Children should be seen and not heard

OPINION:

Decades ago, the prevailing attitude — the oft-expressed attitude — of parents toward their little ones was that children should be seen and not heard.

Harsh and humbling as that sounds, fact is, we could use a bit more of this adult-driven ’tude today.

The teenage anti-gun fest that’s been taking place around the nation in recent weeks is nothing short of unschooled. And it’s not just the kids who are touting views that show — bluntly — their complete and utter ignorance of history, historical truths and the Constitution. It’s the media.

It’s the members of the media who let these teens get by on emotionally charged calls for bans on so-called automatic weapons or for tighter controls on gun buyers without also asking they reconcile these demanded curbs with the Second Amendment and with the free society called America.

After all, if somebody’s trying to take away a constitutional right, the least he or she can do is demonstrate an awareness that the right’s contained in the Constitution — and be able to explain why it’s there and why it should be removed. That seems fair, yes?

But that’s what’s missing from many of these “March For Our Lives” interviews that have been taking place in recent days.

Far too often, these teens, these living-at-home-with-mom-and-dad teens, are being handed a national platform to make their emotionally charged cases to water the Second Amendment — but they’re not being pressed to demonstrate any sort of knowledge into the very issue they’re seeking to overhaul.

They’re getting more than a free pass.

They’re getting the head-pat treatment.

And while no doubt this pleases the left to no end, fact is, if these high-schoolers want to hold themselves as knowing best what to do with this country, as knowing better than the adults how to run the government — as they have been — well then, they’re fair game for tough challenge.

They should be able to back their policy demands with something more than anti-gun platitudes.

Let’s see some questions thrown the teens’ way that roots out their knowledge of the Founding Fathers and the reasons for the Second Amendment. Let’s see some questions that force them to tackle the truisms of self-defense, and how guns save. Or, some questions to measure their level of knowledge of how governments in other countries have chipped gun rights to the point of non-existence — and what’s befallen those citizenries. Or, even some questions about the hypocrisies of the idea that it’s OK for some to have guns, like police or ex-military, but not others.

Let’s have some questions that force these kids to follow their hoped-for anti-gun policies to their natural and logical conclusions — to face head-on their “what if” fantasies and provide the factual basis of how a government clamp-down on gun rights would actually make schools safer, streets more secure, the country less violent. Heck, never mind how. How about showing a “when” with that scenario, as in “when” has that even happened in history?

Fact is, America is a free society. It’s not a police state. It’s not a dictatorship. It’s not even socialist or nanny-state.

It’s a nation founded on a principle that individual rights come from God, not government — a notion that’s encapsulated in the Second Amendment as a recognition of the basic right of self-defense. That woman down the road, that young man in that apartment, that guy in the country home providing for his wife and three children — these are the people for which the Second Amendment speaks and protects.

These are the people who have the right, by God and, subsequently, by the Judeo-Christian based Constitution, to bear arms. They don’t need the government’s permission.

That’s the premise from which all calls for gun controls must be considered.

Until these “March For Our Lives” teens are forced by a rather weak-kneed media to explain how clamping the Second Amendment figures into that God-given equation, they’re just children playing at politicking.

They’re just children who should be seen and not heard.

• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley.