Reviewing the Second Amendment "Right"

In 1789, the Constitution was amended to include what we refer to the Second Amendment (in the Bill of Rights):

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

One should note the entire amendment. It is not a two-part amendment separating a well-regulated militia from the peoples' right to bear arms. The sentence uses commas, not semi-colons. The point of the amendment is "the security of a free State." The "State" does not refer to those 13 former colonies, but the Nation - i.e. the United States of America.

How do we know? Because the militia went out under the leadership of President George Washington to put down the Whiskey Rebellion - to enforce the Law. This intention was also made evident by the United States when it undertook to preserve the Union during that unpleasantness we sometimes call the Civil War.

The Second Amendment was not included to empower the people and prevent the government from getting too big for its britches. The intent, in fact, was the opposite: to empower the government to put down and survive rebellion(s)!

The Second Amendment was added to the Bill of Rights and intended for the southern Slave States in order to help them suppress any Slave Revolts a la Spartacus. It was rooted in both national and state defense needs - NOT for the needs of individual persons.

The intent of the Amendment has clearly been to preserve order and suppress rebellion - particularly black rebellion.

The NRA, when I was growing up, was an educational organization with an educational focus. Since the 1960s, though, it has changed its focus from education to Deifying Firearms and "supporting and preserving" the 2nd Amendment. One might ask why, and one might note, coincidentally, the changes taking place in the 60s. The civil rights movement scared red-necks and (primarily poor) white people wherever blacks began to be getting "uppity" and demanding rights and respect.

The NRA began to feed off this fear, profited mightily from it, and continues to stoke the fires of fear.

The Second Amendment has never been in danger of being repealed. While machine guns and certain other weapons have been limited (remember the gang wars of the 20s and 30s?), no one has ever worked to eliminate any American's right to own a standard firearm (handgun, hunting rifle, shotgun, or sporting gun).

It is the Excess of firearms and the Easy Access to them that has created a problem unlike any we have faced before as a Nation.

That's the matter we need to address. Not whether or not we should have firearms or what kind. How do we protect our nation from lawlessness that firearms exacerbate?

Thoughts on Guns

"This is a rifle, it's not a gun;
it's made for shooting, it's not for fun."

So runs a line in a movie, the name of which I have long forgotten. If I recall correctly, Richard Widmark is one of the main actors and plays the part of an army (or marine) drill sergeant.

It is one of those weird quirks of mine that, having heard the D.I. instruct a young recruit not to go around calling a rifle a "gun" that I wince whenever there is talk of "gun violence."

But wincing over the term "gun" is nothing compared to the contortion one goes through when under actual attack. I stood on a fire escape at the old Raymond Hotel in downtown Spokane one night in the mid-1970s when a disturbed man inside took a shot at me through the hotel window. I was a cop at the time and was on that fire escape to prevent him from becoming a sniper. He was mentally disturbed, threatening suicide and threatening to shoot anyone who got in his way.

I was fortunate in that the bullet missed it's mark; I got into a better vantage point to ensure he wouldn't do that again. After a stand-off that lasted a few hours, one more round was fired by the hotel's tenant; he died from that self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.

The question we face in our day is how to prevent firearm violence. It would seem an impossible task for a nation of 300 million people and a nearly inexhaustible supply of firearms.

No matter what you do, it is argued, criminals will always be able to get their hands on firearms and do harm. That's true. It is equally true that if there are fewer firearms, that criminals will eventually have to resort to using butter knives or box-cutters. To be honest, I would have preferred the man at the Raymond hotel to have thrown a knife at me than to have fired at me with his Saturday night special!

Just because a problem is complex, though, does not mean we should not begin a process of addressing it. Kicking the can down the road does not solve the problem, does not answer any questions, and simply irritates neighbors as they listen to it clang down the road!

Further, the delay in addressing these issues seriously (and without the flag-waving, name-calling, or insult-hurling screams of either gun-nuts or gun-abolitionists) means that another 30,000 people will die each year from gun violence.

