One journalist’s encounter with an ardent gunman
Just before the turn of the new millennium in 2000, I was hired as an editorial writer at the third-largest newspaper in Illinois. I’d been working in the newspaper business in advertising and promotions for the previous ten years, but published hundreds of articles in collaboration with the editorial department.
Most of them were feature stories, articles on nature or the environment, theater and the arts. So there was proof that I was a good enough writer to handle work in the editorial mode.
The journalist’s job
Those who aren’t familiar with the newspaper business, especially as it was structured nearly 20 years ago, should know that an editorial writer’s job is to serve as the voice of the publication. There were five of us spread across a geographic area serving 90+ communities. It was our job to keep tabs on the news, find issues of importance to our readers and write perspective pieces, generally 400–600 words, about the significance of the news. We were also, on a consistent basis, to serve as the editorial “voice” of the newspaper.
Before writing these commentaries, we all participated in a weekly conference call in which the diversity of opinion within the editorial writer staff came into play. We’d challenge each other on many fronts; most importantly facts about the issues, political perspectives, scale of a problem and many other factors.
It was absorbing and rewarding work. And it was an honor in which to be engaged.
Letters to the Editor
We were also responsible for receiving and publishing Letters to the Editor. This was a daily function that assured the voice of the readers would be heard. We had a policy not to edit the letters, but some would turn out too long to fit the allotted space. In that case, we’d ask our readers to edit for length if possible.
There was also a policy concerning topics and number of times we’d publish opinions from a given letter writer on a particular topic. It wasn’t our objective to limit access to the paper, but we had a responsibility to provide space for the many people who wanted to express their views.
Some writers refused to accept this policy, or could not see why they were not allowed to be published every week if they took the time to write. In my coverage zone, one of these writers was a fellow we’ll call Dan. His central issue was gun rights. Every week he’d author a new letter, send it in and follow up with a phone call at times to make sure that I’d received his carefully worded missives.
Gun rights redux
There was just one problem with Dan’s letters to the editor. They all said basically the same thing. Every time. He might move a paragraph around to alter the perspective a bit, but his campaign said little more than “gun rights should not be infringed.”
We’d published his initial opinion and put it first in the order of letters to the editor. Dan wasn’t a bad writer. He was just extremely repetitive. After a couple months of communications with Dan, and his growing impatience and irritation with our unwillingness to publish essentially the same letter again and again, we sent him a reminder copy of our Letters to the Editor policy. And for a week, there was silence from Dan.
Then we received yet another letter about gun rights. This time the language was much more insistent and forceful, as if that were the difference we were seeking in the content of the letter.
Scene of the encounter
This went on for several more months. Finally Dan asked if we could meet in person. He was interested in coming to the office for a meeting.
Our office was located in a commercial strip along a state highway. The company was almost complete in converting to a digital format, but the interior of the office included a photography room with both Mac computers and the vestiges of some film processing facilities.
There was also an office for the advertising manager who served as general operations manager for that region.
Then there were doors that opened to a small front lobby space. Those doors were always locked, and we all had key passes. But people from the public often waited outside for appointments.
Having words
That’s where I decided to meet Dan. Up to that point, we’d never encountered each other in public. My work for the newspaper did, however, involve quite a number of interviews, especially with community leaders and political candidates. Some of these encounters surprised me. Earlier that year I’d interviewed a candidate for Illinois state representative whose political views were ardently racist. During that interview, I repeated back to the candidate the precise words he’d said because they would be quoted in a candidate profile we were assembling in advance of the election. The candidate repeated his blatantly racist views about shipping people back to Africa and that sort of thing. It was a difficult profile to write.
Yet as journalists, that was our job: quote the facts or opinions of others as accurately as possible.
Person to person
Which is why I also agreed to meet with Dan, the ardent gun advocate. I’d learned that people often express themselves differently when they meet face-to-face. It seemed fair to give Dan a chance to sit down with me and talk about his frustrations in trying to publish multiple letters in the newspaper.
My thinking was basic. Perhaps I was missing some aspect of his perspective that he could not get down in words? That’s another job of a journalist. Find out what people are truly trying to communicate. You can’t always make assumptions based only what you’ve read.
Military grade persona
Dan showed up wearing a deep green pea coat that looked like a handoff from the military. He stood with his hands stuffed deep in the pockets. He was tall, standing 6'4" at least. As he slipped through the front door at the appointed time and backed into a corner of the front office, I let the door lock click shut behind me. It was then that realized with some level of alarm that I was now all alone in a room with a man I hardly knew, whose hands were still stuffed into the pockets of his jacket.
I wondered to myself whether there was a gun in either of those hands. All those stupid jokes about people faking like they’ve got a gun in their pocket by poking a finger into the jacket did not seem so funny now. Dan’s demeanor was a bit guarded. I wondered what that meant.
I invited Dan to sit down. As he did so, he still kept his hands in his pockets. This made my spider sense tingle. He sat there on the edge of a chair with hunched shoulders and his hands wedged into those pockets. It seemed a strange pose to assume, but an even stranger one to keep.
