Gerson: The GOP spin on guns is “wrong–morally and legally”

Here is Michael Gerson’s recent Washington Post column:

Is the slaughter of innocents the unavoidable price of freedom?

A significant group of Americans believe it is. In a recent CBS-YouGov poll, 44 percent of Republicans agreed that mass shootings are “unfortunately something we have to accept” in a free country. It is the “unfortunately” that gets to me.

This is a case involving unequally distributed peril. For most observers, such misfortune amounts to reading a depressing newspaper article. For the families involved, it means suffering beyond measure and grief beyond relief. Government cannot take all the risk out of life. But is it permissible to “accept” the risk of murder on behalf of other people’s children? Is it moral to make our peace with such evident evil?

Any consideration of gun regulation in the United States immediately involves a debate about our fundamental law. Through most of American history, the prefatory clause of the Second Amendment — “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State” — determined the meaning of the operative clause, “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” This made sense in a country where the entire western frontier was ragged and bloody with danger. Every able-bodied man was expected to possess a useful weapon to fight for the security of his state. And at least part of the reason to stay armed was that many people feared and opposed the accumulation of federal power.

Read the entire piece here.