Rights, Regulations, and Human Dignity

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When we debate the issues of gun rights and gun control, I sometimes wonder if we realize how strange the argument appears from the outside.  The idea that an “unrestricted right to gun ownership” must be maintained as a protection against government power sounds just a little over the top to contemporary ears, especially when America’s closest friends and allies place significant restrictions on gun ownership and so far have managed to avoid the descent into tyranny.  Were the consequences of this American peculiarity to be benign, we might actually smile at this historical quirk, as we do for the British who believe they aren’t really part of Europe, or for Canadians who believe that they really won the War of 1812.

But of course, the peculiarity isn’t benign.  Indeed, there can be little doubt that contemporary interpretations of the 2nd amendment have been the cause of considerable human suffering.  Thousands of deaths could have been prevented were even the sensible restrictions put into law that Eric and Stephen describe.  Progress on these reasonable rules remains elusive however, and even after  the recent tragedies, I don’t expect any new regulations to gain traction in this election cycle.  A large part of the reason, in my view, can be placed on the American preoccupation with (and misunderstanding of) individual rights.  Let me be explicit: an “unrestricted right to gun ownership” is not a right.  In fact, any “unrestricted right” is not a right.  For rights to be genuine, for rights to be effective, for rights to be humane, for rights to be rights, they must be placed into social and political contexts—and that means regulation.

From a Christian perspective, this argument depends on the high view of human dignity that my fellow conversationalists have described.   A high view of dignity will pair rights with responsibilities, individual freedoms with the obligation to ensure that freedoms of others wil be respected.  If we believe that human dignity requires the right to bear arms, that same foundation of human dignity requires regulations to ensure that this right is appropriately related to all the other rights and responsibilities we bear.  Our debate should not be whether regulation, but only which regulation.

Once we grant that point, the position of the NRA and others in the gun lobby against regulation in principle falls apart.  Many of these arguments are slippery-slope arguments anyway, suggesting that waiting period and trigger locks will somehow lead inexorably to government agents seizing hunting rifles.  These arguments aren’t helpful—what we need instead are solid arguments that suggest how to move from high moral principle to effective policy and principled regulation. 

The Road to Solutions: Standing in Unity Against Gun Violence

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305 Chicagoans were murdered in the first seven months of 2012; the vast majority of them were victims of gun violence. Stories like that of 7-year old Heaven Sutton, gunned down in June by a stray bullet as she sat next to her mother at a candy stand outside their home, capture headlines. But gun violence is so commonplace in Chicago that murders rarely receive media attention. The gun-related tragedies in Chicago, where I live, are just one more reminder that gun violence has reached epidemic proportions in the United States.

As has been the case in each round of the Alternative Political Conversation, these short essays can only scratch the surface of the complex issues we are asked to address. I applaud the contributors for offering many insights into the gun issue and highlighting concerns that we all need to consider.

Three common themes struck me as most significant: the gun problem is a cultural problem with deep roots, there are no simple solutions for reducing gun violence in the United States, and Christians need to provide a voice that defends the sanctity of human life.

The authors offer a range of suggestions for what seem to be common sense restrictions on gun use. Steve Monsma is the most specific, listing five policy steps that encourage more responsible gun ownership. I found his first four suggestions helpful and wise. I’m less enamored with the requirement that guns be stored in locked cabinets. I share Steve’s assessment that this is a practice that reasonable persons should be expected to do; I part ways with him in wanting such a provision written into law. He notes that such a provision would be hard to enforce. In my view, the complexities of enforcement are a significant problem. The law would indeed send a positive message about gun safety, but I am less comfortable about what it implies about the reach of government into private homes. To Steve’s constructive list of suggestions, I would add the reinstatement of the assault weapons ban that was allowed to sunset in 2004.

