Gun Wars: Why the Right to Bear Arms Trumps a Child’s Right to Life, Liberty and Happiness.

Gun Wars. Why the Right to Bear Arms Trumps a Child's Right to Life, Liberty and Happiness.

Prologue:
Over a hundred and seventy years ago, Justice Green of the Tennessee State Supreme Court in the opinion for Aymette v. State, 21 Tenn. (2 Hump.) 154 (1840) wrote:

"Suppose it were to suit the whim of a set of ruffians to enter the theatre in the midst of the performance, with drawn swords, guns, and fixed bayonets, or to enter the church in the same manner, during service, to the terror of the audience, and this were to become habitual; can it be that it would be beyond the power of Legislature to pass laws to remedy such an evil? Surely not....It is true, it is somewhat difficult to draw the precise line where legislation must cease and where the political right begins, but it is not difficult to state a case where the right of legislation would exist." Aymette v. State, 21 Tenn, (2 Hump.) 154 (1840)

Introduction: 
In the immediate aftermath of the Sandy Hook elementary school massacre, while We, The People, tip-toed warily around the precipice of the battle pitting the right of access by private citizens to firearms of virtually any make, measure and killing capacity against the right of that same citizenry to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, I began trying to identify the reasons why this nation is so inherently unable and unwilling to commit to a meaningful course of action to limit the routine carnage of gun violence that infests our cities, towns and villages.

Cataloging the underlying causes of our collective propensity for gun violence led to an examination of many tributaries but to only one principal conclusion: the sum cost in human lives, including those of our own children, are held in far less regard than the national and global need to sustain the profiteering motives of munitions manufacturers and their associated "Masters of War".

What follows is a personal rumination, of who and what is behind this and why they are winning every battle.

Gun Wars, Part One

Adam Lanza's mother loved her son.

Adam Lanza's mother also loved guns. She owned several, including automatic weapons, all of which she purchased legally.

Adam Lanza's mother taught Adam Lanza to love guns.  He used one of those guns to murder his mother in her sleep. Then, he turned his attention to Sandy Hook Elementary School.

In the hellfire Adam Lanza unleashed inside Sandy Hook, 28 lives ended, including a special needs teacher, a librarian and the school principal who tried to protect the 20 slaughtered innocent children. 

Adam Lanza may have departed this corporeal sphere, but Adam Lanza is not gone.  He is merely unseen, cloaked in shadows, silently waiting until his demons summons him once again.  For while Adam Lanza may be as devoid of life as his victims, multitudes of his kindred tortured spirits walk among us every day.

And so, we mourned and celebrated the innocent dead. Then, we turned and cravenly inched away to await the next assault on our humanity. 

 After each such tragedy, whether on a nuclear scale or a mundane single bolt rifle and scope capable of  blowing a man's head off  at 100 yards, those who oppose the proliferation of weapons rage, despair or muster shrugs of resignation over the needless dead for whom light will shine no more.

We look for clues within. Some insist the blame is not with the weapons per se, but with the untended, untreated mentally ill, whose unchecked madness runs amok. Is the woefully and perpetually underfunded mental health system to blame for the failure to identify, intercept and treat those with a predisposition for violence, even those whose acts have not yet made them criminal or is this a false reading of the situation and solution and no more than a simple delusion?

Before we blithely accept the premise that mass murder by demented individuals wielding handguns is a recent phenomenon, I submit for consideration, one Gilbert Twigg.

On August 13, 1903, Mr. Twigg, being without the advantage of an assault weapon, chose instead to arm himself with a 12 gauge double-barreled shot gun.  He loaded each shell with twelve bullets and opened fire into a crowd of what news reports at the time described as, "promenading people gathered at an outdoor concert."  Mr. Twigg killed 9 innocents and wounded another 25 before killing himself.  The accounts of the incident are quite graphic, including depictions of certain of the dead and dying clutching at their own brains or rather, the remains of same, seeping through their shattered skulls.

What are we conclude from this?  That madmen filled with tortured souls and minds unanchored from reality are more likely to commit murder?That, if we curb access by the mentally ill from firearms, the spiritual descendants of Adam Lanza and Gilbert Twigg will no longer roam among us visiting their vengeance whenever they choose?  

While none possessed of human grace can truly understand the nature of a depraved heart or diseased mind, we may, with some measure of confidence place mental illness, with all its' vested caveats, on the list of causation, This leaves us still with the interminable and unattractive question of what to do about it - and ultimately whether we truly care. 

But the fingers of blame far outnumber those pointed at the mentally ill. There are forces operating with far more cunning and calculation than that which exists within any one human being. 

Pitted against the the hue and cry to legislate our private arsenals we hear the countervailing rationale:  if the Principal had only been armed with an assault rifle, invoking familiar scenarios of western legend.

Following a politic week of silence after Sandy Hook, The National Rifle Association shamelessly issued public declarations expressing their collective grief and, in a breathtaking display of audacity offered their analysis and solution, blaming the purveyors of violent video games, movies and television shows that celebrate violence as a common, everyday occurrence, despite the the fact that we have been presented with depictions of casual murder and violence as a way of life for as long as any alive can remember.

The NRA has coined a cliche to inflame the national rhetoric:"The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun". They urged us to join in their proposed National School Shield Program to protect our children by "the only line of defense that tested and proven to work." This "solution" includes placing armed guards within schools. 

The NRA further responded by offering 70% discounts on lifetime memberships and their membership ranks swelled. 

President Obama said the nation should be ashamed of its inability to get tougher gun restrictions through Congress in the aftermath of shootings that have become commonplace in this country. "Our levels of gun violence are off the charts', he said. "There is no advanced, developed country on Earth that would put up with this" noting that most members of Congress are "terrified" of the NRA.

In the weeks and months and now years that have followed Sandy Hook, the carnage has continued unabated. Since that day, there have been at least 74 more shootings at schools throughout the country. Some have been celebrated, many ignored among growing numbing indifference.

There is another far larger and more sinister factor fueling the daily carnage beyond the isolated and estranged "bad" actors, beyond the millions of dollars fueling the lobbying efforts of the NRA. That is the military-industrial complex which Dwight Eisenhower warned against decades ago. These global corporate interests manufacture and distribute military weapons world wide, creating a permanent war time economy that has proliferated and provided private citizens with ready access to weapons designed and intended solely for mass murder. The defense industry that manufactures and distributes these weapons employs millions of US. That means, "jobs, jobs, jobs" for millions of American families and billions of dollars annually into the coffers of defense contractors. 

That is the singular fact that reduces the slaughter of babies, children, and so many more of US to the status of collateral damage.

As we endure the ongoing murderous assault and trail of broken hearts and souls, let us step back, survey the carnage and ask ourselves just who we really are as a people and how we got this way. The sad answer may be as simple as, this is who we are and this is what we do.

December, 2012