It was also seen as a bulwark against tyranny, of an all-powerful, central government, a grave concern for the founders who had just fought a war against tyranny in the form of the British Crown.  It is consistent with a society that embraces autonomy and freedom and rejects coercive state power as well as threats to life and property.  History has also given us regimes that enjoyed a monopoly on firearms, and they have been its most violent and brutal, even genocidal.  But none of this matters to the left: it is not the gun per se but who controls it, and individual gun ownership for the left is untenable.

The Second Amendment, as part of our Bill of Rights and Constitution, supersedes legislation, and can only be altered through the laborious amendment process.  Simple majorities and standard legislative practice do not come in to play here.  These rights are inalienable, endowed by our Creator, and cannot be taken away or tampered with through simple majorities. 

This, too, is a concept upsetting to the left, which prefers rule by fiat rather than the arcane, slow moving mechanisms called for by the Constitution; the left is further displeased by such notions as "inalienable rights" for it believes all power resides or should reside with government, not individuals and not God.

But gun violence is not necessarily an issue to be ignored.  And there are a host of issues that should be included in any discussion surrounding it quite apart from gun control.  Such a discussion would include the treatment of the mentally ill, and then also the role of video games, Hollywood and TV, and aspects of the social media, much of which promote violence; then there is the media, which sensationalizes mass murderers, thus enticing the next psychopath. 

Perhaps even more important is a "conversation” on the abandonment of God and faith in society, the failure to teach right and wrong, good and evil in our neutered, post modern schools, bastions now of moral relativism and amorality; the rejection of transcendent moral truth (and, hence, the absence of moral judgment), all notions and developments, mind you, endorsed by the left. 

There should be a discussion on the breakdown of the culture, the lack of intellectual and moral grounding of many of our citizens, the inadequate knowledge and respect for our founding and history, the failing schools, the disruption of crucial traditions and institutions, such as marriage and family, the abandonment of important virtues and values such as personal responsibility, initiative, and discipline, all fundamental to a vigorous, just, and lawful society; all this would be appropriate for Presidential pronouncements and commissions - not just the assault on our freedoms and the disarming of law abiding citizens. 

In the end, though, there is no law that will prevent evil people from killing innocents, no perfect solution for human depravity. The best protection for such evil is for good people to be armed.  Law enforcement cannot be everywhere at all times; nor would we want them to be.  And so individuals must have the right to defend themselves with lawfully owned guns.

The war on the Second Amendment is equally an assault on the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, as it is on individual freedom and autonomy, all of which are impediments to centralized authoritarian government, the goal of the utopian left, incrementally or, if necessary, through revolution.