Welcome to a breakpoint a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of

unchanging truth.

The Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street.

The hope that the attempted assassination of former President Trump would become a kind of

rallying moment of national unity vanished quickly. What remains is a deep

divide over gun ownership and what to do about the extensive gun violence in America.

For many progressives, a solution is just to get rid of guns by any means necessary.

Others call for more rigorous legal restrictions, like more thorough background checks.

Most political conservatives want the least number of legal restrictions possible,

given that the long history and original purpose of Second Amendment rights had more to do

with fears of an overreaching state than it did hunting or recreation.

Because the constitutional arguments matter, so do the warnings of so many of our nation's

founding fathers.

The future of the Republic, Benjamin Franklin said, dependent on whether citizens could

keep it.

And John Adams added, quote, our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious

people.

It's wholly inadequate to the government of any other."

Chuck Holson would often say that a choice that all nations face is the one between the conscience and the constable.

If a people will not be governed by their

conscience they have to be governed externally by the Constable. The loss of

conscience, which is always a failure of moral formation, will inevitably lead to the loss of freedom.

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