Let’s Ask WHY, not WHAT

 Guns and their regulation are once again at the forefront.  Instead of the same old, tried and tired arguments, I would like to see us think more deeply about the problem.  Let’s remember that guns are the instrument, not the instigator of violent acts.  We know what guns are.  It is time that we take a deeper dive into the problem and ask not What, but Why are so many picking up this instrument and using it to commit violent acts.

The following addresses some of the concepts surrounding gun regulation issues, but ultimately moves beyond them to consider the Why of the problem, rather than the What.

Where are the voices of compassion on days there is no mass shooting?

The Democrats, in trouble at the mid-terms, must be delighted that the recent mass shootings have given them a new and compelling talking point as they provide a soap box for their anti-gun mantra:  children are killed and we care, let’s eliminate the weapon that killed them, then all will be fine.  Sounds good until one explores the facts and stops to think for a moment.

Mass shootings make the news.   But while such events kill several individuals at once, they are only a small percent of all the killings that occur daily in this country.  Think about Chicago.  Children are shot and killed every weekend.  According to CBS, in 2021 at least 275 children 16 and under were shot, 43 of them younger than 13.   

It is not only Chicago though.  Cities all across America have seen increases in violence, with and without guns.  Every day of the year there are children caught in the crossfire or otherwise injured and killed by strangers, by other children, by their own parents.  Daily.

We should all be upset by the school shootings and the other mass killing events, but if that sorrow and outrage does not carry over to the individual and far more frequent events, then one must wonder about the sincerity of the mass-shooting outrage.

Restrictions on Gun Ownership and the Constitution

The right to bear arms is a right explicitly set forth in the Constitution.  It appears in the Bill of Rights, along with other core rights such as free speech, freedom to worship, right of assembly, etc.  The purpose of the Bill of Rights was to protect citizenry from overreach of the federal government.

At the time of our country’s founding, many believed, in part based on their experience, that “governments are prone to use soldiers to oppress the people.” (The National Constitution Center, constitutioncenter.org) The proposed new Constitution gave the federal government almost total authority over the army and militia. This concerned many, along with anti-federalist concerns that the people and their rights should be protected from the federal government.  Such concerns led to the Bill of Rights – the first 10 amendments to the Constitution.

While “the Second Amendment conceded nothing to the Anti-Federalists’ desire to sharply curtail the military power of the federal government,” it was “easily accepted because of widespread agreement that the federal government should not have the power to infringe the right of the people to keep and bear arms, any more than it should have the power to abridge the freedom of speech or prohibit the free exercise of religion.” (constitutioncenter.org)

Compelling governmental interest may allow some regulation or limitation of basic freedoms expressly stated in the Constitution.  A governmental interest is compelling if it is essential and necessary rather than simply a matter of choice, preference, or discretion.  The proposed limitation on fundamental rights must undergo strict scrutiny to show that that limitation is indispensable to achieving the compelling interest.  The government must prove that it cannot achieve its purpose through any other less infringing means.

Moreover, any such regulation must be narrowly focused on a specific harm; the infringement can be no broader than is absolutely essential to achieving the compelling interest.  The government cannot generally prohibit guns any more than it can generally prohibit expression of religion or speech. 

Even the temporary assault weapon ban signed under President Clinton did not ban those weapons from everyone but only sale of certain types of such weapons for the limited period of the ban and with a number of exceptions allowed.  No matter how much we may believe that certain types of weapons should belong only to military and law enforcement, there is likely no compelling governmental interest that, under strict scrutiny, would allow the government to absolutely deny the right to bear such a gun to all citizens.

The problem is, if one thinks today that such broad limitations are acceptable, then that becomes precedent for similar broad limitations on other core freedoms including the freedom to speak, to worship, to assemble.   Thus, if you can ban a type of gun from everyone, it follows, for example, that you can ban a particular type of worship from everyone.  Don’t like what the Lutheran church is preaching – just ban worship there, following a precedent of banning certain guns from everyone.  This is not what our Constitution intended or allows.  (Personally, I hate guns, but I love the Constitution and our freedom more.)

