Sunday, June 16, 2013
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I'm a very strong supporter of gun control, so it pains me to write this article.
The Supreme Court recently ruled that the Second Amendment to the Constitution guarantees the right of citizens to own arms. Here is the text of the Second Amendment:
"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."
First, it needs to be said that the word "arms" can only be interpreted to mean guns. Knives are also arms, but no militia would go into battle with just knives (or swords, etc.). As for arrows, they were the weapons used by Indians, not Europeans. It's clear that the authors of the Constitution meant guns.
The problem with the Second Amendment is that it is vague and outdated. At the time that it was written, state-sanctioned militias were the form of defense employed by the states. To the best of my knowledge, militias were only formed when they were needed; and when one was formed, the members were expected to bring their own guns. Today, the states have the National Guard for defense, and the states provide the guns.
There's no doubt that the focus in the Second Amendment is on maintaining a militia. That was what was important to the framers. However, it can also be said that the framers merely mentioned militias as one example of why people should have the right to bear arms. If, at the time, each state had its own standing army and didn't use militias, would the framers have allowed local governments to outlaw guns? I don't think so. The reasons are simple: First, the frontier nature of the country was still very strong, and frontiersmen need weapons. And second, hunting for food was still a common activity (even though most meat by then was probably farm-raised). What 18th century politician would have had the nerve to tell people that they couldn't shoot a rabbit for dinner, or shoot the wolf that was stealing their chickens?
I hate to say it, but that's the way I see it. The Bill of Rights is an important part of the Constitution, and we should not be looking for reasons to nullify the rights granted in it simply because social circumstances have changed. I do, however, believe that the Constitution should be changed to allow states to ban guns if they so choose. Guns -- especially automatic weapons -- just don't belong in a modern society, and especially in large cities like New York and Chicago. Guns empower criminals more than they empower non-criminals. Also, the proliferation of guns leads to accidental and spontaneous shootings, like the shootings that take place during domestic arguments. There is no doubt that there would be less death-by-weaponry in our country if guns were tightly controlled.
There is one thing about the Supreme Court's decision that I find curious: They interpreted the Second Amendment to mean that people have the right to own hand guns, though hand guns are generally not used in battle. Why hand guns?
As I noted in another article on this blog, arming one's self to the teeth seems to be a Christian thing. Christians have little faith in God to protect them. Based on what I've read, the average American gun-owner has 27 firearms. Considering that many owners probably have just one gun, that means that there are people out there who have hundreds of guns. What are those people afraid of? Some of them are gun-collectors who don't use the guns for self-defense, but some of them are not. Some of them are just terrified people who feel that nothing short of an arsenal will protect them.
In "New Age" circles there is an understanding that what you fear is what you get. We are all, to some extent, afraid of crime; but if your fear reaches the level of an obsession which causes you to buy a raft of weapons, your obsessive fear may attract crime into your life. In other articles on this blog, I've mentioned the Seth Material, which forms the basis of my religious views. Seth gave a reason for this attraction. He said that when you dwell on something, your thoughts create a "thought form" in the mental universe from which our physical universe arises. Sometimes this thought form is weak, and it never materializes in your life. But if your thoughts are obsessive, the thought form will gain strength and eventually materialize as a reality in your life. For example, if you have an obsessive fear of criminals, your fear will materialize as a criminal. That's not to say that your thoughts actually create a criminal; rather, a criminal in your community will be attracted to you because of your obsessive thoughts. So you see, the fear that caused you to buy 27 guns is the fear that will bring the criminal into your life. You will be better protected if you let go of the fear.
Seth said that we create our own reality according to our thoughts and beliefs -- so it isn't just fearful thoughts that become reality. However, fear is a strong emotion that tends to propagate itself. If you are fearful, you probably think about it a lot. When we are just happy, we don't tend to dwell on it. It is what we dwell on that becomes our reality.
