The Ban on Assault Weapons is a Threat to the Freedom of Religion

Thinking readers well versed in church history understand how a chaplain posits a free democratic society has a Second Amendment right, an obligation, to keep and bear arms and that the reinstitution of the ban on assault weapons is a threat to the freedom of religion.  “Instances of the licentious and outrageous behavior of the military conservators of the peace still multiply upon us” (Townshend Acts).  

In 1972, the Environmental Protection Agency invited psychoanalyst Murray Bowen, M.D. to do a paper on human reaction to environmental problems.  He identified a link between the family and society.  The link had to do, first, with the delinquent teenage youngster, who is a responsibility for both parents and society, and secondly, with changes in the way both the parents and the agents of society deal with the same problem.  We are in a period of increasing chronic societal anxiety. Society responds to this with emotionally determined decisions to allay the anxiety of the moment; this results in symptoms of dysfunction; the efforts to relieve the symptoms result in more emotional Band-Aid legislation, which increased the problem.  We keep repeating the cycle, just as the family goes through similar cycles, regressing to the states we call emotional illness. Modern Americans assert it is more urgent to pass new gun control legislation after a mass shooting of children while simultaneously insisting a woman has the right to kill a child in the womb.  It is irrational to have such incongruent and radically opposing policies within the same society.  A government that fails to hold authorities accountable for Fast and Furious and Benghazi and considers it their responsibility to disarm her citizens is schizophrenic.

ATF "gunwalking" operations were, in part, a response to longstanding criticism of the bureau for focusing on relatively minor gun violations while failing to target high-level gun smuggling figures.  It is one of the many examples of emotional response to societal anxiety and the lack of maturity of both citizens and the political leaders they elect.

42 weapons recovered by Mexican military in Naco, Sonora, Mexico, 20 Nov 2009; these weapons were investigated by U.S. ICE.  Operation Fast and Furious; suspect Uriel Patino bought 19 of the weapons pictured one to two weeks earlier. http://www.justice.gov/oig/reports/2012/s1209.pdf

The Second Amendment

As ratified by the States and authenticated by Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of State:

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.

The concept is an extension of European thought during a period of conflict between Protestants and Catholics.  In an effort to oppress the Protestants, their weapons were confiscated, rendering them defenseless.  When less anxious leaders triumphed, a rational policy was based on six foundational assumptions universally necessary to a free people to maintain a healthy balance between the governed and the government:  

• deterring tyrannical government;
• repelling invasion;
• suppressing insurrection;
• facilitating a natural right of self-defense;
• participating in law enforcement;
• enabling the people to organize a militia system.