It is so
easy to love guns. So much potential
life ending force, coiled and wrapped in cold metal.
I grew up
around guns. At the end of any major
celebration and certainly every wedding that I attended as a child, someone
would pull out a handgun and let off a clip into the air to punctuate the
joining of the happy couple. At the
conclusion some people might cheer but it was so common place, that unless you
happened to unexpectedly be next to the gunman when it occurred, you didn’t
really take much notice.
One summer
afternoon in 1979 my parents dragged me to the wedding of a cousin. As we were all waiting outside, an anxious
groomsman exited the building and quickly shot up into the air. Instead of
the blue sky above, his bullets slammed into a roof overhang. Shouting ensued as well as a little
laughter. There were also some gasps as I
looked over to see my mother holding her arm, blood running between her fingers.
Gossip
quickly erupted that people had been shot. In reality a piece of splintered plaster had
grazed my mother’s arm. She put a napkin
on it and the celebration continued. Shortly
thereafter, another groomsman shot off a few more rounds this time clearing any
buildings, presumably to make up for the mishap and not bring any bad luck to
the marriage.
Even when
something like this happens or much worse, we still love guns. We love pointing our fingers at something and
making machine gun noises. We love
watching the raw destruction that flying projectiles make. We love this so much that we had to invent
Bullet Time, the artistic slow motion effect of encircling the blossoming chaos
that ricocheting bullets make. This way we can enjoy the erupting destruction
in excruciating detail.
Then there
is the Second Amendment. This is our
right to assemble armies and to keep arms.
The second part was intended as a form of checks and balances. The reason for it is to retard a government’s
tendency towards excessive control over its people.
The Second
Amendment (which likes to be called 2A) doesn’t care about hunting rights. It doesn’t care about high capacity clips or
reload rates. It wants to make sure we
the people have a deterrent and possible recourse over a government that has
overstepped into our freedoms.
The ways in which a government might do this in 2017 are numerous and
varied. Our federal government has at
its disposal an unprecedented arsenal of devastating force. This could come in the form of overwhelming
strength or covert razor sharp surgical accuracy. Any citizen or group of citizens wishing to
defend themselves from this force would need the logistics, resources and
weaponry rivaling a first world nation.
Let’s now turn to the idea that the role of the 2A today is to ensure
that we have ready access to automatic rifles so we can defend ourselves from a
militarily aggressive government. If it
was possible to a group of USA military leaders to assume control, their
tactics would surely come more from propaganda than outright assault. If their threat assessment had you or I on
the top of their list, even a top of the line assault rifle isn’t going to do
much against a drone strike or cyber attack where our bank is drained, our
records altered and evidence planted against us.
If we really believed that we are given the right to defend ourselves,
then we should each have the right to modern tanks including ammunition,
anti-aircraft ordinances and electronic countermeasure, surveillance equipment
and state of the art decryption algorithms.
But it would be impossible to successfully argue that each citizen
should have the right to bear these arms.
Instinctively we all know our neighbor should not be able to point a
tank turret at our house.
Or use a shoulder launched rocket out of anger. Or detonate an electronic pulse weapon inside
our financial centers.
The argument over the class of weapon a citizen has a right to is not
a 2A issue. The disservice that groups
promoting gun rights have done to our 2A rights is incalculable. We have focused ALL of our attention on
beautiful shiny automatic weapons while the government has continued to
encroach on our rights eroding access to our other rights. If we freedom loving, peace seeking, flag
waving citizens truly cared about the 2A, we would be turning our attention to
accountability, transparency and the checks and balances envisioned for us so
long ago.
But these things are not nearly as sexy as the solid recoil of a sleek
Barret M82A1. There isn’t the same
romance of taking accountability from our cold dead fingers.
The truth is we love guns. But
in our desperate need for this love, we have both gravely neglected our true 2A
rights and at the same time made toxic any attempts to give rational safety
rights to both gun owners and victims of gun crimes.