What about licensing?

We often hear the comment:  we register and license cars and drivers, so why not do the same for guns?  First, we must note that this analogy is misplaced since the right to bear arms is guaranteed by the Constitution while there is no such guarantee about automobiles or any other transportation device.

Nonetheless, some licensing of our constitutionally protected freedoms is allowed.  For example, peaceful demonstrators, no matter how controversial or unpopular their cause, are allowed to speak their views, but they can be required to obtain a permit to conduct their march or demonstration and such speech can be limited to certain times.  It cannot, however, be banned entirely. 

I’m not sure how this translates to guns, beyond such things as hunting licenses and limitations or perhaps limiting hour and locations for shooting ranges etc.  States of course can enact regulations that define gun free zones, ability and requirements for carrying a concealed weapon, etc.  

We already have these gun licensing laws in place.  We also have criminal statutes that prohibit one from using a firearm in an illegal manner such as to commit a felony, or to assault or murder.  We can, of course, concern ourselves with ensuring that such regulations and statutes are well enforced, but in many of the mass murders as well as other shootings, licensing and similar regulation would have done nothing to stop the event from occurring.

Guns are the tool, not the instigator, of the tragedies

The problem is not the gun, but the one who fires it.  We must recognize that attempts to ban or control guns are a superficial fix and move on to reach the deeper question of Why, not What.  We must question why there is so little respect for human life in this country, why people in this country turn so quickly to violence, even deadly violence, when they are upset or having a dispute with another human being. 

I have touched on this question in past blogs.  I think that in large part it traces back to a lost belief in the concept of something greater than ourselves combined with a rise in the desire for self-satisfaction to the detriment of anything or anyone else. 

Value systems based outside of oneself causes society to adopt rules of behavior toward one another as well as respect humanity as something unique, irreplaceable, and deserving of respect.  A value system that places the self above all else leads to destruction of the social order as the individual seeks constant gratification.

We are becoming different people

In my local newspaper today there was the story of a 20 year old who shot and killed a man as part of a “road rage” incident.  The two did not know each other.  Apparently the 20 year old was driving and came upon the man and his friend walking in the road.  The 20 year old drove by, the man apparently thought he was too close, so when the 20 year old parked nearby the man came to him and angrily accosted him.  A fist fight ensued and when the 20 year old was on the ground he pulled his gun and fired.  The man died.

The sad thing is that this does not sound surprising or terribly out of the ordinary in today's world.  We regularly read stories of basically minor disagreements that end in shooting or stabbing or other violence.  What has happened in society that causes us to have such little regard for human life?  Why is violence our go-to method of settling disputes?

Destroying every gun in this country will not alter this attitude.  What may alter it is a deep look inside ourselves and our current cultural norms. 

The family, once the place where children were taught not only social skills and civility but also a respect for the world outside of themselves is a fading concept.  We have single parent homes, even essentially no parent homes when we see children just weeks old shipped off to daycare for the “convenience” of their parents.  We have dysfunctional families where drugs or similar mental problems overtake the family dynamic. 

Children growing up in dysfunctional families have no healthy model on which to base their own parenting.  Schools, that used to work in consort with parents to teach children necessary academic skills now teach children to keep secrets from parents as they learn about the day’s smorgasbord of genders from which they can choose.

Lost children become lost adults.  They become angry adults.  They become adults who do not understand how to interact with others, how to participate in the give and take that society requires.  They become adults full of hurt, and that hurt spills out in many ways.  And we see this destroying our society and whom and what we are as human beings. 

Today we have more and stricter gun laws than ever before; nonetheless, gun violence (as well as other forms of violence) continues to rise.  Guns are nothing more than a tool and that tool is currently being used to act out the deep dysfunction of our society.  Removing guns will not cure the problem.  Taking a deep look into how we are raising and what we are teaching our children is the only way we can ever heal.

