Perhaps that is too strong.  The Second Amendment to the US Constitution is famously ambiguous (so maybe Taoists would then be comfortable with it!): does it secure an individual’s right to bear arms or the right of the various states to maintain militias?  A case working its way through the Supreme Court might focus the issue, but will not end the controversy.

     In any event, the horrible shootings last week at Northern Illinois University have got me to thinking about gun rights and Way. 

     Generally, the Tao Te Ching is against violence and coercion.  I know, some amount of violence is to be expected as a natural part of Way.  But a certain number of violent acts (we really cannot be more precise and maintain a Taoist sensibility) are the result of calculated human action that violates Way.  People who kill take on the role of the "master carpenter" and achieve nothing but to bloody their own hands (74).

      What is more interesting are the passages that have to do with weapons.  Yes, weapons are "tools of misfortune" and a "master of Way stays clear of them" (31); but the text does not call for an absolute ban or abolition of weapons.  The enigmatic ending of passage 36 stands out in this regard:

Fish should be kept in their watery depths:
a nation’s hone instruments of power
should be kept well-hidden from the people.

     The fish metaphor suggests that it is natural to keep weapons from the people; that only sages should know where they are and, implicitly, when they might be brought out and used.  This passage thus seems to rationalize (I won’t say justify) a Legalist concentration of power.  But I do not believe that a Legalist reading here is in keeping with the spirit of the text.

     Rather, I understand the writers of the Tao Te Ching to have a certain pragmatic strain in their thinking.  Is is possible to abolish all weapons?  Is is practical to demand that each and every one be destroyed and never be used again?  No.  Weaponry is a product of the human mind and as long as their are human minds there will be weaponry.  So, instead of a total ban, the Tao Te Ching seems to be advocating strict limitations on the possession and use of weaponry.  They need to be "hidden" – i.e. not sold widely and easily so that a troubled young man with a history of mental illness can just walk in and buy the guns he will use to kill his classmates.

    Indeed, thinking about the NIU case highlights the simultaneous inevitable and preventable qualities of these sorts of events.  The diversity of human experience in Way, the variations among individuals and among groups, generates an impulse to violence for a wide variety of reasons.  People will lash out at others – for irrational as well as apparently rational reasons.  Given this inevitable quality of humanity, it makes a certain sense not to have a lot of guns lying around.  Weapons translate what might have been a punch into a deadly shot.  That, I think is the Tao Te Ching‘s position.

       The text also understands violence and weaponry in a broader socio-cultural context.  In passage 80, which describes something close to a Taoist utopia, weapons are not completely absent:

Let nations grow smaller and smaller
and people fewer and fewer,

Let weapons become rare
and superfluous,
let people feel death’s gravity again
and never wander far from home.
….

     "Nations smaller" and "people fewer" is a direct rejection of the logic of the Warring States period, in which rulers vied with each other to increase their state’s territory and population to bolster larger and more powerful armed forces.  Just give all that up, the text is saying.  People will fear death if their lives are comfortable and peaceful; if life is hell they might prefer to die.  So the text is telling the putative ruler to make sure each person has a sufficient subsistence, enough food to eat and clothes to wear  and shelter.  The assumption here is that there is some minimum of material goods that will satisfy most people.  And when that is achieved, then weapons will be come rare and superfluous: people will have no recourse to violence because they will be satisfied with their immediate circumstances. They will be happy in their localities not want to go anywhere else.

     Yes, this is idealistic (I read it as utopian), but it suggests a general ideal toward which contemporary public policy can strive: work to secure a basic standard of living for all people to diffuse the impulse to violence and limit access to guns so as to prevent those individuals who might have recourse to violence from hurting others in an un-Way-like fashion.

      In the end, the Tao Te Ching might not be against the Second Amendment, but it would certainly side with those who interpret it as allowing for significant limitation on an individual’s right to bear arms.