Guns - There Are No Cowards

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 Guns - There Are No Cowards

“Ninety-nine Percent of the so called ‘The Ninety-nine Percent’ may prefer to live as cowards, not because they are weak or scared, but simply because they have different priorities.”

We love our societies; the progressive democratic bouquet of rights, liberties, equality, and equity. They are such a far cry from the tyranny of many a monarchies of yore. This is so because all our important rights are often enshrined in our constitutions, and if not so, then the courts of our democratic societies find them for us in them (like in the case of Australia). Occasionally however, with the passage of time, some constitutional rights become so foreign in their appearance in our daily lives, that most of us wonder; why do we have these? This happens because we can’t find an association with that time anymore where such rights were considered so inalienable as to be made a part of our constitutions. We forget that those times feel so different from ours because of those very rights that enabled the transformation. ‘Right to bear Arms’ is one such right that the US citizens are lucky to have in their constitution, and yet many don’t understand the ‘why’ of the equation. The reason lies simply in the fact as to what the majority of the people consider as their immediate and long term needs, coupled with their inability to foresee the future of the society because they are too caught up in their own personal present struggles and future desires. What no one realizes is; the constitutional rights are meant to safeguard those who identify a problem, and then decide to do something for the benefit of everyone, often against the grain of salt. It’s not a school teacher that needs the ‘Right to Freedom of Speech’, but the most vocal critic of the political lobby in power who does. Although one such teacher may reap the benefit of the same right on some occasion nevertheless. But today I will only talk about the ‘Right to bear Arms’ in a global context, and why it is the most significant and borderline pious deed to bear one.

The first and most important thing to understand before anything is said about the rights is perhaps the nature of those who need protection of those rights. The ‘Ninety-nine percent of the Ninety-nine percent’, let’s call them ‘The Vast Majority’ for the sake of brevity, their life is all about finding a loving life partner, a quiet place to call their home, making a couple of lovely kids, and finding a good job or a small business setup to help run their family. They are neither interested in bringing about a social change to fix a problem, nor are they interested in critiquing government, big business, or the likes, beyond discussing these with their daily cup of caffeine goodness shared with their colleagues and friends. They don’t need the ‘Right to Free Speech’ or a ‘Right to Conglomerate’ for that, and they most certainly don’t need a ‘Right to Bear Arms’ to defend it. Even if their superior tells them to stop wasting time, they won’t complain, but rather get on with their work. They are not interested in getting out of their comfort zones, and start public marches towards their parliaments, and they most certainly won’t ever need a gun to kill anyone on a daily, monthly, annual, decade-wise, or even century-wise basis. They don’t want to be bothered, and if something is wrong anywhere in the society, they would be more than happy to live with it, or let someone else do something about it. They just want a quiet content life!

Consider the ‘Right to Privacy’ to illustrate the above example; no one cares about constant surveillance because ‘The Vast Majority’ can still live their lives normally, and they believe it is only helpful in safeguarding them. The fact that it could be a tool used to find blackmailing options against any credible challenger to a harmful political setup does not concern them, even though their own interests might be getting harmed by the same political setup. It’s the bliss of ignorance of convenience; you don’t want to know how big the gash is as long as the painkillers are working, and you won’t be dying anytime soon. ‘The Vast Majority’ is bogged down in their life’s basic struggles; to provide for their loved ones, and save for a rainy day. They are not planning about changes to governance that need to come around in twenty years time, to give a certain advantage to a certain group of big businesses, the ones that power election campaigns today. It really doesn’t matter to ‘The Vast Majority’ because they only know how to find a good job, or run a small business. They don’t need access to unfettered opportunities to grow where sky is the limit. Besides, those opportunities do not exist anymore for the resource-less.

