Lawrence Hall
“I Called to the Lord
from my Narrow Prison”
“I called to the Lord from my narrow prison and he
answered me in the freedom of space.”
-Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl
When Viktor Frankl was liberated from Dachau in 1945
after three years in several death camps he walked into a meadow, knelt down,
and said, over and over, “I called to the Lord from my narrow prison and he
answered me in the freedom of space.”
We have all been in a “narrow prison” of some sort, even
if only a metaphorical prison, a prison of the mind in which we confined ourselves
through false ideologies, a failure to think things through, or plain old fence-row
self-centeredness.
St. Thomas More is said to have said (it’s in the movie,
anyway) that he had no window with which to look into another man’s soul, but
the mass murder in Maine last week leads to all of us to wonder about why the
killer destroyed others and himself. And we just don’t know what was churning
in his soul.
The murderer was a career soldier in the Army Reserve who
wore a number of gedunk ribbons (he was never in combat) and was a
marksman-instructor. He was a citizen-soldier who also worked in civilian life,
drove a car, paid bills, and shopped at the local grocery store, indicating an
ability to cope with the usual tasks of adult life.
Recently the murderer lost his job and was said to have
heard voices that no one else heard. He was committed for emotional / mental
evaluation for two weeks.
He also owned a legal firearm, a semi-automatic rifle.
In that lies part of the problem, and chanting slogans
through a bullhorn doesn’t change the reality of that problem.
No citizen needs a magazine-fed semi-automatic. Someone
who can’t bag his deer with two or three rounds just isn’t going to have
venison for supper. Continuing to spray the area from a 10-, 20-, or 30-round magazine
is dangerous, wasteful, stupid, and unsportsmanlike, and demonstrates either malevolence
or a lack of adult self control.
Such calibres and detachable magazines belong only in the
capable, trustworthy hands of soldiers and law enforcement, and not as personal
weapons but as issued and tracked government issue.
And yet here was a situation in which a well-trained
soldier who was a career sergeant and instructor in that “well-regulated
militia” decided he could tame his personal demons by massacring his unarmed
countrymen, including women and children, who were enjoying community games at
a bowling alley or a well-deserved after-work beer at the local Cheers.
He did not call out to the Lord from his narrow prison; he
reached down into the darkness of it and embraced resentment, jealousy, and death.
We can make the same old arguments until the cows come
home about the Second Amendment, the pointless distinctions between automatic
and semi-automatic, clip versus magazine, and what “AR” stands for (I think we
all know by now), but what argument can be made to a child whose torso has been
exploded by a .556 round?
Real men do not play at G.I. Joe.
Not even if they are G. I. Joe.
Real men do not call to a gun to resolve unhappiness.
If a real man is in a prison of the mind, he will be a
man: he will call to the Lord.
-30-
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