Four freedoms

While some are attempting to take part in what they've called a "culture war," by steadfastly refusing to regulate weapons of war, and as children and innocent unarmed adults are killed by assault rifles folks should have few rights to in the first place, FDR proclaimed 4 fundamental freedoms that are essential in a democracy. Those were freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. Those last two are the ones that we've lost in the culture war that pits the second amendment rights to "bear arms" against the safety of all Americans.

Some of us want to eliminate poverty, as it is most often the source of poor schooling, stresses on the home, divorce, and of kids falling through the cracks. The "conservative" approach is to put hardening of schools as their priority, while also hardening the lives of our kids and increasing the level of fear. Imagine for a moment that your loving fourth grade teacher had an AR-15 at hand behind her desk ready to blow away anyone who arrived in class unexpected. Any other weapon and she'd be outgunned. Imagine for a moment that to enter the supermarket, you had to face an AR-15 armed guard and pass through a metal detector, taking your concealed weapon back to the car when the alarms went off. That's the world some Republicans want.

Freedom from fear these days is the freedom most lacking. So what's a person to do? Put the guns down, walk forth freely and bravely into the world. When we meet those carrying guns let's ask them what they are so afraid of that they need to be "armed", while the rest of us walk forward having put fear aside. The purpose of self-defense weaponry is proposed as that of living with less fear, while parents worry about sending their kids to school, and to see an armed man enter a grocery store makes me want to run for my life.

I work out at the gym with doctors who have long served in our community, including for many years taking turns in the emergency room. I asked them if they could count the numbers of self-inflicted and accidental gun deaths over their many years of service here. The number was beyond their counting. I asked if there was a single case in which a gun saved a life. There were unable to recall even one. So if we want to live without fear, let's remove assault weapons and weapons of war from our society, please.