Drop by Drop Freedom is Lost

Today, President Biden, by executive order, has expanded the restrictions on the Constitutional rights of the people.   This was not a law passed by Legislative procedures.   There was no legislative consideration by the people’s representatives in Congress.  This was executive fiat. 

For the record, I am not a fan of guns, but I am a fan of the Constitution. 

Regardless of my personal feelings about guns, the Second Amendment protects the right of American citizens to keep and bear arms.  That Second Amendment is part of the Constitution, and importantly is part of the Bill of Rights – the first 10 Amendments to the Constitution.

The Bill of Rights lists specific prohibitions on governmental power, its intent being to provide for greater constitutional protection for individual liberties.  The First Amendment includes protections for the rights of freedom of religion (both exercise and establishment), freedom speech, of the press; of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.  The Second provides the right to keep and bear arms.  The Fourth protects the people from unreasonable search and seizure and the Fifth provides that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.  The Amendments provide for a variety of rights to criminal defendants.  And Amendment Ten provides that powers not specifically delegated to the government are reserved to the people.

These are important Amendments.  Yes, reasonable and necessary restrictions can be placed upon these rights, but the standard for such restrictions is both narrow and requires significant showing of extraordinary necessity. 

The 2^nd Amendment is part of these protected rights.  Regardless of what you think of the right to keep and bear arms, it holds equal place with such rights as freedom to worship, to speak, to be protected from unreasonable searches, and the many other individual rights protected for the people by the Constitution.  No one right is more important than another; people cannot pick and choose which is or is not to be defended.   

If the President thinks he can, and does, restrict these rights simply by signing an executive order, then all of the people’s rights are in peril.  What is to stop an executive order from restricting your right to worship?  To write a controversial op-ed?  To demand a search warrant before your home is searched?  

The President takes an oath to support and protect the Constitution.   How does a unilateral decision to diminish certain rights simply because he does not like them square with that oath?  Answer:  it doesn’t. 

Today’s executive order may seem harmless enough – tighten restrictions on “ghost guns” (untraceable individually constructed firearms) – but to stop with that thought misses the more important point.  This is the Constitution, the document that protects to the people the rights that are fundamental in making America the country that it is.  The document that protects the many freedoms that Americans take for granted. 

Yet, what the President has shown us today is that he believes that he, with the mere stroke of a pen, has a right to cancel and restrict whichever of those rights he chooses.  That is not America.  And while this one order will not end America as we know it, it does put us on the road toward that end.  What hastens our pace on that road is the acceptance of the right of those in power to unilaterally remove the rights belonging to the people.

Those who have lived through the rise of a dictatorship will tell you that it happens in a way that you don’t notice until it is too late.  Little by little your freedoms are taken away.  Drop by drop until the bucket of freedoms is empty and you have no freedom at all.  This executive order is just one of those drops.  But it is important to notice what it means.

 

Culture, Mental Health, and Guns

The Democrats focus solely on gun control, perhaps because it is easier for them to mess with our Constitution than to grapple with the mental health and cultural issues that underlie most mass shootings.

The Dayton shooter (a Leftist and Elizabeth Warren supporter by the way) had problems since middle school.  His classmates say they knew and even said he would shoot someone someday.  The manifesto of the El Paso shooter, while perhaps in part couched in the language of a white supremacist, reeks of hopelessness and despair from a young man who feels that he is ignored and forgotten and has no future.

These shootings were less political acts than they are screams of hopelessness and despair from young men who mentally could not cope in a culture that overwhelmed them while ignoring their mental issues.   Lost young men who turned to the internet and a violent culture for solace and for guidance on what to do – how to act out their hurt and despair.  By the time they got their guns they were well into some sort of downward spiral of depression and hate.  Feeling alone and unloved, they lashed out.

