Gun Rights

President Obama's announcement of proposals for legislation and executive orders on guns and related health matters was an historic moment in an historic presidency.  His speech was the most impressive mix of common sense, reasoned argument, political sense and righteous emotion that I think I've ever heard.

A number of key moments have been shown and quoted.  But I want to highlight a section that hasn't gotten a lot of attention, in which he talks about rights other than the right to own guns:

"This is the land of the free, and it always will be. As Americans, we are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights that no man or government can take away from us. But we've also long recognized, as our Founders recognized, that with rights come responsibilities. Along with our freedom to live our lives as we will comes an obligation to allow others to do the same. We don’t live in isolation. We live in a society, a government of, and by, and for the people. We are responsible for each other.

The right to worship freely and safely, that right was denied to Sikhs in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. The right to assemble peaceably, that right was denied shoppers in Clackamas, Oregon, and moviegoers in Aurora, Colorado. That most fundamental set of rights to life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness -- fundamental rights that were denied to college students at Virginia Tech, and high school students at Columbine, and elementary school students in Newtown, and kids on street corners in Chicago on too frequent a basis to tolerate, and all the families who’ve never imagined that they’d lose a loved one to a bullet -- those rights are at stake. We’re responsible."

This is what I think of when I think of rights.  The right to have a cup of coffee in a restaurant without worrying that somebody with one too many and a gun is going to take offense at how I raise my eyebrow when I read the paper.  The right to sit at my kitchen table without being blown away by a bullet fired several blocks away or a half mile away at somebody else, or at nobody at all.  The right to go to a sporting event without being shot by a fan for the other side.  Not to mention the rights of  family members to go about their lives, to go to school, to their workplace, to public buildings without being mowed down by a gun made for massacre. 

All of these are more specific instances of the most fundamental right in a civilized society: the right to live.  The right of children to grow up.  Place these next to the right for any individuals who can operate a credit card to buy whatever guns they want whenever they want them. Not a close comparison. 

These very small restrictions being proposed and attacked with ferociously mendacious rhetoric are the least a responsible society can do.  Another measure of how far we've fallen is the end of restrictions in so many states and in so many places on where people can legally carry loaded guns, concealed loaded guns.  Such restrictions have been traditional since the nineteenth century.  And now when guns are more lethal than ever, and some people are apparently more homicidal than ever, we want fewer restrictions on guns than on driving a car or transporting live plants across state borders. 

It's probably true that gun legislation will require the support of gun owners, and the wearying rhetoric of supporting the rights of people to own all the guns they want as long as they aren't capable of slaughtering 20 children in seconds.  But hello?  There are some of us out here--in fact quite a lot of us out here--who don't want guns anywhere near us.  Although it's true that a gun owner is just as likely to be killed by one of these high powered guns with especially lethal bullets, when he or she is sitting at their kitchen table.

For another point of view by another non-owner of guns, here's Josh Marshall at TPM.