While the mass murders get the major publicity, it is the common run-of-the-mill murders and suicide that do the country's heavy-lifting for the funeral industry (and let's not forget the many who are not killed but injured, or the families, friends, and loved ones left behind, and not to mention the collateral damage we may be ignoring or not even considering in our debates).

In the story of Noah's Ark, after the waters had receded and the bodies of the dead were beginning to wash up on shore, God repented of what God had done. God hung up his bow (the primary assault weapon of the day - God's AR-15, if you will) as a reminder to GOD - "I'll not do this ever again!"

Maybe we ought to give serious consideration to the prophet's call, to consider doing the same: Toss our weapons into a foundry, melt them down, and transform them from weapons of death to instruments of life: plows and pruning shears.

As St. Paul says, "Let's put on the helmet of salvation, the breastplate of righteousness, and shod our feet with the Gospel of Peace."

As people of God, that should be our FIRST order of business.

Creation Matters

Compassion is … a spirituality and a way of walking through life.  It is the way we treat all there is in life – ourselves, our bodies, our imaginations and dreams, our neighbors, our enemies … Compassion is a spirituality as if creation mattered.  It is treating all creation as holy and as divine … which is what it is.  – Matthew Fox

In almost every world religion, and from the lips or writings of almost every major world-class figure in spirituality, one reads what is often referred to as the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.

We teach our children from early on not to hit their siblings or neighbor pals because “you wouldn’t want them to hit or bite you, would you?”

With such a small lesson we teach such a large principle: that people are to be treated with dignity and respect.

Over time, of course, we teach them that there are exceptions to the rule.  When a child hits our child, we may well teach them to set aside the golden rule for a moment and “protect yourself”.  It isn’t too far down the slippery slope where we find ourselves rationalizing that it is OK to “don’t get mad” but “get even”.

Spirituality is fine and good, it seems, when everyone is behaving properly, but it doesn’t take much to identify multiple exceptions to the rule.

We have heard it said, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,” but Jesus tells us to turn the other cheek, and if one tries to take our coat, to offer him our cloak, and if one would compel us to go a mile, go an extra mile!

That is very counter-intuitive advice, and not very practical. 

Was Jesus crazy?  Was he really that out of touch with human nature and the inordinate capacity of some people to take absolutely every advantage one gives them?  Didn’t he know that when you give someone a second chance that they’ll want a third, and that if you draw the line anywhere, they’ll resent you for it and hate you for it – and probably forever?

I don’t believe Jesus was crazy; I think he had something else in mind; he was addressing a world where compassion was in woefully short supply; he had two people under consideration as he spoke: “you” and “the other.”

Our very own humanity is bound up in the humanity of the other person.  Their ill treatment of us or of our property has nothing to do with how we ought to respond or behave, except to respond to the other person as a human being, whom God requires us to treat with dignity and respect; not because they have done so to us, but because that is how we must treat them if we are to retain our own humanity, and keep our own spiritual connection with God healthy, alive, and well.

While there are bad people in the world, they are probably fewer than we would like to admit.  It has been said that every person is the hero in his or her own story.  If that is true (and I believe it is), then we need to understand that the thoughts and actions of others are a function of their own heroic perspective; we tread on dangerous ground when we presume our own thoughts or actions are innocent and heroic, while imputing evil motives to those with whom we may be at odds.

Taking a moment to view the hero in the other person, even when we would most like to punch their lights out, allows us to see where we may have fallen woefully short of our own humanity, and of how we may have contributed to the mess we’re in.  Taking our responsibilities seriously, we may find the time we need to make amends and prevent further violence to those God calls us to love.

Perhaps it is time to ponder anew the golden rule and see if it doesn’t result in a bit more peace and joy in this, our valley.  I’m sure we would all find that nicer to look at than a bunch of smug neighbors stumbling around half-blind and toothless.  At least “eye” would hope so – and that’s the “tooth”.