Then I said, “So Dan, let’s talk about your concerns.”
Let’s talk
And at that moment, he pulled his hands out of his pockets and put them on his knees. I made an effort not to sigh with relief. My anxiety still told me to be cautious in the event that Dan had something dire in mind, but eventually we had a good talk. During our discussion, he seemed to better understand our editorial policy. I even gave him suggestions on how to approach his central concern of gun rights from different perspectives and gave him a few pointers on where and how to submit his work in other places as well.
From then on, Dan and I had a working agreement. In general, we’d publish a piece of his work every few months. But now he understood the problem with readers getting “too much of a good thing,” as I jested.
Empathy
I empathized with Dan. It was clear his concerns were quite genuine. But had he taken an even greater offense at our editorial policy, things might have been quite different between us. That fact was pressed home yesterday when I read about a gunman who entered the offices of a newspaper and shot four people dead and wounded others. Because at the moment that I heard that door lock behind me in the front lobby of our newspaper years ago, I literally thought about the fact that I could well be shot dead in that moment. Some small recess of my brain registered the fact that if I was the one to be shot, at least we’d isolated ourselves from the rest of the staff. They’d be warned.
Thus I’ve long been sensitive to the fact that all it takes to turn a law-abiding gun owner into a gun-abiding law owner is a sufficient level of anger to make that person act on their definition of justice or conscience. Fortunately in my case, that did not occur.
But let us repeat: nowhere is the danger of passage from rationality to violence more evident than among people who view guns as an expression of their conscience. The frightening reality in America is that so many people seem to make that leap with such furious and immediate resolve, as if a switch got flipped. That’s when gun rights get turned into a perceived right to kill. It happens every day in America. Blaming mental illness is a lame excuse for the commonality of this problem. The real blame rests with a denial and even willful ignorance of the human capacity to kill, especially toward the types of guns that make it so easy and practical to commit mass shootings and everyday murders.
So it pays to take a journalist’s approach to examining the source of these attitudes. The opinions about to be expressed here certainly do not conform to the actions of the Supreme Court in recent years. But as we’ll see, there are knowing flaws in how the principles of law and the supposed “logic” of the rulings have been applied. These have allowed our nation to become one of the most murderously acquiescent nation-states in the world.
We are in fact a pathetic excuse for the freedoms so many claim to espouse under the umbrella claims that gun ownership equals law, not the other way around. Some will call these opinions “liberal” to brand them with a political moniker. But in truth, they reflect an honesty that has been transactionally dispossessed for purposes of raw profit by the gun lobby, barely closeted prejudice by the most fearful and intolerant Americans and the untold privilege of selective law enforcement and its forceful blowback across the streets and fields of America.
Gun rights and the law
It’s quite quite valuable to read the first passage of the Second Amendment, and consider what it actually says, for it is meant to be read intact and serves as a qualifier of all that follows:
“A well-regulated militia, being necessary for the security of a free state…”
These two phrases prove there are inescapable truths that need to be acknowledged in the process of vetting gun laws and solutions.
The first unavoidable fact about guns is this: Guns were invented for the purpose of killing. Thus without regulation, they consistently threaten the security of a free state. That is why security of a free state follows in order the establishment of a well-regulated militia.
Arguments over what constituted a militia in the early days of American history are tempting to indulge. Rather than rely on anachronism, this historicity is these days a term that has been illuminated in ironic fashion by the many anti-government or racist “militias” formed in the backwaters of American life that are far from ‘well-regulated.’ That’s because the participants in these so-called militias abide and communicate deep suspicions about the rule (and role) of law and government in their lives.
Instead they embrace a philosophy that stands outside the law. In many cases they may believe their worldview stands above the law. And when it comes to guns, weapons are their perceived guarantee to express those rights, by force if necessary. Guns play with the status of both country and religion with these folks. Thus the character of a thing is not confined to its literal definition or even its material use. It can become an extension of the person itself. This is why the world of gun control has become so muddled. People confuse guns with their own identity. The gun is inseparable from their nature. Their nature becomes an expression of what guns are, and what they can do.
The character of a thing
One must recognize the character of a thing in order to create laws that cover its use. Thus the first passage of the Second Amendment attempts to reconcile the inherent purpose of guns (which is killing) to their containment in a civilized society.
The second unavoidable fact about guns is this: Weapons designed for killing should be well-regulated.
The fact that some people prefer to use guns for sport, even self-protection, is secondary to the original nature of the invention. Constitutional originalists should understand this order of reasoning most of all. Reaching the original basics of truth and law is the entire basis of originalism. One thing follows another. Cause and effect matter.
That is neither a liberal or conservative opinion. It is materialistic. When people make the claim, “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people” they are willfully choosing to ignore the material fact that it is the ease by which guns make it possible to kill that is a direct threat to the security of the state. That is, the right of all people to live in freedom, without constant threat of being killed.
The Second Amendment rightly places that security before the right of individuals to bear arms. That right is subordinate in order of importance. The interpretation of law that aggressively depends on omission of those facts is the product of ideology and selfish desires.
