Gun Violence Strikes Home

Coincidentally, the day before the Borderline mass shooting, I did a workshop on the March for Our Lives movement for colleagues on campus. The movement promoted “Turnout Tuesdays”, a key element showing that the students recognized the need to get lawmakers in place to enact reasonable gun control laws. On election day, the day of my workshop, the democrats took over the House of Representatives and we rejoiced. Just one day later, the unthinkable happened yet again, but this time the gun violence struck the community where I work and shop: Thousand Oaks.

This tragedy has happened so often in the past few years that we seem to follow an unwritten but all to familiar playbook. Our response seems routine: Identify the deceased, the survivors, the heroes, and the gunman. Conduct a full and thorough investigation into why the gunman took up arms against the innocent. Offer endless thoughts and prayers. Interview survivors and their family members.  Set up makeshift memorials at the site. Hold candlelight vigils. Hold funerals and memorial services. Lament our legislators’ inaction on sensible gun control laws. And then wait for the next incident. This year alone there has been a mass shooting nearly every day. I believe the report called this incident number 306.

One of the things I learned while doing research for my workshop was that the 2nd Amendment was never intended primarily as a means to protect ourselves from one another or to provide us with fun recreation at a target range or for hunting.  In those days, these things were pretty much taken for granted.  It’s primary intent was to ensure our liberty against a potentially tyrannical federal government. I read the writings of the founders and whether federalist or anti-federalists, they all agreed that an armed citizenry was the greatest insurance against tyranny. They believed that no despot with a federal army would dare trample upon the liberty of states rights and its citizens if they were armed with their own guns.

And that’s the issue and the point of contention with the interpretation of the 2nd Amendment. It reads: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”  Some interpret it to mean that individuals have the right to bear military style arms as part of a state militia while others believe individuals have an unfettered right to bear any and all arms.

In response to excessive gang violence in 1939 the Supreme Court ruled in Miller that was on the side of collective military gun ownership as part of a regulated militia. That decision was overturned in 2008 in the Heller case that focused instead on individual rights to own guns. So, today, the NRA spends it influence to make sure lawmakers never infringe on this individual right no matter the carnage.

They have mudded the reasons behind gun ownership in the minds of the American public. I asked my gun owner husband why the founders enacted the second Amendment in 1791 as part of the Bill of Rights and he said to hunt and protect our families. I think most Americans would give the same answer. Before my research for the workshop, that’s what I would have said. My husband used to say, no one needs an AR 15 to hunt or to protect themselves so he was against individual ownership of military weapons on that account.

Given the current president in office, I have a new found respect for the 2nd Amendment. We need to recall to mind the primary reason it was put in place. We have our state militias firmly in place. Individual citizens do not need to have military style weapons with which they can continue to terrorize other citizens. We are loosing our liberty to go to the market, the movies, a mall, a restaurant, to school, to a house of worship, to a concert or dance hall without the threat of being shot by a fellow citizen with a gun. This is not what the 2nd Amendment was intended for and its time to demand our lawmakers enact sensible laws to mitigate this threat to our actual freedoms.