However, life takes its’ toll on all of us, and by twist of circumstances, anyone of us could start on a warpath to right a perceived wrong, the path that leads to a direct confrontation with someone or something powerful. Then there are people, ‘The One Percent of the Ninety-nine Percent’, let’s call them ‘The Minority of Majority’, who maybe like ‘The Vast Majority’ in general, but who by their innate desires or passions to succeed, have identified something that is hurting their chances, and thereby the interests of ‘The Vast Majority’, and have decided to do something about it. This ‘Minority of Majority’ are the people who would go out of their comfort zones, organize and run marches to the parliament, cause blockades and strikes, suffer in jails or suffer penury, and if the only means left is by the barrel of a gun, would eventually pickup the same to fight and even die for ‘The Vast Majority’. Their hope in general is that they would fix what is wrong and benefit from the change, or in worst case scenario, they would leave a better society behind them, and that ‘The Vast Majority’ would care for their loved ones after they are gone. So it doesn’t matter whether it’s a quirk of circumstances, or an individual’s personal perception of their innate worth that is tormented, there are people in the world that would always have a reason to fight for the rest of their kind. They are the ones who would need protection of those rights that we generally forget about in our day to day lives. Eventually, their might even come a time when the entire breadth of ‘The Vast Majority’ comes to believe they need to take action to fix something. It is then when they all would need those rights too. You might be surprised as to how times change, and do so very subtly.

Consider how our quality of life is directly affected by the extent of external pressures on our belief systems, be they of political, social, religious, sexual, or any other nature. When regimes anywhere in the world take a stand (by action or in-action) that appears to favour a particular set of beliefs, then the people belonging to other beliefs feel marginalized, and in worst cases, discriminated or targeted. Next you consider the current trend of not only sanctioning all kinds of behaviour, be it by legal means or privately by contractual means, but also taking measures to make sure that no one escapes. You will notice a lot of minor things building up that irritate us, and make our day to day lives difficult. An example would be the levying of fines for the most minor of traffic infractions, and then deployment of cameras and closed-circuit surveillance to catch those breaches. Remember those tyrannical regimes of yesteryears from our history books, ones that would severely penalize all kinds of human behaviour, and collect hefty fines? Do you see the parallels amongst our societies and those tyrannical regimes beginning to emerge?

Our quality of life of life is directly impacted by how easy or tough it is to satisfy our daily needs. Getting away with minor breaches of law that do not physically affect the lives or properties of others, while helping us get one of our daily cores done quickly, impact that quality of life. Breaking minor laws doesn’t mean you are criminal that needs to be sanctioned, but rather that you are human. In fact, I would go as far as to say that as long as a breach of a law does not impact the lives and property of others, one should have a ‘Constitutional Right to Not be Prosecuted’ for those breaches. Instead, as in case of our traffic offenses example, we are fast becoming societies that sanction all kinds of behaviour simply because it is in breach of some written rule, and then going one step further by trying to catch each and every breach of it even when that breach impacted no one and nothing but that written law only. When ‘Law is like death so that no one escapes’ then no one does, and everyone is a criminal to lesser or greater extent.

Such a society might be alright to live in for the elite of the society, for all such sanctions are lose change for them, and most of their daily chores are dealt with by minions who can suffer a bit more for their whims and fancies. But when you think of ‘The Vast Majority’, not only those sanctions are a big budgetary strain on their purse strings, but it makes getting the simplest of chores done that much more difficult. Imagine driving around for ten minutes just to pick up a loaf of bread from the corner shop which is on a street lined by ‘No Parking’ signs. There is always the proverbial straw that breaks the camel’s back. And when ‘The Vast Majority’s’ camel will eventually succumb, guess who would need the ‘Constitutional Rights’? Time is always changing from bad to good or from better to worse. The rights however, are evergreen!

Now coming to the ‘Right to Bear Arms’; let’s consider the example of US, to understand how rights come to life in constitutions, and how times change to alter our perception of their need. Why was there a need to add a ‘Right to Bear Arms’ in the US constitution itself? The answer lies in the history of the birth of this nation, and its’ maturing into a country that serves as an example for others to emulate. The ‘Right to Bear Arms’ has complex origins, with roots emerging out of the perceived right of Christians to defend themselves and their society (a similar ordainment was made to Sikhs by their Gurus, and before that, by Prophet Mohammed to Muslims). History of mankind is full of stories of bravado that saved communities and societies from annihilation at the hands of a ruthless force, and equally the stories of demise of cultures that couldn’t defend themselves. Arms always were the most significant defence of cultures and societies. This Right, thus having been codified in the British ‘Bill of Rights,’ became an important part of the US constitution too, even if as an afterthought. However, the strength it derives comes from what happened in the US War of Independence, a glorious chapter written in blood, and not too long thereafter, the US Civil War that was fought to bring about a fundamental change to the US society for everyone’s betterment. If ever there was any doubt, these two most significant events made the people of a young nation aware of one important thing; the future of the society can only be safeguarded if its’ citizenry has an access to weapons to fight and defend its’ core principles. Thus the ‘Right to Bear Arms’ became inalienable. It is easy to understand the evolution of all other rights in a similar way, by looking at the circumstances that gave credence to those rights’ enshrinement in a nation’s most significant document.

