At Saturday's downtown Rally for Self Defense, sponsored by the Libertarian Party of Chicago, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms and various other like-minded outfits, there's an undeniable, almost palpable sense of us-against-them.
"Us" is the assembled crowd, perhaps 300 strong, waving their "More Guns, Less Crime" and "Show Me Your Guns" signs, shouting out "Daley is a liar!" and cheering wildly for the "citizen-hero" who sent a mugger to the hospital with a bullet in his neck. "Them" is me, standing awkwardly in the front row with a steno pad that I try to conceal whenever a speaker starts condemning the liberal media for its biased reporting on gun laws.
But the rally proceeds with little violence, and - with apologies to colleagues in the pinko media cabal - by the end of the often-emotional rally I am half convinced that ubiquitous concealed weaponry is just the thing this country needs to get back on its feet. The gun people proceed from the simple proposition that the bad guys have all got guns, so why shouldn't law-abiding citizens like us?
"If two people in a crowd have guns," says Joe Waldon of the Citizens Committee, "the criminals don't know which ones, and we're all safer for it." "This is not about guns," says another of the speakers to riotous reception. "It's about personal freedom." HmmmÉ It definitely seems that for many of the attendees - particularly those in camouflage pants - this is definitely about guns.
But there is indeed a deep undercurrent of good old fashioned anti-government sentiment here, all firearms aside. Let them trash the Second Amendment, goes this line, and who knows what will be next. One of the most chilling placards being hoisted underscores this point: "Hitler," it informs, "wanted gun control."
The fervor for personal freedom spills over into other realms: A graying hippie invites me to a pot-legalization march, and the mental picture of ROTC guys billyclubbing anti-establishment types like this one is forever scrambled.
Talking with Father Chester Przbylo, who had opened the day's event with a "prayer for those killed by Chicago's strict gun control measures," the question is whether he finds this sort of benediction a little, well, ironic?
"Oh, no," answers the soft-spoken Przbylo. The right to bear arms, it seems, "is deeply rooted in Catholic theology. This is tradition." He refers me to the writing of St. Augustine, and to Pope Julius II, who led armies into battle.
So the Second Amendment overrides the First Commandment? "Killing, yes," says the priest, and I get a minor chill. "Murder, no."
(Ben Winters)
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