Carlson
I know that I will never forget where I was when I heard the news of the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. We were visiting our son, daughter-in-law and our two grandchildren in another state. Our grandson is the age of the children killed.
For the rest of our visit, I couldn’t take my eyes off of our grandchildren without thinking about those innocent lives senselessly lost. At one point, I held my grandson’s head in my hands and shut my eyes in terror and sorrow.
The concept of “tipping point” has entered our world’s vocabulary, suggesting that there is a point reached when change, even radical change, occurs. We can argue as to when the tipping point on the gun culture of this country should have been reached in the past. But if Sandy Hook, Parkland, Buffalo, and now Uvalde aren’t enough for our nation and its leaders to deal with weapons whose only purpose is to kill human beings, I don’t know what it will take for us to awaken from this nightmare.
In the days afterward, an image came to my mind. Yes, it is a fantasy, but it is a fantasy I can’t let go of. I picture our Founding Fathers standing with the horror-stricken parents outside the Robb Elementary School and hearing their screams. Would they, as the gun lobby seems to believe, stand there defending the easy access to assault weapons that the young shooter had? Would they have the nerve to apply the word “freedom” to the shooter’s ability to kill children and not to the “right of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” of those children and teacher?
As a professor of Biblical studies, I know how vital it is in interpreting ancient texts to pay attention to the historical context of the writers. And I know how dangerous it is to take ancient thought out of the context in which it was written.
The same applies to the Constitution. As one writer recently put it, the Constitution did not come down from Sinai with Moses, and Jesus didn’t bring it down from the mount in Galilee. In other words, we can’t treat the Constitution as if is divine, as if it wasn’t written by human beings living in a time in history much different from our own.
The Second Amendment about the right to bear arms is a case in point. That amendment came at a time when our nation feared that Great Britain would try again to defeat us. But more importantly, the amendment was written when the weapon of choice was a musket. Weapons experts estimate that a soldier in that day could fire, on average, three shots per minute.
The AR-15 used by the shooter to take the lives of the children and teacher and destroy those families’ lives in Texas can fire a minimum of 45 rounds, possibly more, per minute. Yet the gun lobby wants us to believe that the Founding Fathers, if alive today, wouldn’t make a distinction between using a weapon that shoots three rounds per minute and a weapon that shoots 45 or more rounds per minute.
When historical context is ignored, innocent men, women and children — so many children — die. If you agree with this, write your senators and representatives and tell them that you’ve had enough with our insane gun culture. Let’s make the teacher and the 19 children being buried in Uvalde the tipping point.
David Carlson of Franklin is a professor emeritus of philosophy and religion. Send comments to [email protected].
