Joseph Sabino Mistick: Guns blocking our pursuit of happiness

Is this the end of happiness? It feels like it more and more after every new mass shooting and the slaughter of innocents. Each shooting steals another safe place from all of us, and, last week, when a domestic terrorist with a military-style weapon randomly killed seven and wounded dozens at an Independence Day community parade in Highland Park, Ill., it felt like we lost the right to publicly celebrate our civic holidays.

Along with life and liberty, Thomas Jefferson included the pursuit of happiness in the Declaration of Independence as the third natural right to which all Americans are entitled. Decades earlier, the English philosopher John Locke had written that God-given rights included “life, health, liberty and property,” but Jefferson switched out “property” for “the pursuit of happiness.” Since then, happiness has been an American goal.

Consider those things that once made us happy that we must now think twice about or avoid altogether because of the specter of human carnage. They include those places and events that make life a little more pleasurable as well as those rituals that give our lives greater meaning. We have lost many of them, daily activities that have contributed to our happiness.

Mass murder can occur at movie theaters, havens from the weather and momentary breaks from the reality of life outside the theater. Death can come from above at an outdoor music festival, tearing bodies apart freely as the audience panics, unsure of where to run. Carefree nights at dance clubs and social gatherings are now fair game.

Churches, synagogues and temples are places where many Americans have found their deepest happiness. But there is nothing sacred about our sacred places to an evil man with a military-style weapon that is designed for nothing else but killing humans. People in prayer are now sitting ducks.

Our schools are where our children — the future of our country — have been nurtured and educated. Now, none of them — grade schools, high schools, colleges — are safe, and the most important lesson we can teach our children is to “1) Run, 2) Hide, 3) Fight” whenever a heavily armed stranger comes to kill them.

For each of us, the circle of our communities is getting tighter with each mass killing. Places where we feel safe and places that we feel are safe for our children are getting harder to find. And the promise of America in the Declaration of Independence is slipping away because many of our politicians just don’t get it.

In late June, a tone-deaf majority of the Supreme Court struck down a New York law that restricted who can carry concealed weapons. The decision will put more guns on the street at a time when communities are fighting for the lives of their citizens.

And some members of Congress — powerful enough to block real gun reform — scuttle every attempt to restrict access to human-killing weapons that fire so powerfully and continuously that there is no time or place to hide from them.

They all should listen to Jefferson when he said, “The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government.” Until they understand that, the pursuit of happiness is on the back burner for the rest of us.