Who *Wouldn't* Bring An Assault Weapon To A Political Rally?

So.

At the town hall meetings President Obama held, protesters arrived armed with weaponry like assault weapons. Which is totally cool, right? So not threatening. After all, carrying weapons to a political event in full view of other citizenry is totes fine. It's not like African-American men - or presidents - have historically been victims of gun violence. It's not like we live in a country where this specific man, this specific president, has had "kill him" shouted out during political rallies.

Oh, wait.

That is exactly the country we live in.

We live in a nation where "one out of every eleven presidents has been shot and killed, and more than twenty percent of presidents have had shots fired at them". We live in a nation where prominent African-Americans have been murdered because they dared become prominent, because they dared to rise above what White America had delineated as their station, because they dared fight for the right to be treated as a full and equal citizen under the law. Because of that, I have to agree with Jeff Fecke when he says, "it’s impossible to view this as anything other than a direct threat on the president’s life".

If we were a nation where the implicit violence of the gun was mostly theoretical, where people have not been cut down because of their viewpoints or their skin color, then perhaps carrying guns to political rallies would not be as bone-chilling and as stifling as it is. It would still be stifling. It would still be silencing. It would still hold that threat of death and destruction (what else is a gun truly for when shown to others, other than to scare those around you into *not* taking a specific action?), because it is still a mechanism used first and foremost to destroy - whether it be bullseyes, deer, human beings, a gun alone is a neutral destructive force, but a destructive force all the same - but it wouldn't be as bad.

However.

We don't live in that kind of nation. We live in a nation where gun violence isn't a small thing, where "in 2006, there were 30,896 gun deaths in the U.S: 12,791 homicides (41% of total deaths), 16,883 suicides (55% of total deaths), 642 unintentional shootings (2% of total deaths), 360 from legal intervention (1.2% of total deaths) and 220 from undetermined intent (.8% of total deaths)."

We live in a nation where threats of violence have been used to stifle political debate. We live in a nation where we have the freedom of speech, but the words "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants" carries a particularly harrowing message, with a relatively recent and violent allusion I can't imagine we're supposed to miss.

Even if we were to give these particular gun-toting protesters the benefit of the doubt, even if the argument can be made that these particular protesters are obtuse and bereft of historical knowledge (and that argument, at least for one of these men, cannot be made, because as Bill Moyers pointed out on last Friday's Journal, his Myspace page makes it clear "he admires white supremacists"), it doesn't change one fact.

The freedom to bear arms is a right, but it also carries with it a responsibility. Even if none of these men would ever point a gun at President Obama, even if none of them would pull the trigger, they are still playing a deadly game. Because there are those out there who would, who wish to. And to add more guns - even legally displayed - to a crowd when the President is present, is at the least highly irresponsible and at the most incredibly dangerous. In their willful arrogance, they may not recognize that fact. They may actually believe that they are merely expressing, as the man carrying the assault weapon stated, that they "still have some freedoms". But they are responsible for being yet more people who could qualify as legitimate threats. They are responsible for the effect they have on the debate as a whole, a debate not even about guns or their control. They are responsible for racheting up the intensity and the fear and the uneasiness surrounding this particular issue. And they are responsible for their gross negligence of historical precedent.

Playing For Change

On my birthday, I indulged, had a bit of cake, and spent much of the rest of the evening on the couch trying to stop the world from spinning. In that state, my father decided that I could watch Bill Moyers. On the Journal, Bill had on a man who traveled the world, recording music from different countries and recording songs, old and new:

Although the idea of connecting people and changing the world through music is very much a 1960s, flower-child idea, and although this kind of movement is incredibly and naively idealistic, there is something thought-provoking about the film and the idea that lives can be changed and the world can be bettered by an acknowledgement of interconnectedness that is exemplified by music. Mark Johnson, the film maker, says it well when he said, "We all know the world is changing. And we get to decide if it's changing for the better or if it's changing for the worse." And it is incredibly moving to see "Stand By Me" sung and played by such a wide breadth of people:

What is also wonderful is Johnson's commitment to bettering the communities he visited by building music schools there. Johnson says, " now it's a chance for kids to get together, to have something positive to look forward to. And what we're doing with this foundation is we're going build hundreds of schools around the world. And installing them all with recording equipment and cameras. So that people can log on to the internet and they can watch recitals and concerts in the schools we're building, to kind of break down that whole distance barrier."