Where to Begin?

I’m interrupting my current interruption (yes, I promised a few more blogs on the tribulation, which I interrupted to talk about Santa Claus) to talk about the tragedy in Connecticut.

There are several questions that come to mind when something like this happens.   We all want to know why.  Why did he do it?  Why did God allow it?  Why does our culture have so much violent crime?  Then we turn to what.  What can we do to get justice?  What could we have done to prevent this?  What can we do to stop it from ever happing again?  What should we do with our own children?  What should we tell them?  What should we do for the families who he so devastatingly affected?

I do not know the answers to all of these questions.  I do have some very well organized thoughts about self defense in general, about guns in particular, and about the public policy that surrounds both of them.

First, let me say that as humans, we are all endowed with certain inalienable rights from God.  Among these rights is the right to life.  In other words, we have a right to self defense.  The right to self defense or its assumption can be found throughout the Bible.  This may surprise some casual readers of the Bible.  For instance, one translation of the Ten Commandments admonishes, “Thou shalt not kill,” but a better translation is “murder”. In the Mosaic law, one was not punished for killing someone else in self defense.  The Israelite armies went into battle.  Capital punishment was prescribed for certain crimes.  Obviously, “murder” is what God had in mind when giving the Ten Commandments.

Some point to Jesus saying to turn the other cheek or His command for Peter to put his sword away as further evidence that the Bible does not allow for self defense.  In the first instance, Jesus is not talking about turning the other cheek after a fist punch to the face.  Rather the circumstance is a backhanded slap with the right hand on the right check of another.  This was more of an insult than an injury situation.  In the scene with Peter in the garden, note that Jesus does not reprimand Peter for having a sword (nor is there any record of people wigging out, “He’s got a sword! He’s got a sword! Ahhh!”).  Rather, He simply tells him to put it away as it wasn’t time to battle in this way.  Note that Jesus actually tells his disciples to get swords at one point.  Of course, swords were one of if not the most offensive (and defensive) weapons of Jesus’s day.  So, this would roughly equate to a gun today.  I will leave this topic for now.  If there is interest, I could work this out in more detail, but the links I’ve provided do it justice.  From here on, I will be writing from the assumption that human life is valuable and is rightly defended with force—deadly force if required.

In the past two days, we have already seen both sides of the gun control issue began to position themselves for the upcoming policy fight.  So I write to point out a few things.  First, as I’ve already noted, self defense is a God given right.  One may choose to lay his life down, but he isn’t required to do so. Second, keeping and bearing arms is a right of the people guaranteed in our Constitution.  (Justice Antonin Scalia finally closed the long debate on “militia” versus “people” a few summers ago with this opinion.)  Third, these tragedies always occur in “gun free” zones.

What I hear being whispered from the liberals is a need for stronger gun control laws.  In reality, this simply will not work.  Predators will always be drawn to the weakest victims.  The more that we declare areas as “gun free”, we ironically see an increase in violent crime there.  Post Offices, schools, some colleges, and some theaters are all “gun free”.  Instead of burying our heads in the sand and pretending as if more laws will help the criminally minded among us behave, we have to achieve peace through strength.

Yesterday, I heard some an official state that the school was now secured.  The empty hollowness of these stupid remarks cannot be written down in words.  The school needed to be secured before the madman entered.  Are those policemen going to stay there 24/7 to keep it secured?  Will there be policemen at my children’s school to secure it.  It was like a cruel joke when I heard it on the radio—“the school is now secured”.

What do I want? I want law abiding citizens to be able to carry their concealed or visible weapons where ever they go.  Where. Ever. They. Go.  Yes, I know that is odd in today’s culture.  While an armed citizen could not save everyone in one of these scenarios, he or she would at least be able to save most by putting the gunman on the defensive.  But this fact overlooks the most important element.  Law abiding citizens with the ability to defend themselves are a natural deterrent to crime.  This is key.  The mere knowledge of the presence of armed citizens actually changes the criminal mind.  He seeks a softer target.  This puts to bed the very sophomoric claims that one armed person couldn’t stop a tragedy like Columbine.  In most cases, the crime never occurs and therefore never needs to be stopped.

Of course, I will not pretend that the day when everyone has a gun is the day that violence goes away.  But, I do believe that it goes down.  Further, shooting sprees of unarmed innocents becomes a thing of the past.

Still don’t want your teacher packing heat? Here’s another way out.  Just legislate that for every “gun free” zone, a cadre of uniformed, armed guards must be provided at the facility owner’s expense (or at the expense of the government body who legislated it to be "gun free"). How many guards you ask? How about the greater of (a) 1 for every 100 people or (b) 1 for every 100 square yards of outside space plus 1 for every 50 square yards of internal space.  Too expensive you say? Ok, then let the people protect themselves.  (This last idea was mentioned to me by a friend.  I rather like it.)

This doesn’t answer those other questions above, and we need those answers too.  While I don’t know all of the answers, I do believe that I know a few.  How can we lower violent crime? Increase the number of families built around Biblical principles and committed to Jesus.  What can we do for the families hurt by this tragedy? We pray.  We pray. We pray.  Then we take meaningful actions to prevent this from happening.  Yes, our president got the words right but the intent wrong.  We need to allow each other to fight for the right to life.