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A Conservative Response To The Colorado Massacre

By: Ausonius (Diary)  |  July 22nd, 2012 at 07:58 PM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

First: I am not a gun owner, and have not had an interest in spending one cent on a weapon.

Second: I believe the Second Amendment has already been abridged quite enough by legislation.

Third: As people have pointed out, it is obvious that, if people with concealed-carry permits had been present at the theater, the shooter may not have killed or wounded quite so many people.  I have read that the theater does not allow anyone, even those with permits, to enter with a weapon.

After news of the Aurora Massacre was reported, the response of the mainstream media and other left-wingers, e.g. the mayor of New York, was easily predictable.  More gun control, more laws, more restrictions, until the Second Amendment is gutted completely.

Why is the left-wing so obsessed with eliminating weapons from the civilian population?  The answer would seem to be obvious, and unpleasant: so that complete control over our lives can be more easily attained.

They will tell you that it is for our protection, for the elimination of crime.

They will tell you it is part of their plan to perfect society, not unlike their plans for the elimination of poverty, and for universal “free” health care, and full employment, etc. etc. etc.

However…

The Conservative knows that attempts at even coming close to perfecting society are doomed to failure.  Leftists believe in control, using both science and pseudo-science (e.g. global warming theory) to assert the reasonableness, if not superiority, of their intentions to make your life safe and comfortable…using their definitions of “safe” and “comfortable.”

The Conservative knows that such a life is not worth living.  The free life means facing the risk that another human being will use freedom against you to perpetrate evil.

The Conservative knows, therefore, that the free life requires courage and faith to face the day when life allows evil to happen.  The free life also requires the wisdom of preparedness to prevent evil or to stop its advance by risking one’s life.  The Leftist would try to prevent evil by restricting freedom to ever greater degrees.  But for the Conservative the prevention of evil has limits, so that maximum freedom can be enjoyed by the lawful majority.

The irony is that the Leftist’s utopian attempt leads to less security, as criminals – because they are criminals - will obtain whatever they need to perpetrate crimes, while the law-abiding will be following laws which disarm them.

As proof that having practically every citizen trained in weaponry, including assault rifles, and owning a small arsenal, will lead to less crime, I offer one word: Switzerland.

http://www.stephenhalbrook.com/articles/guns-crime-swiss.html

I can agree that civilians should not be buying e.g. bazookas and C4 and other items giving them an edge over the police. A complete laissez-faire attitude on weapons is not my intent here.

The Conservative knows that life can be chaotic, but faith in a higher purpose of some sort, faith that somehow life will make sense eventually, bears him through adversity.  The Leftist, often lacking faith in Divinity, runs to government, a purely human institution, to address the times when chaos hits.

Courage and faith, rather than begging for government programs in an unrealistic and impossible attempt to stop the chaos of life, and the wisdom to be prepared mentally, physically, and spiritually for violence from lunatics, are the virtues Conservatism offers at such times.  I can imagine that, for families of victims, wanting to turn the clock back and stopping the lunatic by banning everything, perhaps even the manufacturing of the weapons, would be a yearning both understandable and yet mocking.

Life is flawed, and humans kill each other for the worst reasons, for no reason, and at times for reasons insane and impossible to fathom.   No matter how much a leftist agenda promises security to us with ever increasing limits on our freedom, the chaos of life will seep out and thrive temporarily.  The Conservative accepts this, and battles evil with a virtuous freedom to swing his fist, rather than with the rattling of impotent chains.

 

COMMENTS

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  • gflyer3364qt

    What these anti-gun moonbats don’t understand is the country would descend into complete lawless anarchy if a law was ever pased outlawing weapons. The majority of the country supports the right to bear arms. Supporting stricter laws does not mean one is against the 2nd Amendment. The media ofthen spins these polls to portray supporting stricter laws as being anti-gun. That being said, let’s say guns WERE outlawed. What now? There’s no registration in the US except for full auto. They don’t know who has them. Now go tell few cops that they have to confront a couple hundred million furious citizens angry about the law banning their guns, that their job is in fact now to go take them from them when they don’t know for sure who even has them. They’d all resign immediately and all it takes is a few to start a chain reaction. So now what would happen to the crime rate with all the cops gone you idiot moonbats?

    Also, go tell all the gunsmiths, engineers, factory workers, accountants, lawyers, truck drivers, gun shop owners, and all the others that either work for or benefit from gun manufacturers that tomorrow they’ll be out of a job.

