This commentary is by Brian T. Ortelere, an attorney practicing in Philadelphia, New York and Vermont, but living almost full-time in Burlington since the pandemic began.
I went to bed on May 24, 14 kids mercilessly slaughtered in Texas. Woke up the next day, that number had risen to 19, plus two teachers, and the shooter’s grandmother fighting for her life.
Newspapers and websites yet again dutifully sharing grim photos of relatives and friends bereft with grief, the predictable result of a semiautomatic weapon discharged into the soft flesh of our children.
That Wednesday morning, I read comments from a gun advocate on Twitter arguing that “freedom is messy, freedom is dangerous,” while acknowledging that, yes, kids might get killed in the crossfire, but it’s a welcome tradeoff.
Indeed, we are socialized as Americans to believe that individual freedom is paramount, it’s part of the creation myth, one of the pillars of so-called American exceptionalism.
Spend some time in a European country and the difference is palpable. There is a concern for the well-being of the community that is entirely foreign to Americans, a sentiment considered dangerous by many of us.
Here in the States, my right to life, my children’s right to life, is subject to the whims and predilections of those in thrall to the power that comes with brandishing sophisticated and deadly weaponry. My life can end in an instant, possibly at great distance from my assailant, my freedoms forever circumscribed by that person’s strident belief that he or she should have dominion over me.
Of course, with rights come responsibilities. But that’s a tired platitude, its meaning inscrutable to scores of Americans, the pandemic response just another painful example of the problem.
My mask itches; I won’t wear one regardless of your preexisting condition, not to mention whether I could be an asymptomatic carrier.
I won’t get the free jab, which is perfectly safe and a marvel of modern science, because freedom, or something.
The caprices of others can, again, immediately change the trajectory of my life, or put a premature end to it.
But I digress.
The system is rigged and, dare I say it, the Constitution is flawed. Gun control can never pass the Senate. At bottom, small, bright-red states control the outcome, despite the fact that blue states’ populations are vastly higher. The framers feared the excesses of majority rule, concerned with its impact on rural states, and we’re left to sort out the deadly consequences of their lack of foresight. We are handcuffed forever to the musings of those who lived in an entirely different world.
The Constitution is not, as so many fervently believe, a perfect manifestation of the best of Enlightenment thinking.
Another heresy, but something that needs to be said. And this may well be an intractable problem; those same states will never allow the Constitution to be amended.
I’m baffled by the gun rights crowd. I today feel physically hurt, some low-level grief, oddly tired. But it’s not about me; it’s about the most vulnerable among us, elementary schoolchildren.
And they just don’t care; it’s “messy.”
