From Black and White to Shades of Gray
July 28, 2008
Ethics
(0 comments)
By JanetheWriter
Recently, someone I know told me he is a gun owner. When I heard this, I was dumbfounded and I was speechless.
In my head, guns and associated imagery, most of it violent, churned--a visual stream of consciousness. His handgun, a compact, weighty black rock nestled among dark socks in a nightstand drawer...the McDonald's in San Ysidro, CA, where 21 people were killed and 19 injured, all by gunfire...the aerial view of Columbine High School, a single line of students streaming from its doors... DayGlo orange-vested hunters traipsing into the woods, just yards from my office on a cool fall morning in rural New England...a photo of Rabbi Eric Yoffie speaking at the Million Mom March, the only religious leader to do so.
Complementing the images churning in my head were my up-until-now personal notions of guns: Guns are dangerous, guns kill and, as Rabbi Yoffie has stated on numerous occasions, "The indiscriminate distribution of guns is an offense against God and humanity," and the need for sensible gun control is a religious and moral imperative. Indeed, it's hard to argue with such powerful eloquence, particularly when it's so deeply rooted in our Jewish tradition, which values the sanctity and preservation of human life above all else.
When I'd recovered enough to ask some questions, I learned that this particular gun owner doesn't hunt, but he does own both long guns and handguns that he uses for sport shooting. I subsequently learned that shooting is an Olympic sport requiring tremendous precision, skill and training. With a bit more help from Google, I also learned that Israelis Alexander Danilov and Guy Starek are both distinguished competitive marksman. The former, a pistol shooter, won the gold medal at the European Championships in Germany in 1999 and the latter, a free rifle competitor, placed 7th at the 1995 World Championships and 4th at the 1998 World Championships.
Even with this knowledge, I was extremely disconcerted, not so much because someone I know owns guns, but rather because I--so quickly and so wrongly--had jumped to the conclusion that the weapons are handguns and thus are "bad" in every way. I like to believe that I view the world through lenses that bring various shades of gray into focus, and I was distressed and disappointed in myself that, in this instance, I had seen it only in the starkest shades of black and white.
As the gun owner and I continued to grapple with the issue he'd raised and my reaction to it, I started to think about the topic in a different way--as a page of Talmud. As such, various legal texts, commentaries, opinions and the like from across the firearms spectrum would be laid out on a single page. Among its contents might be the Constitution's second amendment together with states' handgun, rifle, and shotgun laws and commentary. Annotations regarding permits, background checks, waiting periods, sport shooting and more would wrap around the sides of the page, offering both majority and minority opinions and views.
Here, on this and other pages of "Talmud," we could come together to delve into the issue, to share ideas, to argue, to hash out concerns, to distinguish among the many shades of gray inherent in such an emotionally, politically and personally charged "tractate." Indeed, no issue of any import is purely black or white, all or nothing. Rather, each is all about the distinct shades of gray that comprise it and our responsibility as individuals and as Reform Jews is to define these shades, to bring them into focus, to determine which ones best suit our needs and our consciences and, ultimately, as Larry Kaufman has suggested--as did the Shakers before him--to "find the place just right" for us.
Post a comment
|
Print
Email
Comment