The Right to Bear Arms

“A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” Those are the words of the Second Amendment as ratified on Dec. 15, 1791. They are not difficult words, but how they should be interpreted, and how they should be implemented in 2013, is a matter of much heated discussion.

There are some who seem to think that the Constitution’s statement about the right to bear arms means that gun ownership should be virtually unregulated or uncontrolled. For such people, including perhaps a majority of National Rifle Association (NRA) members, almost any type of gun control is seen as the violation of inherent Constitutional rights of U.S. citizens.

Since the tragic shooting of the school children in Connecticut last month, talk about increased gun control, including the proposals the President unveiled last week, has led to a huge surge in gun and ammunition purchases, a substantial swelling in the membership of the NRA, and angry protests in the media.

The NRA directly links its opposition to gun control legislation to the Second Amendment. They exclaim on their website, “What’s happening RIGHT NOW in Washington, D.C. could spell disaster for YOUR guns and YOUR Second Amendment rights!” 

Last Saturday (Jan. 19) was the nation’s first “Gun Appreciation Day.” It was promoted by a dozen organizations, including the Second Amendment Foundation and Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. 

On the same day there were also “Guns Across America” rallies in 49 of the state capitals across the nation. Newspaper headlines proclaimed that those who gathered were “Second Amendment supporters.”

Probably like some of you, I have received pro-Second Amendment, anti-gun control e-mails that included these words attributed to Thomas Jefferson: “The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.”

But while Jefferson did support the right to bear arms, there is no evidence that he ever penned the words just cited. Yet the rhetoric on the right is relentless, and some who quote the spurious words attributed to Jefferson are shrill in their charge that the current administration in Washington, D.C., is becoming more and more tyrannical.

On Jan. 16 the President announced sweeping proposals for reducing gun violence in the nation. Those proposals include 23 executive actions. Opponents of the President have been outspoken in their criticism of the proposed legislation and especially of the executive actions. 

Later that day, one blogger screamed, “The 23 Scandalous ‘Executive Actions’ Dictator Obama Signed Today to Rob Us Of Our Freedoms!” 

Much more worrisome, though, is the response of key politicians. For example, Senator Grassley (R-IA), the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, accused the President of exceeding the limits of his executive authority and charged that he was using executive action “to attempt to poke holes in the Second Amendment.”

And Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) is reportedly proposing legislation to nullify President Obama’s executive actions, saying that many of them could be construed as an attempt by the executive to make laws in violation of the Constitution and the Second Amendment.

But one of the “scandalous” executive actions calls for the launching of “a national safe and responsible gun ownership campaign.” Tell me, does that sound to you like an outrageous proposal for robbing U.S. citizens of their Second Amendment rights?

A Big Day for BHO

Official Portrait (by Pete Souza, 12/6/12)

It will happen at noon today (EST). That is when Barack Hussein Obama will officially be sworn in for his second term as POTUS. Since it is Sunday, though, the public swearing in ceremonies, as you know, will not be until tomorrow (Jan. 21).

Presidents used to assume office in March, but the Twentieth Amendment was ratified in 1933, so ever since President Roosevelt’s second swearing in ceremony in 1937, inauguration day has been on January 20. (Missouri became the 36^th state to ratify the new amendment, on 1/23/33, satisfying the requirement that three-fourths of the states approve it.)

Twice before, Jan. 20 fell on Sunday so the public ceremony was held the following day. Coincidentally, all three times (Eisenhower in 1957, Reagan in 1985, and now Obama in 2013) have been for a President’s second term.

So this is a big day for BHO—and even though his middle name has negative connotations for many Americans, I wish the President would go by the initials BHO (rather than BO!) and that BHO would become as commonly used as FDR and JFK.

This is not only big day for the President, it is the beginning of a very challenging four year term. The biggest challenge is, doubtlessly, the problem of national debt and the “spending” of the federal government. At least that is the source of the major opposition to the President in the House of Representatives.

Over the next three months we will be hearing more and more about the problem of raising the debt ceiling and about the adoption of a federal budget that will significantly reduce spending.

Actually, as you know, raising the debt ceiling is sort of a “no-brainer.” That doesn’t approve any additional spending; rather, is allows the federal government to borrow money to pay for past expenditures. But a large number of Representatives are likely not going to be willing to approve raising the debt ceiling—at least not for long—unless there are concomitant spending cuts.

