The on-air shooting in Virginia has more outrage over our country's lax and getting-laxer gun laws. Again, there are going to be calls to limit guns in some ways, and again, the gun industry is going to marshal its goons . First there's the paranoid division, for spotting evidence that entire shooting was staged by Obama. Because as we all know, no gun nut would ever commit such an atrocity. They're such humanitarians.
Then you'll have Cold-Dead-Handers, who will swear who will get their surgically implanted in their hands to make sure the government can never take them. Never mind that the government has never come close to doing that. In my home city, the state legislature has forbidden police from getting guns off the streets. As a result the number of murders have spiked horribly even though overall crime is down.
They're also forgetting the government has drones and nuclear weapons, and soldiers with body armor. The weapons people are arming themselves with are handguns and rifles that are too light and obsolete for any serious war.
Then you'll have the Rambo Revolutionaries. These are the ones who swear the whole purpose the Founders had in mind for the Second Amendment was written to keep people prepared rebel against the inevitable tyranny that's predicted in the Bible, somewhere. A tyranny would be any government that does away with the Second Amendment. They're not too concerned about the other Amendments though. Like the Oaf Kreepers weren't too concerned with police launching chemical weapons into a crowd practicing the First Amendment. They also seem rather doubtful on Amendments 13-15.
So, what is the Second Amendment for, and why does it guarantee us an armed population? You would think it would tell you that. Unfortunately, this is what it says.
A
well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free
State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be
infringed. - See more at:
http://constitution.findlaw.com/amendments.html#sthash.ULMHQaRU.dpuf
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free
state, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be
infringed."One thing that strikes you from reading it with the rest of the Bill of Rights is it's the only Amendment that tries to explain what it's for. The rest are pretty self-explanatory. "Congress shall make no law . . ." "No soldier shall . . ." The rights of the people . . . shall not be infringed."
Except it's not too good an explanation. Write a sentence like that in English class, and your teacher would probably gouge your eye out. Passive voice with the noun at the end? Is that Latin or Germanic syntax? How is the militia to be regulated, especially if it's a militia to overthrow the tyranny? Does the tyranny do the regulating? If not, who does? In what capacity is an armed populace necessary to security of a "free state?" Nations like Libya or Somalia, where everybody is armed, don't look particularly free on the surface. Other states that have overthrown their governments with the help of arms don't seem to end up better or free. Ukraine, with its Nazi problem, being the prime example.
A
well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free
State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be
infringed. - See more at:
http://constitution.findlaw.com/amendments.html#sthash.ULMHQaRU.dpuf
So, what are its garbled phrases really about?
It just so happens we have the unabridged version, and it survives in the laws of one of the original states. Before the what became the US even won the Revolution, the Constitution of the Common Wealth Virginia was enacted at the same time as the Declaration of Independence. One of the two principle writers of the document was James Madison, who was also later the principal writer of the US Constitution.
Section 13 concerns what we call gun rights, or the right to keep and bear arms. I've put in bold the parts that are word-for-word in the Second Amendment. Here's what it says:
"That a well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the proper, natural, and safe defense of a free state, therefore, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; that standing armies, in time of peace, should be avoided as dangerous to liberty; and that in all cases the military should be under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power."
Therefore, the purpose of the Second Amendment was to provide for state or national defense without having a standing army. Any questions?
We've already stomped over and spit on the Second Amendment by having the biggest standing army in history!!
It's insane to think a government would give, in its own founding document, a means of the people to destroy it once it goes bad. The Founders were trying to form a "more perfect union," remember?
Therefore, the Second Amendment has nothing to do with individuals owning guns, whatsoever. They're not patriots, nothing about owning a gun makes you more patriotic. They're just consumers. If it's not a "well-regulated militia" the Second Amendment doesn't apply.
However, by having a huge, standing military, we've completely destroyed any context in which the Second Amendment can be applied. We've evolved into a nation where the need for the right to keep and bear arms is dead.
Oddly enough, the size of the military doesn't seem to worry gun nuts very much. Nor does the militarization of police.
