The Guns and America series is special to Kingdom in the Midst. It is offered in hopes to raise the level of dialogue in the gun debate, to help people start talking to each other rather than past each other. Parts 1-4 are “Guest Posts.” Read Part 1 of the Guns and America series: The Second Amendment, statistics, and human nature. Read Part 2 of the Guns and America series: Tougher gun laws will not nullify the Second Amendment. Read Part 3 of Guns and America series: Reasonable gun control starts with domestic abusers.
I encourage you to share these posts on your social media channels to further the discussion.
I’m 56 years old and have worked most of my life, at whatever it took to make a dollar. As a friend says, I’m “ex-a lot of things”. While my formal schooling ended with a high school diploma I’ve been reading everything I could get my hands on since I was five years old. In that has been a great deal of history (of the world itself, of regions, and of countries) and biography (statesmen and -women, to a great extent) because human affairs fascinate me. That is not to say nor imply that I know all there is to know. I am confident, however, in my views, but not hidebound nor rigid. At least I try as much as the next not to be those last two.
One thing I have learned is that in approximately 6,000 years of recorded human history the one thing that has remained precisely the same is human nature. People act and react in the same ways whatever period, epoch, or era they are in. Most people aren’t aware of this. Some are, and use it to their advantage. Witness the manipulation of public opinion and discourse by various individuals and institutions, now and in the past. The main difference between the past and now being the ability to disseminate information to larger numbers of people in a shorter time.
This ability to disseminate information and stir public opinion was understood by the Founding Fathers of our country. The modern extent of it may not have been foreseen – although I tend to think that their being learned and farsighted as they were they at least had an inkling of what was to come – but the fact of it certainly was. That is why they gathered together to craft a new document when they saw that their first attempt to devise a government (The Articles of Confederation) was wanting.
Their second effort, our Constitution, is unique in human history. It grants power to government solely through the consent of those governed and limits that power. It allows for the progress of humankind by containing a process by which it may be amended, that process being in no wise a simple or easy one. That is so that the easily-stoked and -swayed vagaries of public opinion cannot be used to to change it willy-nilly.
Which brings us to the present day and the matter at hand. The Founders were, as said, learned men, in a time when learning was in great part up to the individual to acquire by reading and study. They had read history and were aware of the how and what and why of governments, and that as long as humans were involved in the formation and running of them governments would continue to do as they had always done, that is to attempt to accrue more power over the governed, by use of more and more of the power granted by the governed and ultimately by force. They knew that when all methods of civil discourse failed to stop government from exerting its desired amount of power over the governed, the only way for the governed to defend themselves was with the power of arms. This does not mean that the Founders thought that the governed could easily defeat the government, as whatever arms existed were available to either. But it does mean that the governed could fight and not be merely led, like lambs, to slaughter, thereby buying time for others to settle the matter through argument.
The individual right to keep and bear arms has its taproot in the above. Its other roots are embedded in the right of every human to defend himself, his kith and kin, and his fellow humans, from attack, with the same weapon(s) that may be used against him. The fact that a certain weapon or type of weapon has a low probability of being used against him is not justification for denying it to him by law, especially given that the weapon is readily available to his potential attacker, who by being willing to attack shows that he is no respecter of the law and will obtain whatever weapon he desires by whatever means.
Those who deem that their fellow citizens don’t “need” a firearm or a certain type or class of firearm have a method at their disposal to deny it to them: amending the Constitution. That document say that the right to keep and bear arms will not be infringed. It has been infringed, by passage of “common sense gun laws” to a degree the Founders would in my opinion be appalled by. Even so, I am sensible enough to know that an unfettered right to arms would be disastrous to say the least. As a man of my times I think that the laws in place now are sufficient to the task. It is in their implementation that failures lead to deaths of innocents, not in the laws themselves. And thus we are back to human nature, the bane of our existence.
This post was written by Shell Scott.