Let us ask not only how could we have prevented them from obtaining a gun at that point, but more importantly, what could we as a society have done to prevent them from getting to that point? 

Barbara Bush once said, “You must read to your children and you must hug your children and you must love your children. Your success as a family, our success as a society, depends not on what happens in the white house, but on what happens inside your house.” 

No, I am not blaming parents for mass shootings conducted by their children.  But this quote does suggest that we, our societal family, need to look at what sort of a culture we are creating for our children.  Are we teaching them how to cope with the heartaches and disappointments of life?  Are we showing them non-violent methods of addressing conflict?  Are we loving them and teaching them how to love and respect others as well as themselves?  Are we treating them fairly?  Are we paying attention and when someone needs professional help are we reaching out to find that help?  Or, are we simply willing to stand by and ignore cultural problems and related mental health issues until they erupt in an individual’s heinous act of violence, and then satisfy ourselves by blaming the white house and the weapon?

Clearly, with the 2020 election on the horizon and the ever-present hatred of Donald Trump, the Democrats are happy to make the Dayton and El Paso shootings nothing more than a political battle sword in their never ceasing war on the President.  This is not helpful. 

Yes, we have guns in America.  We also have the second amendment.  And, we have a variety of gun control regulations (including those put in place by President Trump).  But these things have been present in our society long before Trump took office.  And we have had mass shootings throughout our history. 

We can argue about what types of guns can and should be restricted and what individuals should not be allowed a gun, but we need to go well beyond that.  As the President said in his speech yesterday, we need to look at culture and at mental health.  We need to address the underlying causes.

Teenagers and young adults (and others) have long struggled with angst and despair as they grow up and begin to face the world and its many realities, some pleasant, some not.  Children act out when they are hurt or confused or troubled or simply not getting what they want.  We used to teach children as they grew that such behavior of acting out, especially when it hurt anyone else (or themselves) was not acceptable.  We taught them other ways to cope.

Yet our culture today seems to fail to provide coping skills other than destructive acting out.  Are our growing teens learning how to cope with life’s disappointments  and their own sadness and depressions without hurting others?  Have we taught them how to deal with a situation in which they do not get what they want, how to respond constructively rather than destructively?  Do we show them examples of people treating other people with respect, or do the movies, music, and other entertainment teach them disrespect and violence?  Do we find a way to give our children hope rather than hopelessness, a strength rather than an emptiness in their soul?

We cannot change a culture overnight.  But we can begin to examine ours and ask the hard questions of what we are doing, what are we teaching our children, and what does that mean for our society.  We need to do this, to ask these hard questions.  And we need to do it with an open mind, with a non-political mind, a mind that truly seeks to make any necessary corrections in the path of our society.  But, as long as the Democrats want to make this a political weapon, that is not likely to occur. 

So, we will argue about gun laws.  We will hear the Democrats blame Trump for all the evils of the country and the world, call him racist, and continue their one-sided hatred and vitriolic language against him, his supporters, the office of president, and ultimately the country.

Meanwhile, we, as families and neighbors and citizens, can ignore the political firestorm and ask ourselves how our culture is contributing to underlying causes of violence and we can demand that our elected officials, our media, our entertainment industry, and ourselves go beyond the means and address those underlying causes. 

It’s Not About Guns

I don’t know why, but yesterday’s church shooting really got to me.  A small town, people together in church worship.  How can someone walk in, look in their faces and shoot?  I don’t care what the anger or perceived injustice or justification, how can someone look into the eyes of a child or a grandmother or a family and just shoot them all? This was not a rifle from a high-rise being shot across a field, or a truck driven into an anonymous crowd.  This was up close and personal.   There had to be a complete emptiness in this killer’s soul, a lack of all things that we associate with humanity, or at least those things that we used to believe made us human.

