Gun Rights, Freedom, Trump's NRA Speech, and the Power of Words

Let’s talk about words. What do words mean? How do words have such impact on us? And, for Americans, “freedom” is Word Number One. Freedom. “Freedom” defines the gun control debate. It is, as we will see, a “god term” that we have come to worship, and to worship a word, even an idea, is not without peril.

Donald Trump, WH photo

In his April 2019 speech to the National Rifle Association, United States President Donald Trump hit the usual notes: self-defense, protecting your community, the Founders, and freedom. In one gloriously vague passage, Trump said:

“And we believe in the right to self-defense and the right to protect your family, your community, and your loved ones. We believe in the wisdom of our Founders. And we believe in freedom and liberty and the right to keep and bear arms.”

Trump’s paragraph gives us a lot to unpack and leaves our main questions unanswered. Defend against whom? Or what? Which wisdom of the Founders (they didn’t all agree about guns or anything else).

But Trump talked about “freedom and liberty and the right to keep and bear arms.” Let’s worry at some other time that in the Founders’ day bearing arms typically meant serving in the state militia. One has the freedom to carry weaponry, Mr. Trump says.

But this historical and linguistic vagueness begs an important question: where do your rights end and mine begin? Or vice versa. I have a right to speak, but you have a right not to listen. Or, I have a right to speak, but I do not have the right to commit libel or slander. I have a right to drive on the street, but I do not have the freedom to obstruct it. I have a right to freedom of religion, but I do not have a right to impose my religion on you, for your freedom matters as much as mine.

So, yes, the Founders did anticipate that most households would be armed. That’s freedom. But ordinary people have a right to walk down the street without being shot. Children have a right to attend school without being shot. Living as I do in the open-carry, stand-your-ground state of Texas, should I not have a right to go to Walmart without being intimidated by a thug waving a rifle around the store? Indeed, why should I not have the freedom to walk down the street without some gun owner threatening my freedom to live? Why should an irresponsible gun owner's freedom to own a gun override the freedom of schoolchildren to attend school?

The lesson that conservatives taught to my generation in the 1960’s is that freedom ends where responsibilities begin, that all freedoms have limits. One freedom must balance with another freedom. When we speak, ever-so-vaguely, about the gun owner's freedoms, do we not overlook other freedoms?

Liberal rhetorical theorist Kenneth Burke and conservative rhetorical theorist Richard Weaver both talk about god terms. A god term reflects a society’s underlying values. But while conservatives use “freedom” as a god term that reflects American values, they neglect that there are many freedoms, not just one, and as they exercise their freedoms, they might exact a price on other people’s freedoms. Or, as Founder George Washington wisely said in a speech to Congress, we must “discriminate the spirit of Liberty from that of licentiousness, cherishing the first, avoiding the last.”

George Washington

So, I submit that the freedom of unqualified and unscreened people to obtain powerful firearms without regulation or restriction passes, in George Washington’s terms, from liberty to licentiousness. Too many conservatives have started to ignore what the Founders really believed and have forgotten that freedom and responsibility must balance. And El Paso and Dayton and Sandy Hook and too many other places have paid the terrible price of their purposeful ignorance. 

Words matter. A word like freedom has great power, and rightly so. But people who utter words that have great power have a responsibility to speak those words with care.