The Second Amendment
What with the rash of senseless, completely preventable murders sweeping the country for the past few years — preventable by stricter regulatory measures, mind you, not by turning every elementary school into Reba McIntire’s basement from “Tremors” — you’d think the gun advocates, egg-soaked faces and all, would be scaling back the inflammatory rhetoric a bit. At the very least, you’d think they acquiesce to a minor conciliatory measure like universal background checks — for which NRA czar and greasy napkin impersonator Wayne LaPierre advocated just 10 years ago — or closing gun show loopholes as a show of good faith to the rest of the nation.
Such measures would, after all, reduce the number of illegal firearms on the street, ensure that mentally unstable or proven dangerous individuals can’t get their hands on guns, and just generally make for at least a marginally more safe and peaceful nation. Which, you’d think, is what gun advocates, like the rest of us, want.
You’d also be charmingly naïve. Judging from the way pro-gun citizens and political shills react to any sign of firearm regulation, we apparently live on a plane of existence at the crossroads of “The Patriot,” “Red Dawn” and “Tron.” Gay commies in pink jackboots lurk around every corner. Bartenders pour your Coors Light into fancy glasses. George Clooney is president.
Gun nuts also love to use the Second Amendment as a framing device for their inane logic. It’s a smart move, since most people — gun nuts included — can’t be bothered to read the Second Amendment in the first place, and understand it in much the same way Ben Rothlisberger understands the concept of “mutual consent.”
Trouble is, the Second Amendment is the shortest amendment out there, at only one sentence and a handful of clauses. And while brevity can in some cases circumvent complications (“no means no”), a statement like “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,” leaves a lot of rhetorical wiggle room, and creates even more contextual complexities as social, economical and military-technological circumstances evolve. That quote, by the way, is literally the entire amendment.
So I want to look at two of these contexts, and take a stab at illustrating why people like Wayne LaPierre and Ted Nugent are less the upstanding freedom fighters of yesteryear, and more tiny-penised wingnuts who spend their 4th of July tongue-kissing an Andrew Breitbart commemorative plate. 1. Militias Became Our Standing Army
We were a young, brash country. We still are, in the grand scheme of things. But remember, when the Constitution was drafted in the late 18th century, America was fresh off of what was essentially a hail mary win over the British in the War for Independence. Keeping that in mind, there are a few things to consider.
First, the U.S. army was essentially one giant collection of militias, an almost clichéd group of ragtag outfits, generally run by and operating in each of the 13 colonies. A Continental Army was established in 1775, with about 20,000 enlistees by year’s end, but a third of that number was still comprised of integrated militiamen. Militia, then, were essentially the foundation of the Revolution’s military component, and it would have stood to reason — to late-18th century minds — to not limit the ability of the nation to keep and regulate one, as that was the context under which the army had been formed.
This is the part of the amendment that far-righters love to crow about. But here’s the thing: we have a “well-regulated militia,” and it’s called the United States Armed Forces. National Guard units are essentially state affiliates. There are also local and state police, highway patrol, K-9, the ATF, the FBI, etc. Anyone jonesin’ for a little militia action can get their fix in one of those organizations.
But we have to keep ourselves free from tyranny, right? Well… 2. This Is as Free as Freedom Gets
A lot of this ultra-reactionary talk from the right has been happening since Obama took office, and there are real world implications: gun sales spiked following both the 2008 and 2012 elections, a statistic that stems from two things: Obama’s continued status as “other” to social conservatives — as well as true political conservatives who are in the power-perpetuating-power business — and his willingness to actually tackle difficult issues like gun control.
Historical precedence exists for this irrational fear that survivalists and gun advocates harbor that Obama is going to confiscate all their weapons in one fell swoop. You have to go back 350 years and cross an ocean, but it’s there. See, when the English Bill of Rights was adopted in 1689, it contained language to ensure that Protestants would not be disarmed by the king without Parliament’s consent. However, by slipping in a sidenote that such arms must be “allowed by law,” the bill really did little more than to assure the hunting rights of the aristocracy.
So yeah, there’s a bit of quasi-justifiable paranoia encoded in patriotic DNA. But again, this line of argument that gun advocates trot out again and again, to defend “the security of a free state,” is hilariously partisan. When George W. Bush established the Patriot Act, probably the most invasive and downright unconstitutional bill ever signed by a sitting president, none of these people said a word. The same administration established the NDAA, which allows for the no-questions-asked apprehension and detention of American citizens by the federal government. Again, not a word. But threaten to limit magazine capacity or make it a hell of a lot harder to purchase automatic weapons, and bam — you’re a tyrant, a dictator, etc.
The issue isn’t going away any time soon. The Supreme Court has heard relevant and tangential cases many times now, and will again, probably sooner than later. It seems, however, downright disingenuous and stubborn that for all the social progress we’ve made — on religion, civil rights, sexuality, etc. — we so wholeheartedly cling to centuries-old justifications on this one more thing. Maybe it’s all we have left. In which case, how sad.You Might Also Like:
