Jun 26
McCain’s gun blasphemy
I have no intention of disputing the second amendment to the US constitution. If Americans wish overall to live in a society which encourages the possession of easy means of slaughtering one another to be seen as a citizen’s right, then they’re free to do so (or not to do so).
However to many of us outside the US, John McCain’s welcome of today’s Heller ruling by the Supreme Court combines stupidity and blasphemy in equal measure.
today’s ruling recognizes that gun ownership is a fundamental right – sacred, just as the right to free speech and assembly.
It is hard to argue that the possession of a weapon whose earliest portable predecessor dates from around the 13th century is a “fundamental right” on a level with free speech and assembly. If it is a fundamental right, then surely the government should make sure every citizen is equipped with one, presumably free of charge, and only stripped of it after due legal process. part of the same process that restricts constitutional liberty.
But to go on and describe this “right” as sacred in a country that claims to follow the crucified one is to move beyond stupidity and into blasphemy.
June 27th, 2008 at 3:24 am
doug,
i love your perspective. i agree completely. we somehow have made guns synonomous with “christian” in America, which is sad. we believe in the “sacred” right to own them, and the dutifull obligation to use them against the rest of the world. unfortunately, Christ told Peter to put away the sword, something we often forget.
peter
June 27th, 2008 at 3:41 am
“make sure every citizen is equipped with one, presumably free of charge” - sounds like a campaign slogan to me.
However, is it really so hard to figure out how this aspect of American culture - love of guns - coheres with the rest, both in good and bad ways? I really wasn’t planning on posting on this, but maybe someone should.
June 27th, 2008 at 6:38 am
I was in Houston, Texas when the Virginia Tech massacre took place. The general rhetoric in the media was amazing and worrying, but the people I was staying with and mixing with had been talking about the problems with gun ownership more or less since I had arrived in the country, without any prompting from me. (I was trying to ignore the fact that anyone I was talking to might well have a concealed weapon.) There is a significant minority, even in the Lone Star State, of Americans who don’t agree with McCain.
June 27th, 2008 at 1:11 pm
doug–
the u.s. as a country does not claim to follow the crucified one. rather, it claims to separate church and state.
but there are oodles of individual gun owners who do claim to follow the crucified one, and some of them hold offices of governance. and that is perplexing and hypocritical.
June 27th, 2008 at 8:43 pm
I’m not McCain Mind Reader but I suspect he believes in the right to “keep and bear arms” as stated in the U.S. Constitution. The right was meant to ensure people could defend themselves and their loved ones against crime and tyranny. In the 13th century this obviously would not have included firearms, but in the 21st century, it would be a meaningless right unless it included firearms.
You might as well criticize Americans for believing in “freedom of press” when the printing press was not invented until the 15 century. Heck, firearms preexisted the printing press.
June 28th, 2008 at 7:02 am
Doug,
I completely agree that the fundamental right (”inalienable” and “endowed by [our] Creator”) to own a piece of technology is complete nonsense and according it the respect and sacrosanctness of freedom of speech and religion is patently offensive.
That’s to say nothing of the moral problem of a machine that makes holes in other humans so that their brains don’t get oxygen.
While I am not a legal scholar, from my understanding of politics and morality, this decision was a disappointment.
-JAK
July 1st, 2008 at 11:20 pm
Well, the sword is a device that makes gashes and holes in other humans so that they will bleed out, but in proper contexts Paul has no problem identifying it as being associated with God ordained responsibilities.
“for it is a minister of God to you for good. But if you do what is evil, be afraid; for it does not bear the sword for nothing; for it is a minister of God, an avenger who brings wrath on the one who practices evil.”
July 2nd, 2008 at 8:44 am
Chris, Paul is very specifically talking about the state maintaining peace and civil order. This could (just about) be used as part of an argument to justify the original constitutional provision when in a time of very limited state power and general unease, the speed with which a militia could be raised was a key way of preserving peace through self-defence. But reading either Paul or the Constitution as though they have no historical context is just bad interpretation. Paul’s point is precisely that the Roman individual should not seek their own justice, because God has given the power of the sword not to the individual but the state, and while I don’t think it is in any straightforward way applicable directly, if it says anything to the situation it goes in the opposite direction to the simplistic use you’ve tried to put it to.
July 2nd, 2008 at 11:24 pm
Doug,
Doug, you do not understand the use to which I was putting the verse. I would apologize for the misunderstanding but I think I was pretty clear.
The point was not that Paul was a Second Amendment buff, but that it is silly to claim Senator McCain is a blasphemer because he thinks there is a right to own something designed to kill human beings (a la the reference to a machine designed to make holes in people comment).
July 2nd, 2008 at 11:34 pm
And exactly where does Paul even hint that individuals have rights to own things that have been designed by other people at all? I disagree with McCain for saying that gun-ownership was a “right”, and said that calling it a “sacred right” was a blasphemy. I can’t see where I misunderstood your argument at all. Paul is talking about the state’s vocation, you are talking about individual rights.