    You can’t stop every lunatic. Furthermore, how often do these shootings actually happen? On average 1-2 times every couple of year there’s a mass shooting. That’s about as low as it’s going to get. Firearms are used in self defense 1-2 MILLION times each year. Mass shootings make up a few percent of the overall murder rate because they happen so UNoften. 99.9999999999999999999999999999% of all people would never do such a thing. NO there are NOT 1000 other people chomping at the bit to copycat the shooting. Quit buying into the media hysteria.

    • Ausonius

      Spread the passion, the outrage, the enthusiasm, whatever you want to call it!

      The attacks will not go away, and neither will the arrogant, morally superior tone used to attack the Second Amendment and the gun owners of America.

      So a response to their phony argumentation is needed: many thanks for adding to the treasure trove of evidence. The emotional side cannot be forgotten, and your passion here is a good example.

  • CincoSolas_del_Bronx

    I’m sure that wasn’t your intent, but two of your dicta, as stated, would leave me, and other biblically-orthodox Christians, no other alternative.

    First, while you allege that “the Conservative knows”, the Christian is both scripturally forbidden to entertain the thought, and consitutionally incapable of long maintaining, “that such a life is not worth living”. On the contrary, the fact of having been graciously been granted life–under any and all circumstances–carries with it the obligation to love God and serve one’s neighbor with all conviction and strength, not merely curl up and die–or worse yet, complain about the circumstances in the long wait for death to arrive. Joseph, Daniel, the Apostles, and two millenia of millions of Christians who have lived faithful, productive lives of service, love, joy, gratitude and worship under unthinkably difficult governments testify against your dictum. “Live Free or Die” may be a powerful political motivator, but is incontrovertibly a distinctly pagan philosophy.

    Second, it is likewise completely impossible to reconcile your attribution of “faith … and the wisdom to be … spiritually prepared” as “virtues Conservatism offers at all times” with biblical Christianity. Portions of the 1658 Savoy Declaration will suffice as a summary rebuttal among many which could be made:

    XI: Of Justification
    1. which faith they have not of themselves, it is the gift of God.

    XIV: Of Saving Faith
    1. The grace of faith, whereby the elect are enabled to believe to the saving of their souls, is the work of the Spirit of Christ in their hearts, and is ordinarily wrought by the ministry of the Word; by which also, and by the administration of the seals, prayer, and other means, it is increased and strengthened.

    IX: Of Free-Will
    3. Man by his fall into a state of sin, hath wholly lost all ability of will to any spiritual good accompanying salvation; so as a natural man being altogether averse from that good, and dead in sin, is not able by his own strength to convert himself, or to prepare himself thereunto.

    XX: Of the Gospel and the Extent of Grace Thereof
    4. Although the gospel be the only outward means of revealing Christ and saving grace, and is as such abundantly sufficient thereunto; yet that men who are dead in trespasses, may be born again, quickened or regenerated, there is moreover necessary an effectual, irresistible work of the Holy Ghost upon the whole soul, for the producing in them a new spiritual life, without which no other means are sufficient for their conversion unto God.

    I have long frequented RS in hopes of profiting from its better-articulated spokespersons, and I am not above employing or enjoying rhetorical flourishes. But those which elevate a movement’s criteria above the gospel of Jesus Christ chill this redeemed sinner’s heart.

    • Ausonius

      By no means was I – nor is the motto of New Hampshire – advocating ritual suicide as a protest against tyranny. Nowhere do I say that e.g. imitating Cato the Younger’s ritual suicide to protest Julius Caesar’s dictatorship is a solution! :)

      When Patrick Henry famously stated “Give me liberty, or give me death!” he also was not advocating suicide.

      The implication is that one must rebel against the tyranny, even to the point of risking one’s life in a peaceful protest (we know what happened to peaceful protesters in Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany) or in a violent rebellion.

      Life under tyranny is indeed not worth living, and so in my opinion one must work against the tyranny, not commit hara-kiri in protest.

      I hope that makes things clearer.

      • acat

        “Better to die on my feet than live on my knees”.

        Doesn’t indicate an intention to die, instead indicates an unwillingness to tolerate the intolerable “for the sake of life”.

        Mew

        • CincoSolas_del_Bronx

          That does avoid some of Ausonius’ rhetorical overreach, but you may not recognize the blow it sends to the solar plexus of at least the typical evangelical Christian, to whom the phrase “on my knees” is tied to both the security found only in submission to Christ and the attitude of grateful prayer, as with Spurgeon’s “But, sure I am, I can say now, speaking on behalf of myself, ‘He only is my salvation.’ It was He who turned my heart, and brought me down on my knees before Him.” and any amount of hymnody ancient and modern.

          • acat

            If submission is intended for God and only God, then it ought to bother your fellows when a person submits to another person, no?

            Mew

          • CincoSolas_del_Bronx

            The Bible describes several proper spheres of authority/submission in a fair amount of detail. Help me out–I can’t see where I implied otherwise.

