What Does it Take?

Must we have Senators’ wives and sons killed in a mass shooting? Or Representatives’ husbands and daughters? Is that what it takes, and the only thing that will prompt real action?

Maybe I’m just dense.

Possibly I care too much about people, and we seem to lose an awful lot of them to gun violence. Seven mass shootings in a week. Sick.

Not being a gun freak, I’ve never bought into the (false — the Constitution does not say that) absolute gun rights BS — have I missed something extra-Constitutional that matters?

Hyper-conservatives are “originalists,” or “textualists,” not believing in adding anything to the Constitution— except, somehow, when it comes to gun “rights.” How, and why, is that so? We’ll forget for the moment that the original text of the Constitution didn’t include any Amendments at all (including the 2nd one), so the whole insistence on the “original text” is logically and legally bankrupt.

What the Second Amendment actually says is: 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.

They wrote this when we had a Militia; and when the Militia was necessary to a nascent country’s security. You will notice also, please, that it says nothing about an unfettered right to use Arms. You will also notice a mostly ignored part: well-regulated.

I won’t waste my time in a further legal discussion of the later judicial decisions that refined and clarified the 2nd Amendment in ways that do not support an absolute right viewpoint. Instead, I will simply return to my initial question: What does it take? And I think it is not really a question of “what does it take to move responsible gun control”; or “what does it take to get Congress to work together to find a way.”

I think the question is more basic, and it has little to do with political party or agenda, or lobbyist money. Those, if you will, are the outer clothing of the main issue, in my humble opinion. The real question is: what does it take to change the essence of a man (or woman)?

I’m not a huge fan of Steven Seagal, but I’ve always had in the back of my mind a scene from his movie On Deadly Ground, a scene often called The Essence of a Man. What does it take to change the essence of a man? The properly chastised bully says, “time… I need time to change.” Steven: “I do too.”

Time. We may run out of that. But even if we are not — is it not time now? If not now, when? Must we lose additional hundreds, thousands, perhaps more, people — all for an illusory absolute “right?”