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.

 

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.