Right to Life

Lessening gun violence may be politically hard to do, and even operationally a bit difficult, but the reason for it is very simple.  Gabby Giffords short statement is eloquent in so many ways.  Thanks to gun violence, she can only speak simple sentences, but more complicated ones are hardly needed.

Also very direct was another statement made on Wednesday was this one by David Wheeler, father of one of the first graders massacred in New Town, who testified before the Connecticut legislature’s Bipartisan Task Force on Violence and Public Safety.  He quoted the opening sentences of the Declaration of Independence and its assertion that governments are created to secure certain inalienable rights, and the first of these is simply "life."  The right to life of his six year old son, and of all others massacred or killed while laughing with friends, as was a girl in Chicago Wednesday who had marched in the Inaugural parade.

No one knows what Connecticut will come up with, but at least Mr. Wheeler wasn't heckled, as was another father of another slain New Town boy earlier in the week.

For the opposition by the gun profit lobby and the gun obsessed remains fierce. Giffords appeared before a Senate committee, but even the Democratic majority is already dismissing the chances of a renewed ban on assault weapons, perhaps even high capacity magazines, hoping for universal background checks as the optimal outcome.

How did we get here?  It seems obligatory for every advocate of gun regulation to pronounce a steadfast belief in the broadest interpretation of the second amendment as guaranteeing the right to own as many guns as you can acquire.  They take pains to assert they shoot guns themselves--they're hunters, or skeet shooters.

Sometimes actual hunters can add something effective to the discussion, like Rep. Mike Thompson (who had to wait until he was no longer my congressman to make a name for himself) who pointed out that right now by law, duck hunters are limited to weapons firing three rounds.  That's to protect the duck and migratory bird population.  But protecting the life of people, apparently not permitted.

But why should those who want to lessen gun violence have to crow about being gunslingers?  What's happened to this country?  I even heard that CNN Brit who is a gun control proponent describe the tradition of Americans owning guns for personal protection.  That's simply not true.  I doubt it was even true in the 18th century or in much of the country in the 19th century, and certainly not true in most of the 20th century.

When and where people hunted for food or were isolated, sure. They kept a rifle, prized for accuracy and durability.  They might keep a shotgun for heading off trouble. But town people and city people, not really.  I grew up in western Pennsylvania, when every fall I was aware of just when rabbit and pheasant and deer seasons were.  Men hunted, and took their sons.  But if any of them kept weapons "for personal protection," they didn't say so.  It just wasn't part of civilized life.

It's possible to live a full life in the U.S. and never fire a gun.  Is that so impossible to believe?  Are we that far gone?  Don't we even aspire to being a civilized people anymore?