Senseless violence.  It happens every day in America.  Sometimes we notice, because it is record-breaking, like yesterday’s church shooting.  Sometimes we don’t, like when it is just a black kid in a Chicago ghetto, or a mother who sells her daughter for drug money, or a man who rapes a child.  But, everyday this country is flooded with acts of inhumanity by someone who calls him or herself human but who has lost the soul that makes them so.

How did so many lose their souls?  How did America lose her soul?  For isn’t that the real problem. We will of course hear the calls for gun control.  But taking away everyone’s guns (even if that were possible) will not heal this broken soul.  Those bent on evil will find ways to carry out their evil intents, whether they have a gun or not.  Tightening gun laws is not a solution (indeed, the church shooter was denied a Texas gun permit, but somehow had a gun anyway).  Guns can be replaced: with knives, with Molotov cocktails, with homemade bombs, with trucks, with any manner of evil and mass destructive devices, directions for which are easily accessible on the internet.

Guns are nothing more than a symptom; they are not the cause.  We tend to look for easy solutions:  get rid of guns; if not guns, then just improve care for mental illness; tell everyone to say something if they see something; etc.  These are all superficial solutions and it is their very superficiality that belies the real problem:  our society has become one of superficiality and in losing depth it has lost its soul; it has become a place where there is a belief in one’s entitlement to immediate gratification, an entitlement to always feel good with a right to act out all feelings, negative and positive.  It has lost its core values, it has lost its soul.

If we really want to stop the violence, not just the mass shootings, but the everyday violence, along with the everyday hatred and anger that we all experience throughout our daily lives, then we need to look beyond the surface.  We need to look beyond the actions to what is causing them.  We have to ask:  What has happened to our soul?  How is it that we are teaching and accepting that feelings and personal gratification are more important than life itself?  What are we teaching and what are we not teaching our children?  What happened to America?

I have a few thoughts.   First, we seem to have lost our belief in anything beyond ourselves.  This is often stated as having lost our belief in God.  But it goes beyond a defined religion to a belief that there is something (whether a defined being or simply some force) that is greater than we humans.  With such a belief comes some sort of value system that among other things instills a respect for life.  Such value systems are more similar than different across nearly all belief systems and can often be in part boiled down into the golden rule:  do unto others as you would have others do unto you.  Implicit in such a belief is a respect for human life.  (Worth noting is that the Texas church shooter was an avowed Atheist who advocated for Atheism).  Beyond the respect for others, is the idea that when there is something more than what we know then life itself tends to take on a greater meaning and with such meaning comes hope.  When there is nothing more, and when life is hopeless, then there is seemingly little to prevent someone from destroying it.

I think that there is an enormous emptiness in many, an emptiness that they try to fill with various forms of gratification and consumerism.  But that emptiness cannot be filled with tangible superficialities.  It needs instead to be filled with intangible faith which with it brings hope and love.  Faith also brings with it a code of conduct that values human life and teaches respect and understanding of others.  This would do far more to end our inhumanity to one another than even the toughest gun laws imaginable.

We exacerbate the loss of a belief in something larger than oneself with the values that we do honor and teach our children.  Self-restraint and responsibility for one’s own actions are largely missing from our moral codes.  Instead, feelings have become a driving force:  competition and striving to do one’s best are often looked down upon because with winners there are losers and losers might have their feelings hurt and no one should ever feel bad.  Of course, if no one should feel bad, that means everyone must feel good.  Restraints on one’s behavior restrict that good feeling, so we become a do whatever you want society.  Thus, we have the current sexual exploitation in Hollywood – both on and off screen.   We have mothers who won’t tell their children NO because it might upset them and make them feel bad.  We have children who are passed from grade to grade without learning because holding them back would hurt their feelings.  We have people who are drug addicted because drugs make them feel good. 

