Freedom is a funny thing.
It’s one and it’s many. It’s
simple and it’s incredibly complex. It’s
huge and it’s microscopic. It’s
wonderful and it’s horrific. If you are
stuck in traffic and are going to miss the traditional family caroling
adventure, then it feels as if it was right there in your hands and has been
snatched away. If you are in a field of
flowers on a sunny day and can see all the way to the horizon and seemingly
beyond, there are no limits to it. If
you are in a political science class or, god forbid, a Constitutional Law
class, it is under the microscope and divided up and dissected in innumerable
ways. When you see your letter to the
editor in the local paper or can go to the local polling place and vote for the
first African American President, it is truly beautiful. When you learn that five year old children have been
shot to death in their classroom, it is so ugly it is hard to accept.
Freedom is an amazing and wonderful thing, but like most
amazing and wonderful things it is incomplete, imperfect, and capable of disappointing
and hurting us. No one is truly
free. It just isn’t possible. Fundamentally, if I am perfectly free than
you are not. My freedom is not
independent of yours. My freedom isn’t
even fully compatible with yours. The
freedom that exists in a world of independent individuals is illusory, so we
have all agreed to give it up. We have
decided that there are particular freedoms that are important, so we surrender
other freedoms to come together to protect those that are most important … most
fundamental. Even within a society, however,
the freedoms we seek to protect can clash. So, we are forced to negotiate about how our freedoms will intersect and interact. That is why no freedom is absolute. That is why our government can impinge on any
freedom, even the most fundamental, if there is a good enough reason. My freedom to say whatever I want can be limited
if it puts you in harm’s way. My freedom of movement is restricted by your
right to have property and privacy.
So, this begs the question, on a day when we mourn the lives
of children gunned down in their classroom by a man using guns that his
mother legally owned and might have purchased at Walmart, why do we act as if your right to own a
gun trumps everything else, including my right to live and breathe? It really is pretty simple. The imposition on my freedoms and rights of
your being able to own an assault rifle or purchase a gun at Walmart without
going through an extensive background check, mental health evaluation, and
training regimen is just way too great. It
is not justified by a cultural connection to hunting, by a Constitutional Amendment
aimed at maintaining an active militia, by a crime ridden neighborhood, or by a
powerful lobby.
Freedom can be a hard thing to grasp … a hard thing to deal
with. Dead children are hard
things to deal with too. Putting limits
on people’s freedom to own and operate guns, however, should not be hard at
all.
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