By Edwin Cooney
It has been increasingly clear to me that, with our permission, the American killer is stealing our lives, our children’s lives, and our very liberty!
A few days ago as part of the ongoing discussion of whether guns or people kill other people, someone sent me a video telling the story of young Kendra St. Clair. Kendra, a 12-year-old living in Oklahoma, was home alone one day when 32-year-old Stacy Jones broke into her home. Kendra grabbed her cell phone and called her mother and her mother instructed her to get her gun, go into a closet, and then call 911. Kendra had never fired a gun before. Complying with mom's instructions, she called 911 and the operator assured her that a sheriff deputy was on his way. After some anxious minutes, Kendra saw the door knob move so she fired through the door. The bullet entered Jones's shoulder causing him to flee. He was picked up a few blocks away by deputies and charged with first degree burglary. That charge was designed to get Jones twenty years in the slammer.
The purpose of the story (aside from praising Kendra's coolness and bravery) was to illustrate that guns save as well as take lives. (Note: Kendra's tale of bravery occurred on Saturday, October 20th, 2012.)
As far as I know, it wasn't until the assassination of President Kennedy that gun control became a national issue. What most Americans really wanted to achieve, by passage of gun control legislation, was to make it unlikely that anyone else could as easily replicate Lee Harvey Oswald’s and Jack Ruby’s dastardly deeds! Since powerful and deadly automobiles are licensed, it seemed reasonable to most Americans that the power of license would control gun users just as it does the behavior of drivers. Few people resent the licensing of automobiles especially since licensing vehicles doesn’t inhibit their use or their availability. However, most people regard driving as a privilege not a constitutional right. The United States Supreme Court has ruled numerous times that the right to “bear arms" is guaranteed by the Second Amendment to the Constitution. Some would argue that since baseball bats, knives, ropes, bombs, and many other tools and methods are potentially lethal, it would therefore be downright unconstitutional to ban guns or even to license them.
However, I argue that the Second Amendment is conditional. It reads as follows:"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.” Proponents of the Second Amendment, as I see it, are too often in denial of the amendment's 18th Century culture lag. Guns were used during the 17th, 18th, 19th, and the early 20th centuries as much for food and clothing as for killing. They even appear to believe that all laws are “created equal,” perhaps even including the laws that were passed in the 1840s enabling angry Christians to kill Mormons in Missouri and Arkansas. Some of us wonder if the Ku Klux Klan constitutes a "well regulated militia.” After all, it's “regulated” not to kill white Anglo-Saxon Protestants!
All of the above arguments have been made thousands of times so there's no need to examine them more than we already have. However, there is a vital element of this whole matter that needs to be considered or our free society will be destroyed.
Opponents of gun control legislation insist that should the government succeed in regulating the ownership of guns, our very freedom would be at stake. Consider the following: First, I wonder if a people are really “free” when they are at the mercy of so many weapons? Can a people really be free when they, and their school children, are inevitable targets of gun possessors and bomb throwers?
Second, what does our primary dependence on weapons reflect about the moral priorities and values of our society?
Three, was the late, great Conservative commentator Paul Harvey right or wrong when he asserted that freedom wasn't merely permission to be absolutely free, but was rather a challenge to do as one ought to do for everyone's benefit?
Fourth, while no reasonable person will argue that guns and not people are the ultimate killers, the more weapons that are cheaply or even freely available, the more killing will occur!
Finally, the ultimate question before us isn't really gun control, it's American “Killer Control.” Remember, killers kill because they feel sufficiently powerful, resentful, and clever enough to avoid punishment for the act of killing. For many killers, due to low self-esteem, the rewards of their acts of killing are greater than their fear of retribution in the wake of their deed or deeds.
After all, many killers are beyond fear of their own mortality. Someone's death, even if it is their own, is the inevitable solution to life's woes!
The wisdom or foolishness of possessing arms and the use of arms depends on the legitimacy and the rights of others.
There's little doubt, as I see it, that it's getting cheaper and safer to obtain and use guns than to avoid being victimized by guns or by some other deadly weapon.
It’s my guess that once we conclude that all we can do to prevent killing is to justify and accomplish killing as the primary antidote, sooner or later America is going to be as dead as George Washington!
Until we find some formula to control American killers, I suppose gun control is the only reasonable place to start, so I support it.
Since the right to make a profit appears to be as dear as life itself, I guess we’re just going to have to discover a way to make life as precious as profit.
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
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