Chapter II: The Half-Way Point

This morning I saw the transcript of a Piers Morgan's "interview" (read: demoralization) of Larry Pratt, the Executive Director for Gun Owners of America. I have also seen pro-gun rumblings, no longer stifled by the fog of tragedy, reappear on social media and in conversation. In yet another attempt to continue entertaining alternative perspectives on gun control, I read, listened and thought deeply about the overarching opinions that these comments and conversations yielded. And if I understand correctly, people are slowly and quietly standing back up about their right to privately pack heat for self-defense. 

Now some have taken a milder approach, alluding to situations where average citizens have successfully protected themselves and their families from criminals by employing a hand gun or average magazine rifle. And in all honesty, as much as I would love to see fire arms eradicated from private ownership for good and forever, I accept that individuals want, and sometimes need, their smaller, yet still powerful guns by their sides. To be clear, I still see the blatant risk for these guns being out on the streets, as even when owned for the sake of self-defense, these weapons can end up in the wrong hands. And even with their lower bullet-firing capacity, they can still be used by criminals to wrongfully kill innocent people. But I am also aware that owning a gun is not just a source of pride or the signature of a potential criminal, but is oftentimes the one thing that helps a parent sleep soundly at night - the one thing capable of saving lives in otherwise lethal situations. Even with the many economical arguments made about the lack of a correlation between gun ownership and gun crime, as humans this notion simply makes sense.

Yet, what has disturbed me about the pro-gun rumblings that have loudened in the past day or two, are those people who refuse to see the value in at least minimizing the level of fire power in the guns that are available to the general public. There are people in powerful places who are blinded by principles and precedents – the right to bear arms, the right to protect ourselves from crime and tyranny – and thus cannot see that we are in a world where the results of political decision-making are conditional. That sweeping statements and bold, un-caveated bills no longer work because there's no such thing as self-moderation anymore in this world embattled by extremes. And while we trust ourselves not to walk into an elementary school with powerful, military-grade, high magazine guns that were purchased legally for recreational shooting and self-defense, can we really trust each other? If recent history – and by that I mean 2012 alone – is any indication, then the answer is a resounding "no."

Which is why we must meet half-way. There has to be a compromise where people can practice their 2nd amendment rights, but be limited to arms of a lesser degree. Arms that will work to stop an intruder, protect against an attacker and – as much as it pains me to say – kill your Thanksgiving turkey fresh from the prairie all by yourself. But not ones that are capable of taking dozens of lives in a matter of minutes. Not ones that are so quick and so powerful that they are used by our military to kill insurgents and would render anyone faced with their barrels incapacitated long before they could draw their own gun in self-defense. 

I hope those who lean more "pro-gun" can see that eliminating everyone's access to these high magazine assault weapons will only help even the balance of power in the citizen vs. criminal scenario they so vehemently fear. Because I believe the majority of people out there, as much as it pains their moral consciences, agree that in many cases there's no time to wait for a policeman or to wield a more conventional weapon to protect against an attacker. The inability for those brave, selfless teachers and administrators at Sandy Hook Elementary to stop the gunman with their bare hands is all of the proof we should need.

A Time to Burn Some Bridges

Throughout my time as a student of political science, I learned the value of not taking political sides on issues unless you really believe in them. It makes it easier to engage in debate when you aren't necessarily sold on a perspective. It compels you to dig into things like political principle, moral guidance and religious history when you haven't yet found your place on either side of a line. 

And then one day it dawns on you that you have in fact chosen a side. That as hard as you've entertained all the angles of an issue with your mind, your heart has chosen an opinion for you. Sometimes this realization comes on slowly – with every debate on the issue, you find yourself more readily able to concoct a rebuttal to points made in defense of what soon becomes the opposing perspective. Or sometimes it happens with a bang – a breaking news alert that something has gone terribly awry and a certain perspective on the issue can be blamed.

I for one am a child of the former when it comes to gun control. With every gun incident in the news, be it victimless or classifiably mass murder, every interview on Fox News, every congressional hearing and every bar stool debate, I've become more and more obsessed with the issue.With every passing day, it consumes me because with so many detrimental things on this planet that we as Americans cannot directly control – civil wars that aren't ours to fight, the manifestation of unbeatable diseases in our loved ones – I feel we should know better than to sit idle in the face of ones we can.

Then there are the victims of the latter – the ones who cannot wrap their heads around something that seems so obvious to others simply because there's nothing real to hold onto beyond our Constitutional right to bear arms. They have been distracted by other wars while the smaller domestic one on gun violence more quietly blips on the radar around our country. They have been overwhelmed by partisan thought-leaders, often influenced by pro-gun lobbies, to the point where they cannot prioritize the tragedy of untimely bullet-induced deaths over the threat of re-adapting our founding fathers' words to better suit our times. 

I choose the word victims for these people because they are not to blame for their fate. We all have our own minds that work in their own mysterious ways. And as someone who rarely feels compelled to take a side on an issue, I completely understand how easy it is to feel paralyzed and overstimulated by our political landscape. 

But in the wake of the heinous tragedy that took 27 lives in Connecticut last week, one that was brought on by a citizen's ability to obtain a high magazine assault rifle, that citizen's subsequent choice to expose their mentally disabled child to that rifle and that mentally disabled child's resulting access to and ability to effectively use that rifle, we no longer have a choice. There is no longer an option. We - You - can't sit this one out. 

We are citizens of a nation that values life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and there is no way to reconcile those values with the rapid, vicious slaughter of 20 pre-schoolers and their defenseless teachers. Even down to the granular, Constitutional law level of this debate, there is simply no argument supporting that this is what our founding father's would have wanted. Not just because of the nature of the murders and the many other senseless ones we've witnessed as of late, but because they never would have defended our nation had they thought we would decimate ourselves so heinously from within 200 years later. It wouldn't have been worth the fight. 

If there is a silver lining to this darkest of hours in America, it is this: We have now seen everyone from congressional leaders to defenseless pre-schoolers find themselves in the cross-hairs of preventable evil. And if people really are the ones who kill these people, then there has never been a more obvious moment to burn the bridges between those people and their guns.