Throughout his first term, there were relentless attacks on the President, verbal attacks perhaps more vicious than on any President in the last fifty years, or longer—although Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush were also often and strongly maligned.

It is hard not to think that part of the visceral criticism of BHO is racist. But one of my Thinking Friends, whom I believe when he declares that he is not racist, says that to him President Obama is “repulsive.” That seems to be the feeling of a significant segment of U.S. society—and that is quite worrisome.

During the last four years I have been worried about the President’s safety. And now that he is pushing for extensive gun control legislation, he is probably in even more danger. Just yesterday there were nationwide “Gun Appreciation Day” activities and “Guns Across America” rallies.

President Lincoln, whose Bible BHO will be using in tomorrow’s ceremony, was assassinated just six weeks after he was sworn in for his second term of office. Even though there are several similarities between Lincoln and BHO, let’s earnestly pray that that will not become another one.

The Inconvenient Hero

Today (Jan. 15) is his birthday, although the national holiday celebrating it will not be until next Monday (Jan. 21). I’m writing, of course, about Martin Luther King, Jr., about whom we will be hearing much this year. King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech was delivered 50 years ago, in August 1963. And then it was 45 years ago, in April 1968, that he was assassinated.

“I Have a Dream” is one of the best, most powerful speeches of all time. I get chills down my spine every time I listen to it—the last time being only last month. And it is the King of 1963 that is most remembered in the celebrations of his birthday.

But I have just read an essay that focuses on King’s talks and activities during the last five years of his life, the years after his famous 1963 speech in Washington, D.C. That essay is titled “The Inconvenient Hero,” which is also the subtitle of Martin Luther King (1996), the book in which it appears. Both the essay and the book were written by Vincent Harding.

King at Riverside Church, 4/4/67

Harding, born in 1931 in Harlem, taught at Iliff School of Theology (in Denver, CO) from 1981 to 2004. Early in his career, though, he was a friend of and co-worker with King. Harding, a Mennonite, even occasionally drafted speeches for King, including his noteworthy anti-Vietnam speech, “A Time to Break Silence,” which he (King) delivered at Riverside Church in New York City on April 4, 1967, exactly one year before he was assassinated.

Not long after his “I Have a Dream” oration, there was an escalation of racial violence in the nation, and King himself talked about his dream turning into a nightmare. “Four beautiful, unoffending, innocent Negro girls were murdered” (King’s words) when the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham was bombed in September 1963, an act of racially motivated terrorism.

Then in the summer of 1964, twenty African-American churches were firebombed in Mississippi and in June of that year three civil rights workers were murdered in that same state. (The latter is the subject of the 1988 movie “Mississippi Burning.”) And then the terrible Watts Riots in Los Angeles took place in August 1965.

King also wrote (in 1967), “I saw that dream turn into a nightmare as I watched the war in Vietnam escalating.” So in his last years, he began speaking out more and more in opposition to the war, seeing it as an extension of the same type of injustice and violence being done to African-Americans in the U.S.

King’s speech at Riverside Church was a powerful one, and it is not hard to see why it is not quoted more often—or why the one who gave that speech is referred to as “the inconvenient hero.” He referred to the U.S. as “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.”

King understood that violence as being linked partly to our nation’s refusal “to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investment.” And so he spoke out strongly against the “giant triplets” of racism, materialism, and militarism.

Being the Baptist preacher that he was, near the end of that 4/67 speech, King quotes 1 John 4 and calls for “an all-embracing and unconditional love” for all people.

Inconvenient or not, here is a hero still worth our serious consideration.

Pessimistic about Gun Control

Let me be clear from the beginning: I am strongly in favor of increased gun control in this country, especially the outlawing of assault weapons and guns with high-capacity magazines. I am for such control because I believe it would save the lives of many innocent victims, such as those children shot to death last month in Connecticut.

Specifically, I am in favor of the bill that Sen. Dianne Feinstein is proposing to the 113^th Congress. That bill is basically the same as the one that was signed into law by President Clinton in 1994 and then expired in 2004.

Surely something needs to be done. For many years now the U.S. has averaged nearly 11,000 homicides per year by firearms. That is over 30 per day! That is more people shot to death every day of the year than were murdered on that terrible morning in Newtown, Conn., on Dec. 14. Perhaps most of the daily homicides are not innocent children—but some of them are.

But I am not optimistic that meaningful gun control will soon be enacted. Both the power of the National Rifle Association (NRA) and the opposition by owners of firearms are likely too strong for new gun-limiting legislation to be passed. I hope I am wrong.

