Gun Laws: The Limit of Freedom

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union…”

The preamble of our Constitution starts with a plural subject, “we the people.”  It goes on to specify the reasons for the document. Domestic tranquility. Justice. Defense. General welfare. The purpose is to move a group of individuals to covenant together for the greater good. While maintaining individual rights, there’s the understanding that there will be sacrifices by some for the welfare of all.

However, our nation may be moving away from the collective “We” to the individual “I.”

The mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton, on the weekend of August 3-4, 2019, elicited the pleas for tighter gun control laws. And once again came the familiar response. “Guns don’t kill people; mentally ill people kill people.”

Such a response reflects the not so subtle shift of moving from “We the people” to “I the individual.” My rights are more important than collective rights. Why should I sacrifice my individual freedom?

In actuality, our nation is mentally ill if it mistakes the right to bear arms with the right to bear weapons meant for the battlefield and not for a Wal-Mart. We are mentally ill if we say that my right to shoot an assault rifle is more important than sacrificing that right if it keeps one more drop of innocent blood from staining the sidewalk in a future Dayton or El Paso.

As the early church was forming, it was vital to focus on the collective good. It was understood that people would give up some of their freedoms if it promoted the well-being of others.  The early leader Paul counseled, “You were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only don’t let this freedom be an opportunity to indulge your selfish impulses, but serve each other through love” (Galatians 5:13). You have to give up the freedom to be selfish in order to be loving.

The same is true for our nation. It might be fun to shoot an AK-47. I’ll never touch one again, though, if that’s what it takes to keep it out of the hands of the disturbed. That is serving our fellow Americans.

Too many in our society dreamily believe that freedom means freedom from restraint. In reality, freedom means choosing restraint if it promotes the greater good. That greater good, in turn, can promote a wider freedom: the freedom to go into an Ohio restaurant without fear of being shot.

Our nation is still very much in its experimental stage. Will a nation based on democracy really work? It will only if the citizens embrace the real purpose of freedom: to form a more perfect union.