Summarizing his position, Eric Teetsel notes: “putting aside extremists on both sides of the debate, sensible laws are uncontroversial.” I concur, but I would add that it is impossible to put aside at least one organization that has been central to gun control politics, the National Rifle Association. The NRA has moved quite some distance from its original purpose, best encapsulated in the motto inscribed on its headquarters building in 1957: “Firearms Safety Education, Marksmanship Training, Shooting for Recreation.” NRA lobbyists now battle any and all legislative restrictions on guns and bullets, no matter how reasonable they might appear. The NRA weilds significant electoral fire-power (pun intended) and has demonstrated many times over the power to mobilize the grassroots and inject significant money into political campaigns. Elected officials in both parties run scared.

Just ask Republican Debra Maggart who recently lost her primary battle to retain her seat in the Tennessee House of Representatives. The NRA was unhappy with Maggart’s work helping stop a “guns in parking lots bill.” Despite Maggart’s 100% pro-gun voting record, the NRA endorsed her challenger and poured $75,000 into the race. NRA-backed Courtney Rogers won the primary, 3,392 to 2,421 votes.

Some gun regulations make bipartisan common sense to most observers and would likely be wise policy to encourage gun safety and save lives, but the political reality is that almost any such bill would be dead on arrival. As David Gushee notes, “we need politicians with the courage to face down the ridiculous and in fact lethal demands of the gun lobby.” To that I would add, and we need voters willing to do their homework on gun laws instead of blindly following the NRA.

Eric’s essay concludes with the observation that “regulations won’t stop those keen on breaking the law.” He is right, which brings me back again to the central themes from all three essays.

We as Christians need to stand in unity against our culture of violence and in defense of the sanctity of all human life. The causes of violence are myriad; easy access to guns is only a small part of a much deeper societal problem. We need to be finding ways to work together—Democrats, Independents, and Republicans; gun owners or not—to demonstrate love for God and neighbor, helping meet human needs and pointing people to Jesus Christ as the ultimate source of hope and life.

A Heritage Worth Preserving

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I’m not much of a gun guy. It’s one of those things I always wish I knew how to do, but never got around to, like the piano and Spanish. But my dad hunts regularly, so for his birthday last year I took a hunter safety course so that I could someday join him.   

For sixteen hours over two days, I listened as a cadre of old men in “blaze orange” reiterated the three rules of gun safety. I learned to identify different types of firearms and their components, how ammunition is measured, and how to make prudent decisions about when and where to shoot. The course emphasized what can go wrong if the rules are ignored. Each year, thousands of people are injured or killed in gun-related accidents, almost always due to negligence. I heard stories of parents shooting kids, teens shooting their friends, and errant bullets killing neighbors.

I am surprised at how affected I have been by my class. The instructors, all retired military, taught me to respect firearms and the culture of hunting. They endowed me with a sense of the tremendous responsibility that comes with handling a rifle or shotgun, while also impressing on me the special relationship between hunting and nature. These were true conservationists, who spoke at length of their love for the woods and the animals they pursued. They saw themselves as heirs to a tradition going back thousands of years. The woods of northern and coastal Virginia are full of history – and the descendant deer and turkey of those that enabled the first Americans to survive.

America’s heritage of hunting brings to mind another side of the story of guns in this country: firearms and the fight for independence. As frustration over the unjust policies imposed by the British crown swelled, America’s leaders declared independence. A ragtag group of militia men armed with Brown Bess and Pennsylvania rifles saw it as their right and their duty to dissolve the political bands connecting the colonies to England, and instituted a new government. Later, this new government would rest upon a Constitution detailing certain fundamental rights, including gun ownership. In the second Amendment, the Constitution states:

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.

This statement is best understood in its historical context. The preservation of freedom animated the new Constitution. The young nation had just overthrown a tyrannical regime through war. The right to gun ownership was included among the ten freedoms made explicit in the Bill of Rights because these early Americans were sensitive to future encroachments on liberty that might necessitate acts of self-defense. The Founders knew that restricting self defense, like restricting speech, would be among the first acts of a rising tyranny.