There is one other cause of many tragic, and needless, deaths every day in this country, and that is the wrongful use (overuse) of alcoholic beverages. If there are those who think guns should be controlled in order to lessen the number of homicides, as I do, there are also those, such as I, who think that if alcohol was also banned there would not only be fewer murders but also far fewer people killed in traffic accidents.

Even though I haven’t heard them say so, I am sure that my friends who regularly drink alcohol, as some of my best friends do, would say that the problem is not alcohol but drinking irresponsibly. And that, no doubt, is true.

But that is exactly the same argument used by the NRA and others opposing gun control: the problem is not guns, they say, but the irresponsible use of guns. As you probably have heard, they often declare, If guns are outlawed only outlaws will have guns. That might be true to a large extent.

Even though there are laws against driving under the influence of alcohol, DUI is quite common—and many people are killed each year as a result. Nationwide there are about 28 people a day who are killed in drunk-driving accidents.

Many years ago, long before there were so many deaths because of drunk driving, alcoholic beverages were outlawed in this country. But Prohibition was repealed 79 years ago last month, and there is virtually no chance of it being enacted again.

Reflecting on what happened with Prohibition and on how so many people drink in spite of all the problems caused by alcohol makes me pessimistic about any meaningful new gun control laws being passed by Congress.

Sadly, I’m afraid people in this country will just have to learn to live with, and many to be killed by, both guns and alcohol.

The Martyrdom of Felix Manz

Felix Manz is not exactly a household name for most people, although he is widely known in Anabaptist circles. (The family name is sometimes spelled Mantz, as in the name of the library named in his honor at Bethel College in Newton, Kansas).

A man of strong faith and conviction, Manz was martyred 486 years ago today, on January 5, 1527. On that fateful day, Felix was bound, taken to the middle of the Limmat River in the heart of Zurich (Switzerland), and executed by drowning.

Felix Manz was born around the year 1498, the son of one of the priests at the magnificent Grossmünster Church in Zurich and the priest’s concubine, who lived (at least later) in her own house on Neustadt Lane very near the church.

By Oliver Wendell Schenk, 1972

Ulrich (Huldrych) Zwingli became the head priest at Grossmünster at the end of 1518 and soon began to preach about reforming the Catholic Church. The young man Felix Manx became one of Zwingli’s ardent students. But by 1524 Felix, and a few others such as his good friend Conrad Grebel, became increasingly dissatisfied with Zwingli, whose reforms did not go far enough, they thought.

Finally, a group of people met in the house where Felix lived with his mother, and they formed a new faith fellowship on the basis of baptism following an open confession of faith in Jesus Christ. Grebel baptized an older man, George Blaurock (c. 1491~1529) and then he baptized Grebel and the others gathered there that day, January 21, 1525.

The group called themselves the Swiss Brethren—but their opponents, mainly Zwingli and the leaders of the Grossmünster Church as well as the Zurich city council, derisively called then Anabaptists (re-baptizers). In March 1526 the city council passed an edict making re-baptism punishable by drowning.

On January 5, 1527, Manz was sentenced to death, “because contrary to Christian order and custom he had become involved in Anabaptism.” About 3 p.m. that afternoon he was taken by boat onto the Limmat River, which runs not far from the front of Grossmünster Church. His hands were bound and pulled below his knees and a pole was placed between them—and then he was shoved into the river to die by drowning.

Manz was the first person to be martyred by Protestants. Some referred to his watery death as his “third baptism.”

In 2004 the Evangelical-Reformed Church of Zurich had a six-month commemoration of the 500^th anniversary of the birth of Heinrich Bullinger (1504~75), Zwingli’s successor as the head priest of Grossmünster. On June 26, that Church confessed their sins of the sixteenth century and asked for forgiveness by the descendants of those first Anabaptists.

That evening, a historical marker was unveiled on the bank of the river when Manz was matryred 477½ years earlier. June and I were quite moved when we visited that spot and saw the marker in May 2005. (In the picture, the marker is on the lower left, and the “twin towers” of Grossmünster Church can be seen in the background.)

The issue for Manz the other early Anabaptists was not just the rejection of infant baptism. The larger issue was the question about the nature of the church and the meaning of Christian discipleship. Those are topics that still merit serious consideration today.
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Jan. 8 -- Bob Carlson, a fellow member of Rainbow Mennonite Church and good friend, shared the following picture of the historical marker pictured, but unreadable, above: