Jimmy Carter Paradox Part 1: Guns

Review by Bill Doughty––

In “Our Endangered Values: America’s Moral Crisis” (Simon & Schuster, 2005) former President Jimmy Carter credits Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, as well as Bill Clinton, with supporting legislation passed by Congress in 1994 that reduced deaths in the United States caused by military-style assault weapons.

“For ten years,” the legislation “prohibited the manufacture, transfer, and possession of nineteen specific semiautomatic assault weapons, including AK-47s, AR-15s, and UZIs” designed not for hunting but for killing other humans. Carter laments that after a decade of reduced mass shootings, George W. Bush and Congress, with pressure from gun lobbyists, allowed the ban to expire.

He makes common sense arguments for preserving the Second Amendment while at the same time protecting human life. “This is not a controversy that involves homeowners, hunters, or outdoorsmen,” Carter writes. “I have owned and used weapons since I was big enough to carry one, and now own a handgun, four shotguns, and two rifles.” 

Hunters, he says, don’t need weapons of war.

Carter targets the NRA and firearms industry who “mislead many gullible people into believing that our weapons are going to be taken away from us.” Gun lobbyists spends millions of dollars on stoking fear and paying politicians directly or indirectly who do their bidding.

Paradoxically…

• Such politicians generally claim to be “pro-life,” yet they promote powerful weapons that cause more deaths –– opposing sensible gun reforms, including background checks, red flag laws, and curbs on assault weapons and magazine sizes, etc. 
• Some say they are pro-police, but they allow a proliferation of weapons of war that are used against law enforcement, such as happened last year in Uvalde, Texas, last month in Nashville, Tennessee, and this week in Louisville, Kentucky.
• They are generally against big government but want to create a more heavily armed police state, even hoping to arm teachers in schools.

Last year was the worst year for school shootings: 34, with nearly three dozen students and adults killed and 43,000 students exposed to gunfire, according to the Washington Post. Death by guns is the leading cause of death for children in the United States, where there are many more guns than people. In 2022, 6,542 guns were intercepted by TSA and airport security, an average of 18 per day.

For some Americans, the gun culture is like a cult religion, and the AR-15 is like a sacred and holy icon. These self-proclaimed patriots are often fundamentalists whose religious beliefs and political principles are “inextricably entwined,” Carter observes.

“I have experienced the intensity of patriotism as a submarine officer, the ambitions of a competitive businessman, and the intensity of political debate,” Carter writes. “As a Southern moderate and former career naval officer, I espoused a conservative fiscal policy and a strong defense.” His devout Christian beliefs, he says, are not in conflict with his desire for protection over proliferation, stewardship over rapaciousness, humility over hubris, and diplomacy over unprovoked military action.

Carter and McCain

“Commitment to peace and diplomacy does not imply a blind or total pacifism,” Carter says.

In addition to lamenting the passing of the ten-year assault weapons ban, Carter expresses disappointment with the rise of neoconservatism.

Neocons, personified by former Vice President Dick Cheney, led to the end of international arms control efforts, a stall in normalizing relations with Cuba, an invasion of Iraq twenty years ago, and the use of state-sponsored torture that broke the Geneva Conventions.

Carter lauds fellow Navy veteran Senator John McCain for his stand against torture and for international human rights.

“Republican Senator John McCain, who was a prisoner of war in Vietnam, has criticized the way detainees have been treated by U.S. forces, and he, Armed Forces Committee Chairman John Warner, and other Republican senators have proposed legislation that would prohibit the U.S. military from engaging in ‘cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment’ of detainees, or from hiding prisoners from the Red Cross, and would set uniform standards for interrogating anyone detained by the Defense Department. These powerful Republican seniors have quoted comments from fifteen top-ranking military officers: ‘The abuse of prisoners hurts America’s cause in the war on terror, endangers U.S. service members who might be captured by the enemy, and is anathema to the values Americans have held dear for generations.’ McCain said, ‘The enemy we fight has no respect for human life or human rights. They don’t deserve our sympathy. But this isn’t about who they are. This is about who we are.’”

Carter makes a passionate plea throughout “Our Endangered Values” for a return away from fundamentalism toward a more reasoned, compassionate, and understanding America.

He decries “both Democratic and Republican Parties” for “vituperative” approaches, “partisan animosity,” and an adoption of “‘red’ and ‘blue’ as habitual descriptive phrases within and between states.” Carter advises us to build bridges toward greater understanding and a commitment to equality, justice, and human rights.

Photo courtesy Patrick Gregerson, Pixabay

“Only the American people can redirect our government’s legal, religious, and political commitments to these ancient and unchanging moral principles,” Carter writes.

Instead of only proclaiming “thoughts and prayers” in the wake of gun violence, a new generation of Americans is approaching the issue with thoughts and action.

Carter walked the path of other civil rights pioneers including Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.

King said, “We must come to see that the end we seek is a society at peace with itself, a society that can live with its conscience.”