Law Abiding Citizens

Let's see: Over here we have this book that says, "Thou shalt not kill."

Over there we have this document that says we have the right to "bear arms."

That first one is the revealed word of God. At least that's how most readers tend to view it.

The second comes from the words of our founding fathers.

The first came from stone tablets delivered by a guy with white hair.

The second came from a bunch of white haired guys on some lovely parchment.

At first glance, they don't seem to conflict much. You could bear arms without killing. Unless you killed a deer or two. For food. For sport. Or you might need that gun to hurt someone who was trying to hurt you or your family. Still, you shalt not kill. Unless you were forced to. By the circumstances. Or the voices in your head.

Then you would be sentenced to a system that might ultimately find you guilty of murder and the punishment for that turns out to be killing you. It's not a fully cohesive system, binding these two firmly held beliefs together. The really clever folks are the ones who insist that it is the state doing the killing in that case, not a person. Or even better, it is God's will that the person being executed showed up on that particular gurney with humane chemicals injected into them by a machine. We are not killing anyone. Pretty convenient, right?

Then there's that vast middle ground, filled with apologists and rationalizers who will tell you these are more guidelines than actual laws, and a world with guns that frowns on killing is a messy one that cannot be fully regulated. Do you want to be the one to try and creep into Charlton Heston's crypt and pry that gun from his cold, dead hands? The threat of taking guns away is more fear inducing than the suggestion that we are using guns ninety-three times a day in America to break that sixth commandment. If it had been in the top five, maybe it would compete with the Second Amendment.
Every day Americans fail miserably in attempts to live by God's Law while we tenaciously cling to our constitutionally guaranteed right to own the guns that make all that commandment breaking possible.

Why don't we outlaw cars? They kill one hundred people a day in America. Let's remember also that you have to be licensed to operate a motor vehicle and there are a few ancillary benefits to owning a car aside from their killing potential. Guns, while being particularly ingenious and mysterious machines are kind of one-trick ponies. As the poet once suggested, "Hand guns are made for killin'
Ain't no good for nothin' else."  This was a guy who died in a plane crash, of course, so maybe we should ask God to outlaw those.