Chris Powell: On gun control, considerTrump’s attempted ‘coup’ and Ukraine; vacuous school prayers

Colt’s Armory, in Hartford, in 1896. Connecticut has long been a major firearms maker.

MANCHESTER, Conn.

Eighteen months later the political left is still stewing about and running a congressional investigation into what it calls a "coup attempt" and "insurrection" instigated by President Trump and supported by many Republicans to steal the 2020 presidential election under the pretext that it was stolen from Trump because of widespread vote fraud.

"Coup" or "insurrection" or not, Trump's attempt to interfere with the normal counting of the electoral votes in the Senate was reprehensible, even if four years earlier many leading Democrats had claimed, also without much evidence, that the presidential election had been stolen from them.

But amid the agitation about the recent mass shootings, the left has failed to learn a lesson of the "coup" or "insurrection." That is -- to borrow from the old cautionary slogan of supporters of the Second Amendment -- if guns had been outlawed on Jan. 6, 2021, only Trump would have had guns, at least if the military continued to take orders from him.

Trump isn't the first president to have provoked fears of a coup. As he resisted impeachment in 1974, President Richard Nixon so frightened his defense secretary, James Schlesinger, that Schlesinger issued instructions to the Joint Chiefs of Staff that no force-deployment order from the White House was to be obeyed if it did not come through his office. That is, Nixon's own defense secretary thought him capable of trying to overthrow the Constitution to remain in office.

But even as much of the political left remains obsessed with Trump's "coup," it also proposes to disarm the population by outlawing and confiscating semiautomatic rifles. Meanwhile the government of embattled Ukraine is distributing such rifles to civilians to combat the Russian invasion and coup attempt in the country's east.

Of course this irony does not diminish this country's catastrophic problem with gun violence. While mass shootings with scary-looking rifles like the recent ones in Buffalo and Uvalde work people up, on average more than 40 people are murdered with handguns in the country every day without generating much concern.

Handgun violence in Chicago has become overwhelming but it is a rare day when there aren't shootings in Hartford, Bridgeport and New Haven -- all accepted as routine events of city life in Connecticut.

Tighter regulation of gun sales and possession -- comprehensive background checks, waiting periods, "red flag" procedures, increased screening for young people seeking guns, including a higher age of eligibility for purchases -- along with long sentences for repeat offenders, probably could reduce gun crime generally.

Soft targets such as schools can be protected better. Maybe someday government and society will be willing to examine even the epidemic of child neglect that produces so many disturbed teenagers and young men.

But a disarmed population will always be more susceptible to coups and totalitarianism. President Biden is so awful that Trump well may become president again, and there always could be another Nixon, a president corrupted by power into lawbreaking. The people getting hysterical about guns might do well to keep this in mind.

Former Connecticut U.S. Rep. Gary Franks notes that reducing gun violence requires healing "hearts, minds, and souls." But his prescription is silly: Bring prayer back to public schools, from which it supposedly was banished by the Supreme Court in 1962.

Actually the court found unconstitutional only government-sponsored prayer in public schools. Students always have been and remain free to pray in school without being disruptive. But it is fundamental to liberty that government cannot compel expression of religious or political belief.

This principle was affirmed by the court in 1943, in the middle of World War II, when the court exempted schoolchildren from being required to salute the flag. "Words uttered under coercion are proof of loyalty to nothing but self-interest," Justices Hugo Black and William O. Douglas wrote.

This precious liberty is exactly what makes the country worth supporting and the flag worth saluting.

Besides, the prayers of old in public schools were usually so superficial and designed only for appearances as to be meaningless and even mocking of the very exercise.

Chris Powell is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester.