Freedom and Firearms

The one freedom our founding fathers did not want or guarantee is the freedom from responsibility. For the same reason that God's love compels Him to allow us to have the freedom to make bad choices, our freedom comes with an innate responsibility.

God loves us, and yet bad things happen. When God created the world, he had a choice. Did He want us to be robotic automatons with no will of our own who would love Him unconditionally because He told us to, or did He want us to love Him because we chose to love Him? He gave us choice. Unfortunately, with the freedom to choose comes the freedom to choose the wrong thing. God is a God of love, but He is also a just God, and a good God. He loves us enough to give us freedom, but with that freedom comes consequences. Because we have chosen wrong, our choices have consequences, and those consequences impact not only ourselves, but others.

What does any of that have to do with the current debate on gun control? Just like our freedom to chose is innately linked to being able to choose the wrong thing and face the consequences of our choice, so the freedoms envisioned by our founding fathers comes with responsibility. If we want freedom, we accept the responsibility to defend our freedom and the freedom of those weaker than us when that freedom is challenged. If we demand that the government care for our every need and keep us safe from every bad thing out there, we willingly abdicate our freedom. There may be an illusion of freedom, but once we turn our well-being over to someone else, it becomes their responsibility, and they must do everything in their power to protect us, including protecting us from ourselves. For example, if we determine we want the government to keep us safe on the roads, it becomes the government's responsibility to set and enforce rules that everyone must abide by. Is that a bad thing? Not necessarily, but you need to understand that you have surrendered your freedom to drive whatever you want at whatever speed you want to. You're trading that freedom to the government in exchange for them doing their best to keep you safe. We may use the roads, but it is no longer on our terms, it is on the government's, and if it decides we are abusing the priviledge, they can revoke it. If we want the government to keep us safe from guns, we give up the freedom to own them. The government can say "OK, if you want me to protect you, you're going to have to give me your guns. Otherwise, I can't keep you safe," and it would be right. The only way for a government to protect its people is to remove the danger from them. It is impossible to be free and irresponsible. It is impossible to be free and demand someone else keep you safe. With each area where we demand the government protect us, we surrender one more aspect of our freedom. You want protection from violent crime, muggings, and rape? We can almost completely eliminate them. Just surrender your freedom to move about unattended. We'll set up a system of armed patrols who will escort groups of people where they need to go. Anyone not in a group with a patrol will be assumed to be up to nefarious purposes and will be detained or shot on sight.

This is not the philosophy that our founding fathers espoused. They wanted us to have freedom. They wanted the ability to determine the course of their own lives, free from government intervention. They knew that with the freedoms they envisioned, came certain innate responsibilites. We have the responsibility to be informed of the current issues and to vote responsibly, holding our elected officials accountable for their actions. We rail against politicians, but who puts them in power, and who keeps them there? People can be broken into three categories, sheep, wolves, and shepherds. Sheep have no responsibility. They are cared for and protected by the shepherd. He makes sure they have water and food and are free from danger. They also have no freedom. They can move around in the area the shepherd designates, and they can eat the food and drink the water he provides, but they are not free to leave his care. Wolves have decided to put their individual desires above everyone else, and they do whatever is in their power to impose their will on others. They're not satisfied with the portion alloted to them, they want their neighbor's portion as well. There is no way for a sheep to stand up to a wolf. The sheep can't resist, it can't fight back. It depends on the shepherd to save it. The shepherd is responsibile for the safety of the entire herd. He protects it and cares for it, but he also decides what is best for it. The shepherd has the freedom of choice, but the responsibility of care. In most nations of the world, the general populace are the sheep. Those who have decided to throw off the rules of polite society and take what they want are the wolves, and the police, army and government are the shepherds. When the wovles attack, the sheep bleat and cower in fear, demanding thicker walls and more protections, and it is the shepherd's responsibility to step in and ensure that safety. The founding fathers rejected this principle. They envisioned a nation not of sheep, but of shepherds. Everyone would have freedom, but they would also have the responsibility that went along with it.

The freedom to bear arms, and the responsibility that freedom brings are innate to our way of life. That freedom forms the foundation of many others, including our freedom from oppressive governments. The shocking truth of the matter is, the second ammendment has nothing to do with hunting. In the days it was written, hunting wasn't a sport, it was a means of survival. It would have been unheard of for the government to step in and ban hunting. The second ammendment was put in place to protect our right to overthrow an oppressive government. We like to espouse the checks and balances of our government, and how each branch balances and keeps the other two from over reaching. We have forgotten that there is one other check and balance in place. The founding fathers wanted to ensure that it would not be an easy thing for the government to overreach and errode the freedoms they had fought for, and that many had died to secure. They wanted to ensure that there was a well armed populace in place who would be able to stand up to tyranny wherever it was found. They expected us to love those freedoms just as passionately as they did, so that we would be willing to lay down our lives before we laid down our freedom, no matter who threatened it. They never expected that any segment of the population would be begging for those freedoms to be taken away so they wouldn't have to deal with the inherent responsibility.