My thoughts

With everyone weighing in on the recent tragedy in Connecticut, I feel a need to post some of my thoughts related to the escalating gun violence of our culture. I do not believe my views will be popular nor do I expect them to accepted on any kind of scale by anyone. These are simply my thoughts as related to social and cultural issues in our country. Like all people willing to write their views, my opinions are an amalgamation of my experiences, my education, and my perception, flawed though these may be.

I am a gun owner and at various times have been a hunter of sorts. Not a very good hunter, I have missed more times than I have hit anything, but I do love to be outdoors. Feeling a little silly wearing camouflage and hiking to a deer blind hoping to hit the next big buck, I recently have shifted my attentions from hunting to walking and running. Plus I realized that I did not enjoy gutting a deer and the meat is not particularly inviting to my taste buds any longer. The feeling of loading a gun and pulling a trigger is somewhat cathartic I suppose and in a primitive sense rather masculine, after all we men do tend to enjoy aggressive activities, but at this stage in my life, I have no real need to express my masculinity through a gun or shooting an animal. As far as animal rights, I maintain that we have dominion over the animals and have a right to govern them when necessary. On the other hand, I choose to leave them alone and allow them the privilege of living in my world without interference from me. My ongoing battle with dogs chasing me while running continues to add to my lack of love for animals, and yet, I get no particular joy out of harming an animal and generally prefer to leave them alone unless they are harming me.

I do recall as a young hunter the pleasure of shooting down rabbits, ducks, geese, deer, and the great joy of shooting a coyote. All good stuff for sure. Today when I hit a squirrel or a deer while driving down the highway, I feel a certain amount of sadness for a short length of time. But I soon recover and go on about my business. My point of mentioning these things is to say that I am not an extremist regarding hunting nor animal rights in any sense. If people wish to hunt animals, that is fine and I wish them well. For me, I have mostly but not entirely lost interest in the process (I better not totally shut the door to the idea of hunting again!).

But I should point out that our country has had a long history of conquering, of survival, of rugged individualism as we fought with man, beast, and nature to build our homes, our cities, our highways, and our superstructures. We could not be where we are without knives, guns, and the assertive muscle needed to progress our culture and make our society better. When a plot of land gets cleared, it requires obliteration of certain things that previously existed--top soil, plants, grass, insects, rocks, and anything else in the way. Clearing land is a very aggressive action. But sometimes we have to clear the land completely to start again and build a home--a home for family, for peace, for love, and for comfort. The Pilgrims cleared the land, Daniel Boone cleared the land, our nation did some clearing in the Civil War, Custer tried to clear the land, and the Industrial Revolution cleared the land. Elvis Presley did some clearing when he inadvertently helped integrate the races in the late 50s and early 60s. And although we still have work to do on integration in our country, we have also made great strides in the last 50 years. We are culturally battling our flaws and slowly but surely addressing our philosophical and economic responsibilities with regard to health care, welfare, employment, and equality.

We give lip service to our egalitarian and opportunistic culture but we continue to see our rights infringed upon in many different ways. While we recognize the problems, we are not always sure how much more "clearing" of the land needs to occur. Does clearing involve more governmental interference or less? Does the obesity of our government affect our lives directly and cause us to lose our personal freedoms and our desire for rugged individualism that has defined our civilization in America?

I love freedom and will never let go of the dream for all to be free. Yet freedom is closely related to responsibility and true freedom should never result in the loss of freedom of another individual. When one person's freedom is another person's straitjacket, it is not freedom. When our freedom to own and fire guns affects people's freedom to be alive, it is not freedom. As we examine the issues of gun control, I hope that we do not look to the government to solve our societal ills, but, instead, we look within ourselves for a solution.

In my imagined Utopian civilization (my Platonic city), there is such a high regard for human life, for dignity, for the human spirit of responsibility, for education, and for ubiquitous love, that no thoughts of violence, harm, or damage to anyone can possibly exist. In other words, I desire a sinless, perfect world of beauty, joy, and selfless service. I desire a world where there is no need for a gun and where aggression is unnecessary, where imperialism is a mystery, and tyranny only a myth reserved for science fiction.

Those who battle relentlessly for freedom and for the world I desire are to be commended; and yet it is imperative to keep in mind that humans are inherently selfish, often devoid of compassion, fearful and unforgiving. Our sensitivities are equal to our intolerance and our capacity for love is as great as our capacity for hate. Our history of caring for the indigent is pitiful but our history of perpetuating violence on each other is nearly limitless. Our love of seeing horror, of watching pain, of smashing, pounding, of terror, and violence is astounding and abjectly disgusting at all levels. Based on our history and our fascination with violence on television and in movies, we are a potentially sick society sometimes awash in disdain for human life and lacking in proper behavior and conduct. In summation, it seems as though we want to be good but are bad. We want to love, but we hate. We want to have peace, but we continually go to war. For example, we worry about the injured football player, but cheer when we see a hard hit on the field. We are not a society that fully embraces the rights of people to live safely, equally, and violence-free. We do not teach the sanctity of life. Instead, in the abstract, we tend to glorify death in movies and in entertainment.

Our books, our televisions, our movies, and, sadly, sometimes certain facets of our education reside on the infliction of pain. The more we are exposed to it, the more we accept it. The more we accept it, the more we love it, and the more we treat pain as a normal part of our existence. I like to think that in my Christian world, we consider human life as special and work to love it with all its triumphs and challenges. As Christians, I hope we dedicate ourselves to treating other people with kindness, compassion, love, and redemption. And yet, I have to wonder if we really do?

