I am so behind on these kinds of “I comment here” and “commented there” type posts, so it’s now time to get a’marching.
The question above was asked over at the Concord Monitor. I’ll give her props for outing herself that she’s terrified of these totally inanimate object, and turn on her for demanding the my Right be cancelled to make her feel “safe”. That’s not my responsibility and if she truly thought about where that Right comes from and plays connect the dots, I might think different of her but I don’t – as an adult, she should have realized this much, much sooner. The failure to do so tells us of her arrested development in believing that she has a Right to outsource the basis of her feelings onto others. Now, at the risk of being accused of having no empathy – it’s not my job nor anyone else’s job to make her safe (unless they are drawing a paycheck directly from her to be her personal bodyguard). What she said that caught my eye (entire Op-Ed after the jump). My response:
“…For the good of all, we each give up a little..”.
Yes, Article 3 speaks to this “[Society, its Organization and Purposes.] When men enter into a state of society, they surrender up some of their natural rights to that society, in order to ensure the protection of others; and, without such an equivalent, the surrender is void.”
Notice it comes after Article 2-a, so it is subordinate to it: “[Art.] 2-a. [The Bearing of Arms.] All persons have the right to keep and bear arms in defense of themselves, their families, their property and the state.”
At least you make it clear that you are scared of guns. You also have hit on why most of us rebel against calls to turn them in: “Don’t restrict my freedom to have one. In fact, isn’t freedom to pursue things an American tradition? Our right? To be free to pursue our rights, or our desires, without interference – read regulation.”
Either a Right is one, or it isn’t and while you say that giving up guns is where “we each give up a little”, it is that “little” that we who own and use firearms object to – many of us see that as part of the essence of being American for the exact reason you state. In fact, I object highly that my Right to self-defense, especially as the Supreme Court has ruled that I cannot expect The State to actually protect me, can and should be taken away simply because of your fear of them. A Right from the Bill of Rights pre-empts the communitarian idea of the “common good” for it is a bulwark AGAINST what The State can do to Individuals. In your fear of your fellow citizens, if you push the The State to revoke an enumerated Right, what’s next?
Why shouldn’t I then work to revoke a different Right from you? Arms are not a “special” case of Rights in general and if we start down that slippery path, there’s no telling where it will stop – history has shown that to be true.
The real motto here is shows, once again, the stark difference between Normals that believe that the Individual is primary and the Progressive Communitarians that believe that “all” demands that Individuals submit to the Community. To them, we are only a cog, only one of many. To them, the Collective is primary and in their Hobbesian way, turn one of the tenets of American Exceptionalism upside down and inside-out. Their view is akin to that of King George and we are now subjects (though they would never say such a word, but do require that we are subject to their worldview so go figure) of our Government (the Democrats promise of “Government is the one thing we all belong to” takes on new meaning).
The problem, as I stated, is that what she considers “little”, many of us look at it as a Pillar that holds up the rest of our Society as designed/acknowledged by our Founders in that we are the sovereigns and not the Government. No, not the Sovereign Citizen movement kind but that of “we people have/own a government” and not the reverse. That we are to be self-reliant and self-responsible and that Government was to be merely an umpire type of entity and not get into the weeds of our personal lives.
Instead, however, Gregg is not bringing a weedwacker but buckets of weed seed (and not the 4-20 kind). Her, and others like her, do not realize the vast amount of damage that has been done to Civil Society that an overreaching and activist Government of the Progressive bent has wrought. And now that the Progressive mask has fallen to show the evil tyrannical face of Progressive Socialism that demands that all belong to that Government, she wish from her failed self for Government to save her from the rest of us.
While it appears that she struggles with this, make no mistake – she is part and parcel of the Parkland kids and former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stephens who openly call for a repeal of the Second Amendment. Remember, the Constitution was written to LIMIT Government and not our Rights (“The Bigger the Government, the smaller the citizen”). While I am in favor of the repeal of the 16th and 17th Amendments that made Government larger, repealing a bulwark Right against a tyrannical government would, well…
…pretty much make us a JAC (Just Another Country).