Two-hundred years later, we face a cultural crisis that warrants reconsideration of the right to gun ownership. I’ll never forget meeting a young woman in a wheelchair at a Bible study in Denver, who I later learned was a victim of the Columbine High School massacre. Such instances of gun violence cause us to ask, “Was this preventable?” Of course, these infamous incidents are a fraction of the violence that occurs each day, especially in the poor neighborhoods of cities like Chicago and Washington, DC.

Putting aside extremists on both sides of the debate, sensible gun laws are uncontroversial. Few question the relatively minor inconvenience of waiting periods, background checks, trigger locks, and licensing. The bigger question is whether the right to keep and bear a gun should be more highly restricted? Must we ask those who participate responsibly in the use of firearms for sport and sustenance to stop?  The answer relies on whether we believe doing so would keep those hell-bent on hurting others from accomplishing their mission. Unfortunately, there is little reason to believe it would.

Regulations won’t stop those keen on breaking the law. Premeditated violence, like in the case of school shootings and gang warfare, means the perpetrators have time to find weapons on the black market.  Even if we were able to totally rid the nation of firearms, criminals would devise other means of destruction. Suicide bombs are a fact of life in some nations. We see the devastation caused by improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in others.

The responsible ownership and use of firearms is an American tradition and a Constitutionally-protected right that ought not be unreasonable restricted. Ultimately, violence is a symptom of a cultural problem that goes much deeper than the mere availability of certain weapons. An effective approach to solving America’s problem with violence would focus on the underlying causes, such as mental illness and psychological disorder, the breakdown of the traditional family, and poverty. And, of course, Christians must continue to spread our message of life and love, knowing that ultimately the Gospel is the only impediment to violence and sin.

 

 

 

So Many Deaths; So Little Action

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The numbers on gun deaths in the United States are appalling and should be the source of distress and alarm for everyone, and surely for every Christian who believes in the sanctity of God-created human life.   The mass shootings in an Aurora, Colorado, movie theater and now at the Wisconsin Sikh temple attract headlines and much hand-wringing.  And rightly so.  But the carnage continues day in and day out. According to the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control in the United Sates in 2009 there were11,493 homicides with a firearm and 18,735 suicides with a firearm.  This translated into an average of some 83 gun-related deaths every day!

These numbers are made more appalling by the fact that most other countries have much lower rates of gun-related deaths.  There is indeed something “special” about the United States.  For the most recent year I could find statistics, the United States had 14.4 gun-related homicides or suicides per 100,000 persons.  The comparable figure for Canada was 4.4 deaths, for Germany 1.4 deaths, for England and Wales .4 deaths, and for Japan .06 deaths. 

These are facts that cannot be denied and ought to horrify us all.  But by themselves they do not dictate—or even suggest—the public policy steps that should be taken.  They define the problem; they do not define the answer.

Banning the private ownership of all guns is one answer, but so would banning all nuclear weapons be an answer to the nuclear arms conundrum.  Banning all automobiles would be an answer to the 35 thousand automobile deaths each year.  You see my point?  Banning the private ownership of all firearms would be effective—but also impossible to achieve.  And it might not even be the wisest course even if achievable.

If this is the case, what answers should the mass shootings in Colorado and Wisconsin and the thousands of additional gun deaths each year lead the thoughtful Christian to support?  Let me suggest five modest, yet potentially helpful, steps that I believe our policy makers should take.  The first is to ban the sale of large magazines of ammunition, those of 50 or 100 rounds each.  There is no need for such large magazines for hunting, target shooting, or other legitimate uses of firearms.  A second step is to require that all guns be sold with a trigger lock that requires a key or combination to unlock.  If such devices were mandatory for every gun sold, some persons would still not make use of them, but many would.  For a time we required new cars to be equipped with seat belts even when there was no requirement that persons use them.  There being present in cars meant more persons did use them and no doubt saved thousands of lives.

A third reasonable step is to require background checks for every one purchasing a firearm, including those sold privately and at gun shows.  This step would help keep guns out of the hands of criminal elements and those who are mentally unstable.  A fourth step also deals with those purchasing firearms.  It is to require all gun purchasers to take a gun use and safety course and to present a certificate they had taken such a course from an approved source before being able to purchase a firearm.  