I can give you an example of this from my own life. In my 30's, my mother told me all about the tinnitus that she lived with. Her tinnitus was apparently very loud, so much so that she could hear it in a noisy restaurant. Well, I became terrified of developing tinnitus myself. I would often listen for sounds in my ears when I was in quiet surroundings, and I worried about it a lot. Eventually I stopped thinking about it so much, but the fear remained. Unconsciously, I had concluded that I would probably develop tinnitus in my old age. Well, twenty years later, in my mid-50's, I developed tinnitus from taking the drug Avandia for a couple weeks. Even though twenty years had passed, my obsessive fear of tinnitus came to fruition. Out of seven children, I am the only one who developed it, and that makes sense because I am the only child in my family who worried about it. What we dwell on is what we get.
What materializes in our lives isn't just what we dwell on, but what we believe in. Beliefs are thoughts or ideas that we "own" or identify with, and which we have made a part of ourselves. Beliefs are stronger than just random thoughts, so strong that you don't have to dwell on them at length for them to materialize in your life. Thus, if you believe that "the world is unsafe" and that "criminals are everywhere", then that increases your chances of encountering a criminal even if you don't actually think about crime very much.
I can give you another example from my life. I don't have a great fear of being the victim of crime, but I do have a great contempt for the lower-class type of people who often commit crimes. That contempt represents a collection of beliefs about such people, and it definitely has the power to attract them into my life. Well, it did. As I explained in my article "No Good Dead Goes Unpunished", I moved into a building that seemed to have nice people living in it, and within two years I had three criminal types living in the building, one above me and two below me. And the behavior of those criminal types was every bit as ugly and crass as I expected it would be.
Christianity isn't a logical religion. Christians hand control of their lives over to God, but they don't trust God, so they buy guns to protect themselves. They believe that God is inscrutable and capricious, and that he "giveth" and "taketh" for no apparent reason. If they held more logical views, they would realize that they themselves bring about the circumstances of their lives, and that guns won't protect them from the consequences of their beliefs. To me, the Christian view (i.e., the idea that the world is governed by a capricious God who is supposed to protect us but doesn't) sounds like chaos. If I believed in a God like that, I would buy a gun too.
The Supreme Court recently ruled that the Second Amendment to the Constitution guarantees the right of citizens to own arms. Here is the text of the Second Amendment:
"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."
First, it needs to be said that the word "arms" can only be interpreted to mean guns. Knives are also arms, but no militia would go into battle with just knives (or swords, etc.). As for arrows, they were the weapons used by Indians, not Europeans. It's clear that the authors of the Constitution meant guns.
The problem with the Second Amendment is that it is vague and outdated. At the time that it was written, state-sanctioned militias were the form of defense employed by the states. To the best of my knowledge, militias were only formed when they were needed; and when one was formed, the members were expected to bring their own guns. Today, the states have the National Guard for defense, and the states provide the guns.
There's no doubt that the focus in the Second Amendment is on maintaining a militia. That was what was important to the framers. However, it can also be said that the framers merely mentioned militias as one example of why people should have the right to bear arms. If, at the time, each state had its own standing army and didn't use militias, would the framers have allowed local governments to outlaw guns? I don't think so. The reasons are simple: First, the frontier nature of the country was still very strong, and frontiersmen need weapons. And second, hunting for food was still a common activity (even though most meat by then was probably farm-raised). What 18th century politician would have had the nerve to tell people that they couldn't shoot a rabbit for dinner, or shoot the wolf that was stealing their chickens?
I hate to say it, but that's the way I see it. The Bill of Rights is an important part of the Constitution, and we should not be looking for reasons to nullify the rights granted in it simply because social circumstances have changed. I do, however, believe that the Constitution should be changed to allow states to ban guns if they so choose. Guns -- especially automatic weapons -- just don't belong in a modern society, and especially in large cities like New York and Chicago. Guns empower criminals more than they empower non-criminals. Also, the proliferation of guns leads to accidental and spontaneous shootings, like the shootings that take place during domestic arguments. There is no doubt that there would be less death-by-weaponry in our country if guns were tightly controlled.