“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”
-Benjamin Franklin
There is no Freedom from risk in Life and there is no Freedom to be safe in our Society no matter what is said in this topic’s debate. Freedom often means chaos for to remove that chaos requires that we would become a police state to ensure that no one goes rogue. Even then, Black Swan events happen – ask every former police state how that worked out for them and ask their former inhabitants where their Freedom went when their Government made them “safe”.
The Op-Ed (emphasis mine):
I admit right up front that I’m afraid of guns. I don’t mean what they can do in the hands of unstable or criminal people. We’re all afraid of that. I mean I’m just plain scared of them. I’ve shot one only once: a .22 with a sight at a target to please a friend. It only kicked a little and didn’t make much noise. I doubt I hit the target, but I had no desire to try again. I still couldn’t understand its appeal.
I’ve lived in rural New England long enough to know many people who hunt, carefully and respectfully, either for food or for sport, and I respect them. I had a student once in eighth-grade English class who was an ace shooter. She won all kinds of awards. And I have a friend well past middle age who has taken up shooting and has a lesson every week. So I understand it’s a legitimate sport despite the fact I can see only death in it.
I understand as well that the vast majority of gun owners are as rational and sane as I am. They are as distraught about killing rampages as I am. They want them to stop, but at the same time many don’t want any restrictions placed on the kind of guns they can own. They cling tenaciously to the idea that if we only ramped up our mental health system, we could prevent guns getting into the hands of people with mental illnesses. With justification they fault law enforcement and preventive services for failing to preemptively intervene in the latest mass shooting. But while troubled people certainly commit the horrific acts that kill many innocent people at a single time, they are really only a fraction of the people who commit gun crimes. Live in a city and see the amount of gun violence that goes on.
We can’t get rid of our gun problem by laying all the blame on people with mental illness and failed intervention. Strengthening our mental health services is laudable and necessary, but by itself it isn’t going to stop the killings. Only limiting guns will stop the killings. I believe that we understand this, know it in our hearts, but still some of us resist it with profound determination. Second Amendment rights, self-protection, sport. These people defend military-style weapons and bump stocks even though their intended use is destructive rather than recreational. One military-style gun owner interviewed on CNN said, “Every month or so I take my guns out to the range and shoot. It’s thrilling, exciting and a great way to vent.” (I’m glad he has a safe way to vent.) He’s undoubtedly a responsible and self-controlled individual who enjoys a kind of extreme sport. Others in the same interview said people are attracted to certain kinds of guns because of the image they convey. For protection some felt the capability of a semi-automatic weapon to fire repeatedly and rapidly made them safer.
Then I came across a quote from a person who said, “I own an AK because of my fascination with the Second Amendment, which I view as a backstop protector of freedom.” It was the word freedom that caught my attention. I know a man in town who has a sign on his truck saying, “Don’t tread on my gun rights.” I’ve never asked him if he owns an AK-47. Knowing him I somehow doubt it, but don’t tell him he can’t have one. Thinking about him I’ve begun to wonder if that isn’t the root of the huge resistance to limiting guns in any way. Don’t restrict my freedom to have one. In fact, isn’t freedom to pursue things an American tradition? Our right? To be free to pursue our rights, or our desires, without interference – read regulation. We see it in sport, in business, development, banking, and making and selling guns. But how do we keep my right to pursue my interests from stepping on your toes – or worse?
Okay, you say, but it isn’t fair to punish me (though no one is suggesting banning guns altogether) because some unstable person may at some time in the future commit mass murder. And this is when it comes down to community. For the good of all, we each give up a little. Doesn’t that make sense? Maybe the hard truth is that banning military-style weapons is the only way to ensure they don’t fall into the wrong hands. You may say, but look at Paris, the mass murders there and in other places. The Boston Marathon bombing. True, but to me allowing virtually unregulated access to military-style weapons threatens to create a police state where the police are the citizens. Do we want that?
(Katharine Gregg is a poet and essayist living in Mason. She can be reached by email at kggregg@myfairpoint.net.)
