Gun Rights Rooted in Responsibility to Defend

Last Wednesday (March 15, 2017) Governor Mead signed HB 194 “School Safety and Security” into law. That same day, he vetoed HB 137 “Repeal Gun Free Zones.” I applaud the first, but decry the veto.

This may come as a surprise to some. This pro-life, conservative, Christian is in favor of people carrying firearms into schools and into government meetings.

I have even encountered some cynics who attack my integrity. They claim that no one can honestly be pro-life while also defending the right to keep and carry weapons meant to kill a man.

Such inflammatory assertions usually pop up in Facebook memes. They are not invitations for rational dialog. But this challenge deserves a solid answer. So today let me outline a few points in reply.

First, we should dial back the rhetoric, just a tad. While I appreciate fine poetry as much as the next guy, a line from Lynerd Skynerd’s Saturday Night Special is hardly adequate to frame the debate about the Second Amendment.

“Ain’t good for nothin’ but to a put a man six feet in a hole,” does not adequately describe a concealable firearm. Hand guns are not built to kill people, but to defend them from being killed.

Designed so that their size and weight makes them easier to carry, they are more likely to be close at hand should the need arise. What kind of need? Let’s be clear. Law abiding carriers know that the only need for a firearm is when there is an imminent threat of grave bodily injury.

It is a tool of last resort to prevent grave bodily injury to yourself and others. Anybody who brandishes a weapon for any other reason is breaking the law and may be fined, jailed, or both. So, if that’s what you are worried about, relax. We already have strict laws on the books to prevent people from waving around pistols in public.

The problem is that someone who is intent on doing you grave bodily injury already is in contempt of the law and, so, is not likely to keep his own gun holstered until you threaten him. Nor is he likely to obey a state law which prohibits him from taking it into a public meeting. For those rare but real situations, the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees “the right of the people to keep and bear arms.”

Once we have dialed back the rhetoric, we are in a better position to consider this right. First, let’s consider the Constitution. Then, look at the principle behind it.

The first reason to advocate for the right to keep and bear arms is simply that this is the law of the land. We teach our children to follow the rules at school. As adults, we also follow city, state and federal laws. In the same way, we should expect and encourage our elected officials to follow the Constitution. This legal document sets boundaries on the kind of laws our elected officials can legally write, and legally enforce.

This is the rule of law, and it sure beats the chaos of tyranny. We are a constitutional government because we have seen the evils that arise when rulers have the power to say and do anything they think is right. If any elected official, or group of officials, is willing to ignore Constitutional boundaries in order to accomplish what they think is good, what principle will check their power?

C. S. Lewis wrote, “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victim may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated, but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”

At this point, someone might object and say that the 2nd Amendment was a bad idea. They may think it should be abolished, and that law-makers should have the ability to infringe upon the rights for persons to keep and carry arms.

Anybody is certainly free to think that. We even have a constitutional way to act on this thought and to amend the Constitution. But amending is lawful correction. Disregarding is lawless tyranny.

Imagine the chaos if the temperance movement had started fining and jailing people who made beer, without bothering to pass the 18th Amendment. Again, witness the corruption and murder that happened when lawmen who disagreed with the 18th Amendment disregarded it and illegally protected the mobs.

But while anybody is free to work at repealing the 2nd Amendment, I counsel caution. To do so would work against our basic humanity in a profound way.

All human beings are endowed by their creator with a deeply human impulse to help and protect those in danger. This impulse is not typically found among the higher animals. Soldiers, lawmen, EMTs, and firefighters will regularly run into harm’s way to aid the fallen. But, herds of deer and elk regularly run away from them.

When we, personally, see someone being bullied, we want to help them. We want to raise our own child to be the one that pushes through the crowd and stops the tormenter. As policy-makers, we want to find ways to provide effective tools that teachers and students can use to stop bullying whenever they see it.

We shame people who see one person abuse another and do nothing to stop it. In fact, we have laws which punish people who can do something about it, but don’t. That’s not only because it helps the person who is being abused. We can also see how dehumanizing it is to stand idly by without trying to help.

That’s the same principle involved in the 2nd Amendment. Rights are merely expressions of pre-existing responsibilities. The right to keep and bear arms was written into the Constitution because we each have a fundamental responsibility to help and protect our neighbor.

If I expect all my fellow citizens to stand up for a neighbor in danger of direct bodily harm, it becomes my own moral responsibility to equip him or her for the task. How dare I push somebody else into performing a dangerous and potentially deadly task while withholding the tools to do that task?

We all know how reprehensible it is for a government to send troops into the fight who are ill-equipped and at a disadvantage. The same goes when we want to cultivate a civilization where people help each other, no matter what the danger.

Much of the debate surrounding the 2nd Amendment is misdirected. We talk as though it were about personal rights and power. Things come into better focus when we consider our personal responsibilities to help and protect. Once we acknowledge these, our love and care for the protectors will make us desire to give them the tools they need.