I’ve often heard the expression, “Freedom isn’t free.” While it’s mostly used to mean that we have to fight for our freedoms, it seems to me that it can also mean that there is a price to some of the rights we enjoy every day. For example, we pay a price for the right to freedom of speech in that we sometimes have to endure incredibly vile and blasphemous comments from those with whom we disagree. We pay a price for the right to freedom of religion in that we can’t have a Nativity scene at our city halls or Ten Commandments plaques in our courthouses.
And for the right to bear arms we pay a price in the lives of high schoolers at Columbine, college students at Virginia Tech, employees at ABB, shoppers at an Oregon mall, and students and teachers at Sandy Hook. As you can see, in the case of the right to bear arms, the price is extremely high.
But America as a whole seems to be ready and willing to pay that price. After each mass killing our leaders say that we must find a way to prevent another incident, and we all agree. We seem to want a new freedom — freedom from the fear of being shot. But we can’t have that freedom. You see, the price of the freedom not to be shot is giving up our guns. In a country with 300 million guns, that’s a price America is not willing to pay.
After a period of mourning and calls for something to be done, we will have another mass killing. Maybe in a week, maybe in a month, maybe in a few years. But it will happen again. And again. And again. And America will continue to pay this price until the right to bear arms is reinterpreted to be in the context of “a well regulated militia.”
John Ebert • Hazelwood