          • acat

            Was it the “and only” piece that I have misunderstood?

            I chose a very minimalist interpretation of “render unto Caesar”, perhaps too minimalist?

            Mew

          • CincoSolas_del_Bronx

            From a sola Scriptura perspective*, one cannot apply simply a Bible verse to a situation without several criteria being met, including the interpretive principle so well-stated in Chapter 1 of the Westminster Confession of Faith**:

            9. The infallible rule of interpretation of Scripture, is the Scripture itself; and therefore when there is a question about the true and full sense of any Scripture (which is not manifold, but one) it must be searched and known by other places, that speak more clearly.

            Therefore the Caesar passage simply cannot be treated apart from its relation to and concurrence with dozens of other passages treating the submission of creature to Creator being worked out in the context of God-ordained human relationships of authority–even in light of the noetic effects of sin. I won’t belabor the thread beyond perhaps the most concise treatment of the breadth of those inescapable relations and their obligations in the Westminster Larger Catechism’s application of the Fifth Commandment:

            Q. 123. Which is the fifth commandment?

            A. The fifth commandment is, Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.

            Q. 124. Who are meant by father and mother in the fifth commandment?

            A. By father and mother, in the fifth commandment, are meant, not only natural parents, but all superiors in age and gifts; and especially such as, by God

          • http://impudent.edublogs.org/ kyle8

            I can think of a dozen different interpretations of each and every one of your stated precepts.

            This is why theological discussions are no more valuable than wondering how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

            Everything you spent all that time writing is literally useless to me because I don’t agree with your version of Christianity. Furthermore if following the scriptures were indeed as complicated as you and your church make it out to be then only the very wise and clever could follow God’s rules.

            And that is garbage because God has given his love to all humans even children and the simple minded.

          • eved3

            acat is a master cat at misrepresenting what others write.

            Doh!

          • tnfriendofcoal101368

            I thought you will still on a two week hold at the local asylum?

          • http://www.hakubi.us/ Neil Stevens

            .

        • CincoSolas_del_Bronx

          OK, now that I have traced the source–I had not encountered it before–consider my critique shifted from yourself to George. Wherever he is at the moment, it is unlikely that he will be glad to have framed it the way he did.

          • acat

            Melior morior bellator, quam ago profugus.

            Predates George by a bit.

            Mew

          • CincoSolas_del_Bronx

            I have always regretted having picked Latin instead of French in 7th grade. Never even heard any F-C classmates use the latter. Why do they let kids make those decisions?

            OK then, my beef with GW is that he explicitly tied it to “the American Christian” and should have exercised a bit more restraint.

            What, me Tory? Had I lived then and had the benefit of foresight, I don’t see how I could have reconciled my theology with the spirit of the age, and I am left to ponder, among several issues, whether at least the CW/WBTS would have needed to erupt had we had the benefit of Wilberforce et al’s work a generation prior.

          • acat

            I’d say that the War of 1812 likely had more to do with it … those troubles pushed the colonies still further away from England’s influence at just the wrong time…

            Mew

          • CincoSolas_del_Bronx

            but my 1st para sb “not having picked …”. Just so I won’t be thought more of a dolt than usual.

      • CincoSolas_del_Bronx

        In fact, I had removed a reference to Masada in an earlier draft for that reason. The offense in your terminology comes not from the question of willingness to advocate resistance to tyranny, but its bald assertion about the value of life under tyranny, an assertion flatly contradicted by both the Christian Scriptures and millenia of endurance of persecution by believers in the Gospel revealed in those Scriptures.

        • Ausonius

          Submission to tyranny and metamorphosing into a puppet would bring a life not worth living indeed. Christianity, however, brings freedom from tyranny, and disallows submission to tyranny, when dictatorship – whether it be an English king, a Roman emperor, or Mao, Stalin, or Hitler – insists that one choose between life and the denial of God, as the many martyrs throughout the centuries attest.

          Die Gedanken sind frei! “My thoughts are free!”

  • Ausonius

    would be difficult! :)

    Although I suppose somebody could find a way!

    Cato the Younger’s story is much more gruesome: he actually had to commit suicide twice! His servants, horrified by his action (a knife into and then across the midsection) summoned a doctor, who amazingly revived Cato after operating on the wound.

    Cato later pulled out the stitches! They don’t make ‘em like that any more!

    On topic: I sincerely hope that Americans do not vote themselves into the sheep pen. I am something of a pessimist on this, because the long-term trends over the last c. 80 years are disconcerting. If a majority wants to be swaddled by government in a locked cradle, that will be their fatal choice.

    But I will not be staying there!

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