FERGUSON AS A CLASSROOM: A PLACE TO LEARN

Sometimes it is hard for me to figure out where news worthy social events will lead us in how we govern ourselves. Such is the case with the Ferguson affair. For several years, the pro gun lobby, a group that claimed support of the entire Republican Party, has been uncompromising in advocating gun purchase to protect citizens from government overreach especially the police. The strange thing is that Party, which is a big part of that government did no push them away.

As ridiculous as it sounds, “protection from the government”, when we are the government, was the right wing justifications for the unregulated sale of assault weapons. For example, this was a much-touted theme in the Clevin Bundy ranch fiasco; patriotic assault rifle armed citizens assembled to protect the rights of innocent ranchers; they had to fight the big bad Bureau of Land Management; the well-armed entire U.S. Army was their enemy. This is counter to the “moral order” of society Republicans so often claim to adhere: the husband is the head of a family, in fact, a family does not exist if there no husband; the owner of the business is the undisputed authority in the that business, which means the workers have no say in that business; the president is the head of the people—of course, that is true only if the president is a Republican as recent events have proved. Thus, Republicans seem to believe that the police represent the undisputed authority in society, which creates the anomaly they seem to believe, which is that the police do not have to obey the law to enforce the law. I am here to tell them that is not true; all of us are the government and police do not have supreme authority.

In Ferguson, it became clear; the right wing suddenly supports the idea that patriotic people should support the police and not hate them. This Missouri’s town police are suddenly part of the government the right wing hated so much on the ranch in Arizona that they pointed rifles at law enforcement officers. What would have happened if the non-whites in Ferguson fired their legally owned assault rifles at the police verses what would have happened if the armed flag waving patriots in Arizona fired at the federal agents from the Bureau of Land Management? In America, in either case, the same thing would have happened; we, as a people, would have come down with force on the erring side.

My objective in writing this blog is to point out how absurd the gun lobby argument for owning assault rifles or other military style weapons are. Equally absurd, is the argument that guns do not kill, people kill; as discussed; we all know people with guns kill.
We all know, even if the Supreme Court does not, the Second Amendment of the Constitution says gun ownership is the province of well-organized militia and clearly police are a well-organized militia. The events in Ferguson have shown us not all police are well organized as they should be but still are well organized. The same events will eventually show us, that in spite of the Supreme Court, we have an excellent system of laws; clearly, it prevented a mob-like rush to judgment. One mob did not punish a police officer for doing his duty the other mob will not allow police officers to do their duty unchecked. We have matured as a society; lynch mobs are a thing of the past. Rather, the law is allowing us time to learn from these events as tragic as they are. No one knows the truth yet but that is not the point, our system of government gives us time to find out the truth free from “the heat of the moment”, there is no guarantee  the truth will be accurate but we did have the chance and that is most important.    

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