Guns Rights Inside 2A

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.