Guns and America

I will begin by saying that this is a political blog. I will follow up by saying that I fully and completely support the Second Amendment. I say that unequivocally because many of my friends and relatives who support gun rights will now think I don't believe in them. And all because I do not think that individual rights in America revolve around gun ownership.

Do you think our guns won the Revolution? They did not. French guns, Dutch money and, perhaps more importantly, the grace of God won the Revolution. Without that our guns meant little: it's that simple. We would be more British than American today without the outside help which, I must add at least with regard to the French and Dutch, didn't really care about our gun ownership anyway.

But to the point: our rights do not revolve around gun ownership. Our rights are about the ideas which support them, namely life, liberty, and property (I wish Jefferson had said property and not pursuit of happiness, but that's an idea for another time). Quite bluntly then, there are more, and I will argue more important, issues than gun rights. What's more important is encouraging the belief that rights are based on our overall obligation to do our part to create and manage a just society.

We need to convince people that our rights, all of them, come from God. We need to emphasize that if our rights, all of them, are not protected as a whole then each individual one means less. If we don't believe in free speech or freedom of religion, our insistence on gun rights is superfluous, and even shallow and unworthy of us, because guns can protect and promote even evil, as history clearly shows. Gun ownership and gun use by themselves are moral neutrals.

So then, as a practical matter it is not our guns which keep us free. It is our attitude towards freedom, our patriotism and more importantly our belief in a just God which keep us free. Lose that attitude, or worse, allow the nation as a whole to lose that attitude, and your right to have a gun means zilch. That right will be squashed alongside every other right.

Pops nearly shot himself

Jokes and novelty songs have been made about this type of situation, but one day me Pops almost shot himself. Really.

It's been nearly fifty years ago. One summer we took a four week family vacation to see Mom's people in North Carolina. Pops drove everybody down in the old Dodge Polara station wagon, stayed a week with us, then left the car there for Mom and us kids while he flew back to Detroit for two weeks. He returned for the fourth week and drove us all back home after that. He spent the two weeks in the middle (other than working) replacing the front porch on our house. It was easier for him to do that chore without us rugrats in the way.

After a few days he had completed the deck but not the stairs. But it was late so he went to bed, knowing he had plenty of time to add them. Yet he hadn't counted on me Grandma Cosgriff's paranoia interfering with his sleep.

Me grandparents lived next door, and Grandpa Joe was off on one of his jaunts for a couple weeks. Grams called Pops in the middle of the night and said she heard a prowler. He grabbed his pistol and rushed out the front door.

He threw open the door and took three quick, unthinking steps. On the fourth step, the step just exactly too far, he realized to himself just too late, 'There ain't no stairs'. He fell face down onto the ground, his pistol in hand right under his chest. Yes, he fell smack on top of the gun.

Luckily, obviously, it didn't go off. And of course, there was no prowler. Pops would often tell the story, yet with a nervous laugh even years later.

Georgia's gun law not radical

They've gone and done it. The state of Georgia has made it legal for licensed gun owners to carry their guns almost anywhere. The NRA loves it andgun control advocates hate it.

But what real effect might it have? Only about 5% of Georgians are licensed to carry; it seems a stretch to believe that opening up the laws on where to carry a gun will induce a lot more people to do it. Surely those who do not have the permits to carry haven't been waiting for a move like this. Within reason, those who have permits are the only ones affected by the law. By all indications, they have been responsible gun owners.

We admit that we can't see any particular reason why one would want to carry a gun to church, for example, but we also note that to carry a gun in church or a school still requires the express consent of the place of worship or the school. This is good, as no one has the moral right to carry on someone else's private property anyway, and schools should have greater self regulator powers seeing as they in place of the parents for large potions of the day.

As to other supposedly offensive provisions of the law, firearms dealers no longer need to maintain records of sales and purchases, and the governor loses his authority to suspend or limit the carrying or sale of guns. But why ought these things have been mandatory anyway? The one thing which many of the anti-gun crowd never appear to admit is that registering your weapon in any form actually amounts to a presumption of guilt. Don't we live in a presumed innocent society? Why then assume that gun owners will use their guns for illegal purposes?

The Second Amendment is not the most important part of the Bill of Rights, and gun ownership really isn't a shirt sleeve issue for us. Still, the Amendment is there, and for very valid reasons. Governments however well intentioned and police officers however noble cannot offer the same degree of self protection which a person can for himself. This means that persons who want guns and are willing to learn to use them safely, that is, take on the responsibility of gun ownership and potential use, must be allowed to carry them. Georgia's actions are merely recognizing that fact. There seems little to say after that.