What we’re really considering during our current angst is how much we as a people in this all too violent country love and care about each other and all the children who are completely innocent victims in way too many gun violence tragedies.
Now, if all a person cares about is the law or the Second Amendment, and how it may be loosely and extremely interpreted to include all firearms sold or obtained without much in the way of restrictions or oversight, then that person has simply lost both heart and humanity… and that is that. But if we do care about the common welfare of all the people, with a sense of empathy and connectedness with all our fellow humans, then we will try to find a way to protect and secure our common welfare, while at the same time living with laws and polcies that secure our common rights as well, including that of the Second Amendment. We can do both.
Milton and Virgil considered these types of issues in a similar fashion using the marvelous figure called the epanodos. In Virgil’s Eclogues, there was the mage-mother Medea who killed her own children in order to hurt Jason the husband who spurned her for a more acceptable bride. We can ask who was worse, as Virgil did, and they both come out equally bad. Too much pride of possession on the one hand leads to atrociousness that defies the heart to understand; while desire for status and power on the other hand does the same thing.
Crudelis tu quoque mater: Crudelis mater magis an puer Improbus ille? Improbus ille puer, crudelis tu quoque mater. (Eclogues, viii, 48-50)
A cruel mother too thou wast; whether more cruel was the mother, or more impious was the boy [Jason]? Impious was the boy; thou mother, too, wast cruel.
Now, appropriate to this note, Milton also uses the epanodos in his early poem, “Upon the Circumcision,” regarding the shedding of infant blood as a precursor to the bloodshed on the cross during the Crucifixion. Here, in lines 15-16, he questions the relative importance of love and the law.
Oh, more exceeding love, or law more just?
Just law indeed, but more exceeding love!
For Milton, as for Christ, love wins out… exactly as it should here in America now.