I recall an instance of an audience member who took great offense at a scene in a theatre production that implied adultery from one of the characters. The teacher wrote a scathing diatribe against the moral position that was being presented to the audience. Please understand that I do not subscribe to nor will I ever condone adultery. And yet, in spite of a certain sensitivity to his feelings, I wondered how he would accept violence on the stage. A few months later, I received my answer when the same audience member watched Medea on stage. In this play, a mother brutally kills her own children to display her feelings of anger toward her husband who had abandoned her. In the play we heard the cries of children and saw the blood on her tunic. Her madness was disturbing but also sadly normal for a tragedy of this type. Curious as to the response of the disgruntled audience member, I awaited the inevitable letter of objection to the violence. But I waited in vain since it never arrived. By his silence, the attender chose death and murder as preferred over adultery. It is considered a strong moral position to be against sexual content while embracing violence, but it truly makes no consistent nor logical sense. Is it fair to make a stand against sexual promiscuity while abusing others with our words or our actions? A moral life is a life of complete goodness, a life of compassion, and a life of giving value to people. A moral life is not one that loves violence but hates promiscuity. It may be time to redefine personal excellence, integrity, and morality. Rather than morality being a cafeteria where we pick and choose those traits we deem as pure, perhaps it is time to think of morals in terms of their effects on the value of life.

We are not robots and we make our own choices in our lives, and yet we are still products of our upbringing and our culture. The history of our country demonstrates a high regard for violence as a solution for all things, and, yes, we are a strong country today because of the violence that occurred in our past. But when is enough, enough? When will we truly make the giant step toward refinement, toward a civilized world, toward egalitarianism, and toward peace? When will we teach the value of the sanctity of life and learn that there is no joy in pain, in horror, in death? When will we put the guns aside and replace them with exercise, with discipline, with wisdom, and with love? Will it take 100 years, 200, 500 years for us to reach a point in our world where there is no place for guns or violence of any kind?

Yes, I do know the arguments and find them to be sound. Those of us who live in the country surrounded by wild animals must have a way for self-protection. I am also sensitive to the need for individual defense and for a man to protect his family. There is also the pure enjoyment factor of firing a gun, and, true, guns don't kill people, people kill people, and, yes, cars kill more people than do guns. I, furthermore, do not plan to destroy my guns nor to sell them, making me a part of the problem and not part of the solution. But I can still imagine a world for my grandchildren and their grandchildren that is free from guns and subsequently violence. We are many generations away from such a world but there are things we can do today. And so...as I sigh a big sigh...guns are here to stay, at least for now.

As I write this controversial essay, I am perusing articles demanding that teachers arm themselves and receive training in handling a gun. There is even talk in our state for mandated arms handling in our education system. Amazing to me that the response to guns is to increase the number of guns. And most people will say that a responsible use of firearms and a nationalized identification system of all those with assault weapons is the solution. As we arm our leaders, we believe we are putting weapons in the hands of those who can be trusted. Maybe we think we are creating a bunch of Wyatt Earps? It is sort of fun to address our primitive side and imagine blowing away the culprit who is trying to harm our children. In fact, I kind of enjoy the idea of the good guys getting the bad guys--great fun and has a positive ending.

And yet, do we truly desire a gigantic O.K. Corral in our world? Is this part of the grand design of being an American? I love our country and feel blessed to be a citizen of this great land, but having lived in the United Kingdom, I must say that I felt safer in England than I feel in the United States. The number of gun-related deaths in the United States compared with the United Kingdom is shocking. While we do not have the highest rate in the world, we are near the top in most categories. Guns usage is very rare and generally forbidden in the United Kingdom, a country with a vast history of violence in its past. The United Kingdom is an older, more established world than the United States and, therefore, a more refined society. They are not "clearing" land any longer. They are done, and their progress is not as industrial oriented but, instead, is economic, technological, and commuter-oriented. Theirs is far from a perfect world, and I could write about plenty of social ills in the United Kingdom; but the facts remain that their gun-free world results in very few violent gun-related deaths.

Back to movies, books, and entertainment in general. The free market drives our preferences (at least that is the way it should work!) and we, as a culture, obviously prefer to read about, to see, to imagine violence on other people. We need to curb our demand within ourselves for violence and replace it with something less harmful. For Christians, I urge a complete understanding and dedication to the teachings of Christ. For others, I posture a profound and propitious regard for the human being, a regard that usurps all others and continually demonstrates the value of life.

But since guns are likely here to stay, what can we do?

1) Have full respect for the sanctity of life, teach others the same respect, start the teaching at birth
2) Let us all stop glorifying violence
3) Stop enjoying movies about killers and death
4) Stop purchasing video games that glorify violence
5) Register all guns and limit their usage, provide full and complete education to owners
6) Be completely and totally aware of the potential for violence in people and watch out for the crazies
7) Recognize that the journey toward human respect and societal refinement is to denounce all violence and work toward egalitarianism.
8) Mostly to protect each other and our children in all situations

This is a call for peace not for governmental action. This is a call for respect, for love, and for a demonstrated regard for the value of life. This is further a call for responsibility for everyone to protect our children, protect our society, and protect the freedoms we all enjoy. While we watch for the demons in our midst, let us consider the possibility that we have inadvertently created the demons through our acceptance of cultural norms. Without overreacting to the situation, I hope to see a society that makes positive strides toward refinement and cultural improvement.