Again, gun advocates aren't patriots, they're a niche market that's been shaped by the merchants selling to it.
Size of the government including the military and the police worry me - I would like to see a world where people are more responsible for their actions and don't depend on others to decide what is best for them. And I own guns. None of your labels of 'gun nut' apply to me. I'm someone who is educated on how / when / why I should use my gun at anywhere but the shooting range. I also believe that the government does not have the right to take them away or to tell me what I as a citizen need to believe. It is short sighted to believe that anyone in any position of power knows what is best for someone else - especially a country at large. I believe that there has become this over reliance on the government - on both the conservative and the liberal side- to be responsible for telling us what is and isn't okay. The government will make sure we get jobs and have health insurance and affordable housing - and we can all live in a happy workers paradise where there are people who take advantage of the bloated nature of the services that the government offers - instead of being responsible for themselves. On the flip side there are people who rely on the government to tell them that how they act and believe is okay because it's how it is set up and when called out on it say that it's the governments view so therefore shouldn't it be theirs as well? There is a third view here that seems to be lost in this post. For all the attempt to be a literal reading of the 'unabridged 2nd amendment' this is just as skewed in viewpoint as the so called 'gun nuts' you condemn.
ReplyDeleteIt's skewed because I'm not neutral. It does make a difference to me. I don't try to hide my frustration with the pro-gun contingent. Mockery is the only line of discussion left for the politically defeated, especially when the defeat comes primarily from lies and money power. Your POV about guns isn't one of the crazy ones pushing the discussion, the ones based on paranoia and lies.
DeleteI won't get into the argument about self-reliance/individuality vs. government/collectivism, or even if that's a dichotomy. That's too big a subject to undertake in a blog commentary. It requires its own series of blog posts, or an entire book. (If you think pro-government/pro-authority describes my POV, you haven't been reading the rest of my posts.)
Yet, like the subgroups I cited in my post, I can't follow your logic. Make me understand how owning guns in an urban area is relevant to your social-philosophy; how does it have anything to do with self-reliance? The people who are the best armed in the world are military, and they're hardly the most individualistic, on average (though some have survival training, it's survival, something you do before you're rescued, by "the collective"). So, apparently there's no correlation there. Criminals with guns aren't admired for their high degree of self-reliance. That's not why they'd obtain guns; so there's no correlation there either. I know these aren't exhaustive arguments, but they're indicative.
Also, I can't believe a couple handguns are supposed to protect you against the tyrannical government, which has a lot more firepower, and from weapons you can't touch. At most, the guns are symbolic.You can go down fighting, but the key words are "go down."
Therefore, I don't understand your POV. The only way those arguments work for you is if you've already decided to have the guns and you need some ad hoc rationalization for it that needn't to be airtight. The purpose is not to convince anyone else but to keep yourself convinced.
I admit that guns are necessary if somebody's trying to kill you. That's where I would agree with the right to keep and bear arms. So, maybe our disagreement is less about guns than it seems to be. Maybe I don't understand the level of threat you're under. What I see guns as doing otherwise is acting the last nonverbal word in the argument. A guy open-carrying shortchanges the cashier. Is she going to dispute it? Is the manager?
You said nothing to answer my point. You told me why I wasn't worthy of an answer: that I affronted you. Therefore, my point stands. The Second Amendment does not support the interpretation that justifies private gun ownership. Say what you will about the value of individuality and how it connects to gun ownership, but it definitely isn't in the intent of the Founders. The author of the Constitution, James Madison, wasn't thinking of self-reliance when he wrote Section 13, nor is it likely he had it in mind when he hacked it into a less explanatory 2A. Private gun ownership is not Constitutionally supported.
I'd take a more respectful tone if people on the pro-gun side weren't lying about this. And yes, it's very easy to track down the origin of the Second Amendment. They're all either lying or passing on other people's lies, repeatedly, and never retracting them when called. This lie just scratches the surface of what's been done: misquoted Founders, spurious statistics, false rumors about the intent of the other side. I might be acerbic, I might mock, but I haven't done any of that.
And that's a principal difference between a gun advocate and a gun nut.