Let’s start with two givens: Americans who see the value in gun ownership are not going to give up their guns. Period. Additionally, Americans who believe that a fetus is fundamentally tied exclusively to the health and welfare of its mother are not going to cede any ground on the fundamental Constitutional right to accessible abortion.
We can start from that premise: Perhaps you hate guns. But you are an advocate of full access abortion. You see it as a fundamental right. Would you be willing to exchange a policy of restriction to abortion for legal restrictions to gun ownership? The interesting thing is that a significant majority of Americans refer to a fundamental right of self-defense, or the penumbra of rights around which the Supreme Court concluded a right of privacy included a right to abortion for pregnant women with non-viable fetuses.
I don’t suggest that abortion rights are the opposite of gun rights. They are not—although the supporters of each seem to be reflexively and diametrically opposed to one another. But in truth, there is value in the subtle spots between these firmly held positions.
Perhaps it makes sense that these positions crystallized once again in the month that we celebrate Purim, the holiday of disguises. We wear costumes…and we mask, and hide the truth.
As children we are told the costumes symbolize the topsy-turvy nature of the will of God. Haman seeks to murder the Jews in Persia, but in the end Mordechai and Esther reveal Haman’s evil plan and the Jewish people prevail. Peel one layer and we see Esther hiding her Jewish identity, intermarried to Achashverosh, but still loyal to her Jewish identity. Haman had no idea, because Esther was not Hadassah—her name and true nature hidden.
Truth comes from subtlety, not from rigidity. Fundamentalists may believe that truth, objective verifiable truth, is always on their side, but without understanding or respecting other perspectives, we cannot create policy. If we refused to understand where people base their beliefs and perceptions, and simply consider the opposition—“them”—the enemy—we will never benefit humanity because we will always put our opponents on the defensive.
It’s easy to have a hardened position after the most recent attack in Parkland, Florida. We lost 17 innocent victims, five of whom were Jews. In their wake we have learned of at least two raffles where the main prize included the same gun used in the attack. In one case an in-state organization called off the raffle. In the other, a little league baseball organization in Missouri doubled down and solicited donations based upon security over hate—as a result they more than doubled donations, and not only locally but from contributors outside of the area and even the state.
Since then, the president has called for a policy of arming school teachers. Ironically, within one week a high school teacher in Georgia was arrested for pulling a gun and threatening a student in his classroom. Finite answers rarely make good policy.
It might not have been expected, but perhaps the lessons are timeless. We need to be more modest in policy proposals. Activists do not know all the answers. Neither do law enforcement personnel. Or politicians. Or Clergy. Or parents, students, victims or felons. We do not know the answers. Not all of them anyway. Each is only a piece of the puzzle. We can capture a few answers, however—and the answer we can be sure of is that when we have hardened positions it will harden the positions of our opponents. We need to listen and recognize not truth, but pieces of truth.
The interesting thing is that many of the people who seek a strict government response to guns in the interest of preserving life, would feel repressed by abortion restrictions based upon the same principle, the sanctity of life.
Whether we as Jews agree with it or not—and some of us do, others do not, for equally fundamental reasons—the value of gun ownership is not something that is going away for people who think that guns are a check on a potentially repressive government.
Alternatively, those who see a fundamental value in personal autonomy, especially from a feminist perspective, who question whether it is permissible to quash a prospective life reliant on its maternal host, could feel as oppressed should there be legislative regulations on her right to terminate a potential human life as those who use the value of autonomy to promote the Second Amendment and the right to bear arms.
So should there be unrestricted gun ownership and possession? I think experience has shown that that would be a horrible mistake; it would be both scary and fundamentally, a poor foundation for society.
But what about free access for abortion? Should we be so cavalier about aborting life, or even potential life? Is there a difference? Should there be a difference? Or even if there is not should we recognize a difference to those who might disagree?
No one can reasonably suggest that gun ownership is not a part of American tradition. The Second Amendment, for better or worse, makes it clear that gun ownership—whatever construction or restriction, albeit with Talmudic parsing—is a fundamental part of the Constitution.
But if you want to outlaw guns, imagine what you would perceive if the law restricted abortion—which is much more derivative, and not nearly as fundamentally expressed in plain language in any section or amendment of the American Constitution.
We may not be living physically in Shushan—but spiritually we are. We are living through and between. We are hidden—wearing masks—and yet in plain sight. The season requires the search for essence. Subtlety is the reward. Only in that search can we move to a season in the time of our freedom. Freedom from violence, freedom from slavery and freedom from fundamental response and restrictiveness of rational thought.
By Stephen Loeb
Stephen R. Loeb heads the Law Office of Stephen R. Loeb, a civil practice in New Jersey and New York. He can be reached at [email protected].