A final step is to require that all privately-owned firearms must be kept in some sort of a locked storage drawer or cabinet.  This would, of course, be hard to enforce, but it would serve as a statement of what society expects reasonable persons to do, and in cases of unlocked firearms being stolen or used in a suicide or in other inappropriate ways, the responsible person could be prosecuted.

However, more important—more needed—than any of these steps and others I could have mentioned, is a change in cultural values and beliefs.  Today, our society relates gun ownership and gun knowledgeableness with being manly, self-reliant, and even sexy.  An internet ad for a firearm describes it as “The rifle that brings out the West in you.”  That needs to change so that guns are seen as being dangerous and with the potential for antisocial uses.  In my life time other cultural changes have taken place.  Smoking has changed from being glamorous and sexy to being just plain stupid.  The ideal woman has morphed from being weak and dependent to being strong, accomplished, and self-reliant. 

A similar cultural change is needed in the case of guns.  One of the positive results of the sort of public policy steps I outline here would be to send signals that guns are not glamorous, but dangerous and carry with them social responsibilities.  The entertainment industry could help by portraying the harm to which guns can lead, and not as the quick solution to problems.  Our news casts and news commentators can add their voice.  Statistics on gun deaths and their causes should be the object of more scholarly studies, studies that the media then cover and highlight.  Doctors who work in trauma centers and daily observe the damage guns do need to find their voice.  Pastors need to speak out.  Right-to-life groups need to speak out against needless gun deaths as they do against deaths by abortion.  And all of us as citizens can join advocacy organizations urging action designed to curb gun violence.  And those who are gun owners can join the NRA (National Rifle Association) and urge more responsible, balanced position on its leadership.

Surely, we who are Christian citizens need to possess a genuine concern over the firearm suicides and homicides that plague our society at an intolerable level.  Possessing such a concern at a deeply-felt level is more important than any particular position we may take on public policies related to the private ownership of guns, since such a concern will defeat complacency and lead us to speak up and support steps to curb the current epidemic of gun-related deaths.  Any one committed to the sanctity of human life should do no less.

Our Gun-Massacre Culture

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Though only our most spectacular gun attacks, like the weekend massacre at the Sikh temple in Wisconsin, gain anything like sustained national attention, a broader look at daily news headlines suggests that mass shootings are weekly, if not daily events: see http://www.bradycampaign.org/xshare/pdf/major-shootings.pdf.

A review of the above list reveals a variety of killers and apparent motives: domestic disputes (children-parents, ex-spouses, etc), hate crimes, religious violence, student-on-student violence, nightclub/partying mayhem, gang vengeance, “regular” street crime, neighborhood disputes, disgruntled (ex-)worker/client attacks, and the occasional random loner looking to end his depression or anonymity in a hail of bullets.

All the response we seem to get from our politicians is an ineffectual spray of mournful words. None are ready, willing, or able to diagnose the deeper sources of our gun-massacre culture or to offer social or policy solutions. The meaninglessness of priestly words of comfort from political leaders responsible for solving public problems has by now moved to the level of the obscene. We should declare a national moratorium on such mournful words from politicians, who should instead be held accountable for developing a bipartisan plan to stop the mayhem.

If I were to offer the beginnings of a diagnosis, I would say a place to start is with the need to develop some kind of etiology of gun massacres. An unscientific review of news headlines suggests that we face a combination of perennial human relations problems plus specific hate crimes plus mental illness issues, all made more lethal by the availability of mass-murder devices to anyone and everyone.

Thus: domestic disputes, in which children temporarily hate their parents, or a marriage is falling apart, or someone is insanely sexually jealous of someone’s new relationship, are nothing new under the sun. But the willingness of the aggrieved to kill their parents, or their ex, their ex’s new lover, their own children, their in-laws, and whoever happens to be in the room when they snap, this seems more than the perennial problem, and the availability of the advanced killing machines we call assault weapons provides a tool to kill more people when that moment comes.

