God given right!

I was listening to a call in show on National Public Radio (NPR) about the Parkland School shooting and the influence the NRA has over our politicians. An angry listener called and began talking about his “God-given Constitutional Second Amendment right to own as many guns as he wants”.

Now, I am not going to use this post to debate what the Second Amendment grants or doesn’t grant. But just in case you were wondering I don’t think it was written to allow average Joe Citizen to stockpile machine guns. No, what I want to explore is the first part of his statement “God-given”.

The Declaration of Independence states “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” The Bible probably details some God-given rights humans have like you can eat from any tree but that one which we all know how that ended. What I want to understand is what are the rights God gave us Americans, you know the chosen people.

I am really racking brain to figure where a Colt AR-15 magazine-fed, gas-operated semi-automatic rifle fits in to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. Some would say that an AR-15 protects “Life” but we have already seen that it also removes life. How about “Liberty”? Does an AR-15 have the capability to increase the amount of liberty we can attain? It certainly has proven itself of taking liberty away from people. Ask the mothers and fathers of the slain students or someone who has lost an arm or a leg after being shot. Yea, I am not sure God had either one of those rights in mind when it comes to the AR-15 or any other automatic or semi-automatic weapon the NRA is pushing hard for us to keep in our closets.

So it has to be the “pursuit of Happiness”. What else could it be? Think about it, just 3% of American adults own 133 million firearms, half of all of America’s total gun stock, 3%. The guy that killed 58 people and injured 851 in Las Vegas last year had 23 guns in his hotel room and another 19 at home. What was he pursuing? Happiness?

I don’t know about you but I find it hard to believe that God, my God would view owning multi-instruments designed to harm living beings as a God-given human right. God didn’t give us the right to own weapons, man did. The question is if we continue to put the burden on God for this “right” shouldn’t we also burden Her with a decision on how many are just too damn many?