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Ngorongoro Crater - photo by JoAnn Sturman
“That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.” “... when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”
---Declaration of Independence
Jefferson states the only duty of the citizen is to throw off despotic government. The Constitution was crafted in a manner to prevent the need to exercise this ultimate duty. Balance is the key: the balance of power between the branches of government, between the states and the federal government, and most importantly between the individual citizen and government. However, the Founders understood the nature of men and the intoxication of power. Democracy is not the natural state of governance; kings, emperors, and dictators are more usual, and democracy usually degenerates to authoritarianism. Without a counter balance, politicians could enslave the people they were sworn to protect. When dealing with velvet glove oppression, civil disobedience in the styles of Gandhi or King may yield a satisfactory political solution, but in the face of true totalitarians Second Amendment freedoms were needed in addition to words.
Gun control advocates, who proscribe gun ownership, are confronted with two “Al Goresque” inconvenient truths which are impossible to ignore: the Constitution’s Second Amendment and the Declaration of Independence, where Thomas Jefferson prescribed the right of the citizen to alter or abolish government.
Growing up in the Mountain West, hunting and target shooting were thought to be traditional American activities, deeply ingrained in our culture and practiced overwhelmingly by law abiding citizens. The government’s role should be to preserve these rights and to deny them to those who are a danger to their fellow citizens.
Fifty years ago there was a general feeling the police could and would protect the public, but even in these more idyllic times mass murders occasionally terrorized the nation. In 1958 Charles Starkweather and in 1966 Charles Whitman killed their mothers and then went on to slaughter innocents. Both came from two parent families, used rifles or shotguns, targeted defenseless victims, and suffered from significant psychiatric problems.
As a medical student, I spent a rotation on the lock down psychiatric unit at a veteran’s hospital and each morning made rounds on some very crazy people. Many, including John, had violent pasts, and their tranquility was due to substantial doses of Thorazine rather than psychotherapy. So each morning it was not without a degree of apprehension that I awoke this huge man dressed in his day clothes, to interview him and scribble a few notes on the medical chart.
“John, John, John,” I interrupted his sleep in a crescendo tone. Like a waking dragon from the Hobbit his eyes opened slowly. “John, how are you this morning?”
In an instant he sat bolt upright and exclaimed, “Perfect! I’m just perfect!”
This was how it was every morning. By his own testimony John was perfect, but despite the perception of perfection, there was a good reason why John had spent much of his adult life behind locked doors. Without medication and continual observation, he was a walking time bomb. Later, in the 1980s politicians decided to roll the dice and release John and many like him into the general population, hoping he would take his medication and behave himself.
In our city both the police and sheriff departments have streamlined the concealed weapons process. There is a presumption law enforcement officers realize it is no longer possible to protect the public against violent criminals who have little to fear and have become more audacious by the day. Not only do mentally ill patients mingle in the general population but dangerous criminals receive light sentences in prisons more disposed to warehousing than punishing. The height of absurdity is attained when once incarcerated, they may released prematurely, if a judge deems an over crowded jail is as an infringement of their constitutional rights. While the Founding Fathers could anticipate the politicians’ lust for power, they were far less prescient at forecasting the leniency and lunacy of the judiciary. This lack of balance and disconnection between the severity of the crime and its corresponding punishment has undermined a civil society which traditionally trusted law enforcement rather than the private citizen as the first line of personal protection.
This holiday season all but one of the 2013 movie previews dealt with an apocalyptic theme. Heavy on special effects and graphic violence, this is the stuff of Hollywood fortunes. Yet Tinsel Town is the first to deny video games and movies have anything to do with promoting violence in society. First Amendment rights are sacrosanct. It is the Second Amendment which is the problem.
History is replete with examples of how authoritarian governments best consolidate rule; the problem is far less complicated with an unarmed citizenry who trust their rulers to do the right thing. Transitions to totalitarianism can occur swiftly and in cultured, educated, and religiously based nations governed by the rule of law; one only needs to consider Germany's metamorphosis from the Weimar Republic to National Socialism to be reminded of the rapidity and completeness of the process.
With comparatively little civil unrest and few direct military attacks directed against home soil, Americans have become complacent and confident despotism is a problem found only in books and other countries. One wonders if the jack boots began kicking doors down in the middle of the night, if most Americans would respond or sit in their homes grateful the thugs only paid their neighbor a visit.
Occasionally, random gun related tragedies occur which disgust all of us. In these circumstances the same activists, who abandoned all pretext of common sense and wrote the laws which allowed criminals to run amok and federal powers to expand, demand the public disregard the advice of Jefferson and Madison and exchange constitutional rights for promises and hope.
After visiting Cambodia last month, it became evident what happens if a lunatic has all the guns and a willingness to use them. In three years from 1976 - 1979 Pol Pot brought the Killing Fields to this sleepy, agrarian country and slaughtered two million people, 20% of the population and the equivalent of 62 million in the United States. “Disagree and you’re an enemy. Resist and you’re a dead man” was the rule. But, of course, that could never happen here - not in a million years.