Further: anyone who ever went to high school knows how emotionally exhausting it could be, how difficult the relationships were, and how there were always people (sometimes us) who got their feelings hurt or felt angry or left out. But access to sophisticated assault weapons is a new factor that we didn’t need.

Further: everyone knows that things get kind of crazy in the dark nightclub scene late at night when the Mojitos are flowing and the hormones are racing. But guns make the inevitable stupid decisions and misunderstandings and macho posturing all the more dangerous.

Further: there are all kinds of unhappy people working in terrible jobs, or forced out of jobs that they either loved or hated. But the availability of guns makes it all too easy for that disgruntled, unhappy (ex) employee to “tell off” his hated co-workers or boss using a hail of bullets rather than words.

Further: everyone knows that there are lonely and depressed people in our relationally dysfunctional and atomized society. But what’s new is the availability of military-quality weaponry for some of these lonely and depressed people to release their homicidal/suicidal howls of pain to the world.

Further: tensions over religious or ethnic pluralism are a problem in many societies, but the vulnerability of those mass gatherings we call worship services (especially for religious minorities), together with the easy availability of guns, means that whenever any group gathers for open worship they must understand themselves to be at risk.

Further: there seem to be a distressing number of people who value neither their own lives nor those of other people enough to be deterred from waking up one day and deciding to kill others and themselves. We face a problem related to suicide, not just homicide.

In sum: sin is not new. Crime is not new. Broken relationships are not new. Bad jobs are not new. Depression is not new. Hatred of the “other” is not new. Suicidal self-loathing is not new. Outbursts of anger are not new. But what does seem to be new, and unique to US culture, is the ready availability of mass killing devices in the hands of just about anyone who might ever feel like killing someone.

At a cultural level, we need to raise children who will become adults who know how to control themselves when faced with intoxicants, broken relationships, problems with parents, sexual jealousy, depression, loneliness, and really bad bosses. One role of religion in family training of children is to offer instruction and spiritual resources to help young human beings learn how to control their emotions and not do what their instincts tell them to do. We need this function to somehow happen in society, regardless of what happens with our levels of church attendance.

We need higher value to be placed on human life. Human beings matter. It is not a small thing to take up a gun and pierce someone’s body with bullets. Life is sacred. We need more of our people to know that sacredness so deeply that they will restrain themselves from killing specific others or random others. Where did we go wrong? When did life become so cheap? Is it all of our wars, our video games, our violent movies? Or does the problem go deeper?

In the short term, ironically, we may need a more heavily-armed police and security presence in all of our public places. Everyone who is responsible for public gathering places, such as houses of worship, schools, malls, theaters, arenas, parks, clubs, and so on, needs to consider the vulnerability of those who gather there to the random or not-random mass killer, and needs to provide an adequate security presence.

And, of course, our gun laws need to change. We need politicians with the courage to face down the ridiculous and in fact lethal demands of the gun lobby. No civilian needs an assault weapon. No civilian needs military style body armor. No one needs to buy a handgun every month.

The Second Amendment was written at a time when the greatest fear was the tyranny of centralized power over the individual citizen or the local community. Today our greatest fear surely must be the tyranny of individual gun violence over all of us.  

If we cannot solve this very basic public policy problem, we will have all the evidence we need that our political system is irretrievably broken.

Topic #10: Gun Control

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Please consider the following potential leading questions for a conversation to be launched on August 8:

#1: Assuming that no “freedom” is without “limits,” what “reasonable limits” should be placed on the freedom to purchase guns and ammunition?

#2: Why should any U. S. citizen be allowed to purchase an assault weapon?

#3: What did our Founding Fathers intend when they wrote the “right of the people to keep and bear arms” into the Second Amendment to the U. S. Constitution, and how should that be applicable, or not, today?

#4: How can a free society protect itself from a twisted mind?

#5: What is it about our political culture that makes if highly unlikely that the massacre in Aurora will lead to any politically viable proposals for gun control legislation?  Is there any way to begin to address that issue?