Gun Laws and Morality 

You do realize that all laws intrude on personal liberty don’t you? All a law can do is say no to something. But a law has no effect without enforcement. In a practical sense, without enforcement, there is no reason to adhere to a law outside of respect for civil society and moral conscience.

In the words of Shakespeare's Hamlet,  “Ay, there's the rub!”

“We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion . . . Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” - John Adams

I have a question. When there is a perceived problem in society, why is the knee jerk reaction always seem to be a cry for a new law? Why not examine the current laws to see if there was a failure somewhere? This is a much more expedient and productive process.

In our rush and demand to pass a new law we focus entirely on what we desire the law to accomplish and not whether or not that law can actually accomplish it. Our wants override rational thought. Remember Pelosi’s, “We need to pass this bill to find out what’s in it”? Our desires and wants override rational thought and examination of what is being proposed.

If your car doesn’t start, do you buy a new car? No. Do you buy additional car parts and add it to the vehicle? No. You locate the problem and fix it.

I challenge gun ban and new gun law advocates to examine all of the current local, state and federal gun laws. In any given shooting incident, see if there was an enforcement failure or a dereliction of duty in procedure of an existing law.

Can murders be stopped? Reread the John Adams quote. Can the rate of murders be reduced? Certainly. And the quickest and most efficient way to do this is to check the current laws and see if they are being carried out and enforced. Otherwise it is pure folly to create new laws if the problem is that laws aren’t being carried out or enforced. If your water bucket is empty because it has a hole in the bottom of it then it makes no sense to pour more water into it. Fix the bucket!

Albert Einstein is credited as saying, "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results."

The mindless plea for new gun laws without examining current laws and procedures is just that, mindless and its insanity. It’s doing the same thing over and over again to no avail.

Reread the John Adams quote again. Let’s examine conscience and morality. Does conscience and morality come from laws? No. Are conscience and morality instituted by governments? No. Conscience and morality are of God. From creation of man into righteousness and his subsequent fall, a conscious moral standard was needed. God and righteousness is within the heart of man but stained by sin. Left alone, man will fail in this condition. So God gave a moral standard, the Ten Commandments that man could intellectually grasp and willingly strive towards. God gave man a Savior to attain the unattainable and the Holy Ghost to guide man from within.

Conscience and morality is not of man and his government, but of God and His government.

“…the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end…” (Isaiah 9:6-7)

W. Bradford Littlejohn in his new book, “The Two Kingdoms, A Guide For The Perplexed” is spot on with his analysis concerning conscience and morality.

“We often seem to expect politics to change hearts, which is of course Christ’s prerogative alone, and without changed hearts, many otherwise good policies may prove futile.”

“Christ reigns mysteriously and invisibly over the kingdom of conscience, and no human authority may dare to interpose itself as the mediator of this rule; it is by faith alone that we participate in this kingdom, so we must not be deceived into identifying it with external works or rituals.”

“Perhaps the greatest error of evangelicals in the past generation has been the temptation to think that more could be achieved through politics than was realistic, and sometimes that more must be achieved through politics than was appropriate”.

So, while society actively seeks to control a conscience and morality problem through more government and laws, society will see nothing but an increase in conscience and morality problems because the true solution is not being implemented.

Crime is a result of a conscience and morality problem. Government and laws attempt to prohibit and punish the crime, and do not address the condition or state of being of the person. God addresses the person, laws and government the crime.

Oh, and another thing about man’s law and government. It’s an electric fence, meant to keep bad out and to allow the good to roam free. But realize that the electric fence is also an enclosure. The more you demand new laws and bigger government, the smaller the enclosure becomes and less freedom you have to roam.

Bill Hitchcock