The Right to Own...Death

As I sat last night at a Christmas service with mixed choirs including the children's choir, I had mixed emotions and was indiscriminately tossed between the joy of seeing young  children enjoying a church Christmas celebration and the aching sorrow knowing that 20 families in Connecticut have been robbed of this joy.

Feeling sorrow and saying our prayers for the families, however, is not enough-- faith without works is dead.  The most well-organized lobbyists in Washington, D.C. are those of the NRA.  Their members are those who in the midst of a mass shooting chide anyone from using a tragedy involving guns to even consider regulations.  They speak out against demeaning the memories of the victims by politicizing  the tragedy.  Of course, there is no right time to discuss the regulation of weapons.  They criticize the media for exploitation for the gun lobbyists and owners of these types of weapons do not want the public to see what carnage semi-automatic weapons can do.  It is exactly the time to talk about regulation of semi-automatics with large magazine capacities since they were not only used to murder 20 children and 6 of their teachers in a school but in nearly every mass shooting since the 1980s.  For the first time, however, we are dealing with victims so very young.

While the Internet is not a safe place for gaining verifiable research, one can learn much from the responses that gun owners have given for the need to possess semi-automatic assault weapons such as those most recently in the Connecticut massacre.

The most prevalent answer is some variation on the fact that they can.  Consider the following

"As a free man living in a so called free country, i am not going to justify my needs to anyone."

"My response to 'Why do you have/want/need an assault rifle?' would be "I want one."

"Same reason I have a 4 slice toaster instead of the more pedestrian 2 slicer: I want it."

"Because I can."

"Because they are a citizen and not a subject."

"why do you need a ball point pen, a computer or TV, surely the founders hadn't thought those would ever exist." 

"My usual reply is 'That is none of your business. Why do you have what you have? Do you want me nitpicking and asking you about why you own your posessions too?'"

"Do we really need these things? Yes, I may not use mine for the same purposes as the next person but mine is a precise and efficient tool that I use on a weekly basis. I don't use it for mass shootings of human beings for the reason that I am a law abiding, level headed American citizen. That should give me the right to own whatever the hell I want."

Then there are those who own guns because it is American.

"It's the people's last recourse against tyranny."

"It has less to do with the needs of the individual than it does with the needs of the Republic.  The Republic of the United States of America needs citizens to keep and bear military grade weaponry in order to have a pool for a well trained militia and as a final line of defense against all of the enemies of the Republic and its Constitution, foreign and domestic."

"Owning a black rifle is a civic duty, not an individual want or need."

"because governments,...all governments, eventually seek total power over those they govern....and fuck you, thats why."

IN fact, if everyone were to do this civic duty and be armed in public, many believe we would all be safer:

"In my opinion the only real deterrent is armed citizens who will react when they find themselves in those types of situations. It ain't much but it's a hell of a lot more than some "make me feel safe" ban on something that will only serve to disarm the ones that don't need disarming."

And then there are those who argue that since there are many more things than guns that may be used to kill, why not simply ban everything:

"Why not ban any vehicle that is faster than the speed limit? Why not ban long butcher knives? Why not ban the ability to "Supersize" your fast food order?  These all make just as much sense as banning large capacity magazines."

"In the right hands, a hand full of spoons and butter knives can injure many people, just like a seriously foggy morning and a slippery road. Should we, then, ban spoons, butter knives, and bad weather?"

"Anything could be used as an assault weapon look at David and goliath one little rock is all it takes I have an ar15 I didn't buy it to harm any one just to have fun with and kill pigs and stuff" 

"Might as well ask why someone needs a car that can go 160 mph when 70 is the speed limit. Or why do you need a compound bow when a traditional bow can do the same thing." 

"Tobacco kills more people then guns so, why not ban tobacco. Just another example."

"Guns don't kill people, people kill people, just like alcohol don't kill people, it's the people that are irresponsible and abuse it that kill and harm others due to alcohol. Ban guns, ban alcohol, ban drugs, ban whatever you want irresponsible people are still gonna find something&abuse it and it will get outta control and hurt others"

Sometimes, believe it or not, doing something simply because one can is not a good enough justification.  It is rather unsettling to know there are people in our communities who may never take the time to consider why they do the things they do.  What ever happened to "the unexamined life is not worth living."  For these people, there is no direction.  They are placed on the earth to do whatever they can get away with.

Civilization, however, is a process of collective self-examination and constantly refining our laws to a changing technological landscape and our moral absolutes to an ever-diversified human race.  In the process, some things we held to be morally appropriate in the past, such as indentured servitude or slavery, we recognize to be unjust.  And some things that we had no need to regulate-- such as highway speeds and air traffic-- justify the creation of new legal parameters.

And why do I feel particularly less safe knowing that a large group of those who own semi-automatic assault weapons are dong so to fulfill their civic duty?

I am also fairly confident that some of the weapons on hand in the U.S. Armed Forces might be able to take down a group of armed citizens fighting against tyranny.  I do believe at one time the weapons available to the federal government were similar to those of the cobbler or cooper-- the Second Amendment made more sense then.

While our friends have certainly identified a variety of things that may be lethal if in the wrong hands, I think we would all agree that while we would never ban our favorite McDonald value meal, many of us might consider banning extremely foggy mornings.   The truth, however, is that while many things can kill, guns are designed.  And semi-automatics are designed to kill more quickly and with less effort.  I have no doubt that anyone premeditating a mass murder will not choose butcher knives, spoons, butter knives, cigarettes (to force victims to smoke several packs a day until a large number contract heart disease or COPD and die?), drugs (to force a large group of people to ingest lethal amounts of drugs?), a slingshot, or for that matter perform an elaborate bad-weather dance to whip up a lethal storm.  The weapon of choice is the semi-automatic weapon with large magazine capacity.  When armed with semi-automatics, an individual is not only instantly more powerful than those he wishes to kill, but is able to kill many more victims.  For these mass-murderers the semi-automatic is the coward's choice.  Those who own these weapons must accept the fact that the potential for extreme carnage in the wrong hands outweighs their own right to possess them.

But for the fact that we are living through a nightmare in which the most innocent have been violently taken from us, their arguments would be part of a SNL routine.  The fact that they will continue to make these assertions and in mass numbers demonstrate how little they value humanity and how they will continue to dismiss logic, reason, and morality in favor of their own selfish and unexamined rights.

But our entire society has been whittled down to the financiers who compound the largest profits of free enterprise and the consumers who feel entitled to have as much as they want.  As a society, we are losing our sensitivity to how safe we and others are in having and using what we possess, and we are continuing our insensitivity to how our desire to own and the investor's desire for exorbitant profits affect the workers who produce what we possess.

This time, however, we must decide between a semi-automatic and a child.  This should be an easy choice, right?  Where your treasure is, there is your heart.