Over the course of a century and a half since the US Civil War, the US society has not only become stable, but a leading light of democracy to the rest of the world. Nations, or at least their people, aspire to emulate that beauty in their own backyards. The earlier eras’ threat of losing freedom to a foreign invader has all but veined, even if minor threats from competing world powers exist and linger on. The thought of a mean local militia or fiefdom taking over a township or a state, and subjecting its people to atrocities doesn’t exist anymore. Christians are safe in US, and they are not out killing other minorities. People no longer see the reason to have access to weapons en masse for the threats that need such recourse don’t exist anymore. This right, along with all other rights, have served well to create a pinnacle of modern democracy. The times have changed!

Alas this isn’t the end of the story though. Over the decades when public struggle helped achieve an equitable and righteous society, the interest groups that suffered a sharp decline in their profit margins, on account of those protests, progressively found ways to legally dilute the protections developed by the struggles. I already mentioned that unfettered opportunities don’t exist anymore for the resource-less. That is a very subtle understatement of the facts. And then you consider the examples of situations impacting the quality of life of ‘The Vast Majority’. If there is one thing that is clear, it is; the times are changing once again!

Today, a maniac loses their mind and shoots up innocent people, sometimes even kids, or an estranged person takes out violent revenge on those who may or may not have wronged them, and the entire town rises up in arms against the vessel; the gun. The fight is not about fixing the issues causing the mania or breakdown in the first place, but rather fixing a component that has a much versatile need outside this hateful scenario. ‘The Vast Majority’ however will not notice this, for as I said before, ‘The Vast Majority’ may need a car or two every day, but they probably won’t need a gun in a century. This is the reason why the argument that ‘vehicles cause more deaths everyday than firearms, and yet people don’t ask for their ban,’ doesn’t work. Everybody needs a vehicle, but the same everybody believes they don’t need guns. They therefore question the presence of the offensive device, rather than the missing structures that would have avoided the abuse of that device.

‘The Vast Majority’ is not a coward, but it has different priorities. If ‘The Vast Majority’ doesn’t see the merit of keeping guns, or of the ‘Right to Bear Arms’, it is because our education system and our societies are not designed to create fighters, but rather workers, and which is what it should be for a society to work and progress peacefully.

However that does not justify the war on guns, and people need to understand that what they might not need today, does not determine what they will need in the future. What is needed instead are support structures that work with people at risk of abusing weapons, system that supports people in emotionally perilous situations, and safeguards to protect general public that are lesser than a ban on weapons. Having to jump through hoops to even get a firearm for self defence defeats the very purpose guns are built for. Banning them outright would be the height of idiocy, for no ban would rid the streets of weapons. Illegal firearms will always flow, and generally into the hands of criminals. If the intention is to rid the streets of unwanted bloodshed, then the intention is idealistic for every criminal act is abhorrent and unwanted, not just the mass shootings, and thus the mechanism proposed is inherently flawed too.

Be it Christianity, Islam, or Sikhism, the general religious consensus is that every individual has a right to defend themselves, but more importantly, they have a duty to protect those who are weak, and also defend the society. The first step each religion always preaches is the use of sound reasoning and arguments to stop a wrong from happening, or getting justice for a wrong. The last step in this process is always about picking up a weapon to either stop the wrong from happening, or fixing the wrong that has already been done. I was born a Sikh, but I don’t believe in any God anymore, and yet I believe that the world is a good place to live in because most of the people in it do most of the things right, most of the time. I believe that to make sure the world stays a good place to live in, we would continuously need to develop and argue reasons to defend the good in the world peacefully, and when all else would fail, we would need to pick up a weapon to fight for the good in the world and restore peace. Then again, my views are mine, and may not be the same as yours. We all are free to develop our own reasons and arguments for a better world, and then share them, for there is a ‘Right to Free Speech’.

Take Care,

Fatal Urge Carefree Kiss

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