This coming weekend I am faced with having to put a pistol to the head of my two pigs. When I talk to others about it we talk of the necessity of the killing, and how they’ve had a good life, which they have. I do not pick up a weapon lightly, and I do not kill anything with apathy; rather, I put the pistol to their heads with antipathy. I take a life, and I do it trying to be morally consistent and with respect for the finality of the act and because I live the way I do: I eat meat.
The recent slew of shootings is the opposite of respect or for that matter the understanding of the finality of death. These shootings are the symptom of, not the prelude of, the lack of understanding and dismissal of the respect that is necessary to take a life with purpose. These shootings are a symptom of how we as human beings have lost the understanding of the price of taking a life and replaced it with ignorance and fear, false empowerment and cowardice.
These shootings are allowed by apathy and a lack of antipathy for killing not because we are not capable, not because our leaders are not capable, but because we are unwilling and our leaders are unwilling to call the shootings what they are: our own responsibility. I kill my pigs, the pigs that I have watched grow and play with the understanding that I am responsible for their lives, but also and more importantly my own: I kill my pigs because I eat meat, not because I like to kill.
I remember when the National Rifle Association’s (NRA) motto was “Firearms Safety Education, Marksmanship Training, Shooting for Recreation”. This was almost a virtuous, an understandable goal. Now, the illustrious association prefers an excerpt from the constitution: a motto that was changed in 1977 to the one the N.R.A. still uses: “The Right of the People to Keep and Bear Arms Shall Not Be Infringed.” Mr. LaPierre leads the charge against a massive majority of this country’s populace who must endure and endless stream of shootings because a minority of people scream about concepts that they seemingly do not understand: rights.
What strikes me about the motto is the allusion to rights. But rights are actually restrictions, not guarantees. The use of a constitutional amendment is important, not because it is an excerpt of the basis of this country’s laws, but because of the word “amendment”. The term amendment alludes to change, to alteration: by its very wording the constitution is to be changed: the very thing the NRA led by LaPierre fights rabidly against.
The NRA is now nothing more than a terrorist organization belying their stated goals of protections of rights by their endless siege upon the safety and security of the persons in this country. They now hold this country hostage by disallowing amendments not only to the constitution concerning gun law, but to their obvious lack of antipathy towards killing: it seems they simply like to kill. With this in mind, I must hold a gun to kill the food that I will eat: I hate killing, but I am morally responsible for what I eat. The NRA supports the opposite: they kill because they immorally support concepts that they either do not understand or refuse to understand.
To the NRA I ask: “How many more times must we say “one more…”?
And the answer that they seem to give is: “As many times as it takes.”
The Armchair Philosopher 
Could a case be made that in either case (killing animals for food and gun rights), the argument is about freedom (“because I live the way I do”)?
With freedom comes responsibility; might the issue of responsibility also rest not only on recognition of the gravity (and finality) of taking (intelligent, affectionate) life, but on one’s dietary choices?
Hi Jennifer!
To your first question: with all replies, the definition of terms (such as ‘freedom”) is important. Here, I would argue that freedom is the flip side of the coin with rights being the opposite side. That is to say: the more freedom we get as individuals the less freedoms we have as societies and visa versa. Rights are typically defined legally and so are freedoms. Law defines what we can and cannot do as societies and so laws define rights and freedoms. The lack of gun laws (the lack of gun legislation with regard to the rights of individuals to own guns) diminishes our freedoms as a society. Killing is limited by law; we can kill animals other than humans because we have not defined them within the realm of rights and do not (as a whole) consider them to have freedoms.
To your second question: I would suggest that that rights and freedoms are not necessarily couched in a moral question, but in a legal one (laws are not necessarily moral). With your first example I would answer ‘yes’. To your second example, I would claim that my dietary choices rest upon a moral foundation; one which is determined by how much/ many freedoms and rights respectively that we give to animals other than humans.
Thnx!
m
Hi M,
Are you claiming that your “moral foundation” is predicated on the legal decisions made by the society in which you live? In other words, if laws allowed individuals the freedom to kill and consume humans, your “moral foundation” would permit you this?
Hi Jennifer;
I’m not sure where you are getting that from? I state that “laws are not necessarily moral”. I go on to state: “we can kill animals other than humans because we have not defined them within the realm of rights and do not (as a whole) consider them to have freedoms.” That is the basis of law, not my moral foundation. I believe that animals have a degree of rights and freedoms. Of course, Pete Singer states that given the justification that we use (intelligence levels, need to feed societies etc…) for killing animals for food, we should be able to apply the same argument to the mentally incapable and children.
I’m curious as to your position on this topic.
You did distinguish between moral and legal in your original post, and stated that laws aren’t necessarily moral. However, if your dietary choices rest on a moral foundation is determined by others, what can you moral foundation be, other than what others have decided for you? Am I conflating two issues (morality and law)? Or, are you saying that your moral choices (i.e. dietary choices) must be bounded by the laws of the society in which you live? If your rights and freedoms are determined by law, you nevertheless have choices to make within those boundaries (dietary, in this case).
My working position on this topic is, “I don’t eat meat.” However, I obviously kill to live (as we must eat living things to live ourselves), so my “position” is perhaps a tenuous and specious one. If I’m asked to defend it, I cannot. I agree with Peter Singer’s argument, but if humans became available as food, I don’t think I’d be any more inclined to eat them then I would a pig. In other words, reason tells me that you are right and justified in humanely taking the lives of nonhuman animals you’ve given a good life to in order to eat them, yet I balk at the idea.