And we have a society that always finds someone to blame, a society in which no one can seem to simply take responsibility for their own actions but rather will find a reason why they are somehow justified – that is, will always find somewhere else to place the blame.  In the same vein we have a large part of society that expects someone else to fix all their problems.  They place the responsibility for their very existence on someone else.

So, where is the responsibility for yesterday’s church shooting.  First and foremost, squarely on the murderer.  Not on the murderer’s weapon of choice.  If we want to stop these sorts of things from happening again, the answer is not simply gun or health care laws, nor is it simply crying for the victims as the media shows their photos, tells their stories, and plays at our heart strings.   We have had guns since the founding of this country; we rarely had mass shootings or the number of senseless non-mass but daily shootings and other violent acts that we have today.  If we want to really change things we need to look deeply within our souls and within the soul of the country itself and ask ourselves what is missing. 

About Gun Control

So, as always after a mass shooting, the calls for gun control begin. 

Now, understand, I am not a fan of guns.  I don’t like hunting; if I’m in danger I’m going to feel a lot more comfortable calling 911 or even just screaming rather than trying to unlock, load, lock, aim, and shoot a firearm.  On the other hand, I have been to a shooting range a few times and really enjoyed the challenge and competition of target shooting (in the same sort of way that one enjoys striving for and getting a strike in bowling; so maybe we could all just go bowling together). 

Nonetheless, it doesn’t really matter whether or not I favor guns, because we have the Second Amendment which provides for the right to bear arms.  I don’t particularly like this amendment, but, then, there are people who don’t seem to particularly like the first amendment or various other parts of the Constitution.  I defend the Constitution to them, and so I do the same to myself for the Second Amendment, because certain parts of our Constitution are not more important than others.   We cannot pick and choose which parts of our Constitution we will enforce and follow – it all carries equal weight and as citizens we must defend it in its entirety.

But, here’s the thing – why do we only seem to hear the screams for gun control after a mass shooting. Why don’t we hear similar advocacy every day when we have thousands of shootings across the country and especially in big cities like Chicago.  Children are injured and die there almost every day from gunshots, so where are the screams for better gun control there and why not on a daily basis?  Better regulation of gun and ammunition sales to the people who use guns daily seems to make a lot more sense than trying to figure out a way to keep guns from the hands of a mass murderer who, until the time of the heinous act, appears totally sane and normal and who, until the act, avoids discovery of whatever plans and motives he or she might have.    

We have the Constitutional right to bear arms.  That right can be reasonably regulated.  So let’s aim our regulations at the everyday people who commit the everyday murders that kill a lot more people over the course of the year than any single mass shooting.   Personally, I don’t think we can ever create background checks that will catch all or even nearly all people who should not have guns.  And I don’t think prohibiting guns to the insane will prevent gun violence from those who appear sane until they suddenly snap.  And then there’s the plain fact that there’s probably already enough guns out there for every citizen to have at least one. 

So, what would I do? First, make it much harder to purchase ammunition.  I think it may be easier to buy a quantity of ammo at Walmart than it is to buy spray paint.  A gun is not going to be much good without ammo (and yes, I know there would be a black market and people could make their own, but it would at least make acquisition somewhat more difficult which might delay or even stop some gun violence).  I would also ban some of the types of guns that are currently available.  I would allow small pistols, etc. for self-protection, basic rifles for hunting, guns for target shooting.  Beyond that, do we really need to generally sell the warlike weapons that are now easily available? (I do realize that there are some good arguments for a Yes answer to this question) At least make then much harder to purchase with significantly greater restrictions than the basic guns.  

That’s what I’d do, though honestly I don’t think it would make much difference. People who want to kill with guns are going to find a way to do so.  I know it is a cliché, but the problem is not the guns.  We seem to have a growing number of people in this country who see violence up to and including murder, as a way to solve problems.  We seem to have more and more people who do not value human life.  We have a country that is filled with divisiveness and anger.  It is this sickness of the soul that needs our attention far more than, or at least concurrent with, revisions to our gun laws.