There is one thing about the Supreme Court's decision that I find curious: They interpreted the Second Amendment to mean that people have the right to own hand guns, though hand guns are generally not used in battle. Why hand guns?
* * *
As I noted in another article on this blog, arming one's self to the teeth seems to be a Christian thing. Christians have little faith in God to protect them. Based on what I've read, the average American gun-owner has 27 firearms. Considering that many owners probably have just one gun, that means that there are people out there who have hundreds of guns. What are those people afraid of? Some of them are gun-collectors who don't use the guns for self-defense, but some of them are not. Some of them are just terrified people who feel that nothing short of an arsenal will protect them.
In "New Age" circles there is an understanding that what you fear is what you get. We are all, to some extent, afraid of crime; but if your fear reaches the level of an obsession which causes you to buy a raft of weapons, your obsessive fear may attract crime into your life. In other articles on this blog, I've mentioned the Seth Material, which forms the basis of my religious views. Seth gave a reason for this attraction. He said that when you dwell on something, your thoughts create a "thought form" in the mental universe from which our physical universe arises. Sometimes this thought form is weak, and it never materializes in your life. But if your thoughts are obsessive, the thought form will gain strength and eventually materialize as a reality in your life. For example, if you have an obsessive fear of criminals, your fear will materialize as a criminal. That's not to say that your thoughts actually create a criminal; rather, a criminal in your community will be attracted to you because of your obsessive thoughts. So you see, the fear that caused you to buy 27 guns is the fear that will bring the criminal into your life. You will be better protected if you let go of the fear.
Seth said that we create our own reality according to our thoughts and beliefs -- so it isn't just fearful thoughts that become reality. However, fear is a strong emotion that tends to propagate itself. If you are fearful, you probably think about it a lot. When we are just happy, we don't tend to dwell on it. It is what we dwell on that becomes our reality.
I can give you an example of this from my own life. In my 30's, my mother told me all about the tinnitus that she lived with. Her tinnitus was apparently very loud, so much so that she could hear it in a noisy restaurant. Well, I became terrified of developing tinnitus myself. I would often listen for sounds in my ears when I was in quiet surroundings, and I worried about it a lot. Eventually I stopped thinking about it so much, but the fear remained. Unconsciously, I had concluded that I would probably develop tinnitus in my old age. Well, twenty years later, in my mid-50's, I developed tinnitus from taking the drug Avandia for a couple weeks. Even though twenty years had passed, my obsessive fear of tinnitus came to fruition. Out of seven children, I am the only one who developed it, and that makes sense because I am the only child in my family who worried about it. What we dwell on is what we get.
What materializes in our lives isn't just what we dwell on, but what we believe in. Beliefs are thoughts or ideas that we "own" or identify with, and which we have made a part of ourselves. Beliefs are stronger than just random thoughts, so strong that you don't have to dwell on them at length for them to materialize in your life. Thus, if you believe that "the world is unsafe" and that "criminals are everywhere", then that increases your chances of encountering a criminal even if you don't actually think about crime very much.
I can give you another example from my life. I don't have a great fear of being the victim of crime, but I do have a great contempt for the lower-class type of people who often commit crimes. That contempt represents a collection of beliefs about such people, and it definitely has the power to attract them into my life. Well, it did. As I explained in my article "No Good Dead Goes Unpunished", I moved into a building that seemed to have nice people living in it, and within two years I had three criminal types living in the building, one above me and two below me. And the behavior of those criminal types was every bit as ugly and crass as I expected it would be.
Christianity isn't a logical religion. Christians hand control of their lives over to God, but they don't trust God, so they buy guns to protect themselves. They believe that God is inscrutable and capricious, and that he "giveth" and "taketh" for no apparent reason. If they held more logical views, they would realize that they themselves bring about the circumstances of their lives, and that guns won't protect them from the consequences of their beliefs. To me, the Christian view (i.e., the idea that the world is governed by a capricious God who is supposed to protect us but doesn't) sounds like chaos. If I believed in a God like that, I would buy a gun too.
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