Important qualifiers
One of the things you learn as an editorial writer is that people will read into words whatever they want (or choose) to extract. This fact alone can turn critical issues such as gun rights into a bizarro world of contradictions and conflicts. Indeed, that’s where we find ourselves when it comes to “gun rights” in America. More people have died from gun violence on American soil than all the soldiers killed in foreign wars during military service.
Thus America is at war with itself over this issue, and too many people are in ardent denial of that fact for one reason alone: they don’t want to have to abide with what the constitution requires when it comes to a well-regulated standard of gun ownership. This is the singular immaturity of our age, and it is costing thousands of people their personal security and even their very lives. That’s not my opinion. Those are facts.
Being necessary for the security of a free state
And thus, the current interpretation of the Second Amendment as it advocates Concealed Carry and even a push for Open Carry essentially ignores the meaning of the most important statement in the entire passage, “being necessary for the security of a free state…”
Because the direction we’re headed is rewarding vigilantism.
Gun advocates almost automatically transfer the meaning of this second phrase to apply to the last half of the Second Amendment, “the right to bear arms shall not be infringed.” That’s called a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The conclusion of gun advocates is that guns are both the beneficiary of the law the tool that guarantees personal freedom in America. But in truth, that’s putting the cart before the horse. The Second Amendment is written in a specific order for a reason. As written in its original context, the sequence defines the meaning, not the other way around:
“1. A well-regulated militia 2. Being necessary for the security of a free state…”
Regulation comes first. Security is its product. A free state is the result, especially because even people who don’t own guns should feel protected under the auspices of the Constitution.
Gun rights are only guaranteed after these provisions are met. Thus gun rights remain under the archaic yet still relevant term of “militia.” That term defines gun ownership as subject to law, not the opposite way around, which is what we have now. That results in our collective freedom being subject to the vigilante whims of gun-abiding law owners. People who think they own the law are all too willing to determine for themselves what that law means.
The fact of a well-regulated militia is this: All gun owners bear responsibility for the impact of their respective levels of freedom. When those freedoms are consistently breached by gun owners who threaten the security of a free state, then the definition of “well-regulated” must be flexibly adapted to protect the freedoms of all. In some cases, access to the types of weapons that most consistently threaten society may be subject to deeper levels of regulation. That’s the common sense solution to Second Amendment interpretation. It serves to mitigate the loss of collective freedom by regulating the risks associated with certain types of weapons, not the individual right to bear arms. But if the risk exceeds the security of a free state, the rights themselves are subject to the determination of law. It’s that simple.
We’re definitely at the limits of that constitutional tolerance. No one is trying to take the rights of all gun owners away. But there is a constitutional demand for equitable regulation.
The disturbing challenge in the present era is that people who actually want to respect the flexible truth of the Constitution are branded unpatriotic by people with the selfishly stubborn notion there is only one interpretation of the Second Amendment. Nothing in American history would suggest this is the case with anything in the Constitution. When written, it allowed slavery. Our nation has fought a civil war over state’s rights and abolishment of slavery.
And women, who constitute fully half the American population, were originally denied the right to vote. So stop with the whole sacrosanct notion that the United States Constitution is a never-changing document. It may have original wisdom, but that is for us to draw upon, not worship as scripture, because biblical literalism is also a farce that denies the metonymy of a Bible that uses metaphor to describe the kingdom of God and even the mission of Jesus Christ.
And let’s not forget the Constitution guarantees freedom from religion as well as freedom of religion. We’re lurching toward a breach of that fact as well.
Serious problems
The reason the sequence of the Second Amendment exists is also to grant flexibility in governing the type and use of weapons. Guns have gotten a lot more serious and a ton more proficient at killing than they once were. The security of a free state does not exist when the lack of gun regulation allows a single person to act as a militia by arming themselves with a military-grade weapon that can murder fifty people in the space of minutes. Or blast children away in a public school. Or burst into a church and bludgeon people to death with bullets designed to maim the inner organs of the body. These breaches of freedom are occurring with such consistency the current interpretation of the Second Amendment has become a murderous farce.
These are the points that people like my friend Dan and his letter-writing campaign seem to refuse to acknowledge. The mission instead is to grab the utmost level of personal, singular, and ultimately selfish laws about guns.
These are the gun-abiding law owners spoken of earlier.
Fear before liberty
In many respects, the arguments of outright gun zealots depend far more on expressions of personal and collective fear, rather than liberty. In fact, unregulated gun ownership is not about freedom at all. It’s about forcibly ignoring the true foundations of law, especially the full content of the Second Amendment.
The Constitution is a living document whether originalists want to deny that fact or not. The existence of a Second Amendment (it’s an amendment!) is absolute proof of that.
Most importantly, an anachronistic and selective interpretation of that amendment should not deliver a death sentence to people caught in the crossfire of selfish desires and disenfranchisement that the current license to kill delivers with such alarming consistency.
And people like Dan need to someday understand that. I’m just thankful that a bit of empathy kept him from taking the next step in protecting his idea of “freedom,” because killing others seems to be a too common expression of gun-abiding law owners.
