The Second American Commandment

The second amendment to the Constitution says “The right of the people to bear arms shall not be infringed”, right? That’s what you’ve heard, that’s what our current supreme court says, so it must be true, right?

Except that it’s not. It actually 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.”

The suggestion of pro-gun advocates is that the two clauses of the sentence are entirely separate. The first half states that a well-regulated militia is necessary for a free state, the second half says that we have the right to bear arms, and they have nothing further to do with one another.

Before I go any further, let me be clear about one thing. I LOVE GUNS. I haven’t been target shooting in years and am miserably out of practice, but I enjoy it. I like the way that they feel, I like the way that they look, I like the noise that the make and the way that they blow shit up. Personally, I don’t use guns to hunt because killing an animal from a quarter of a mile away seems a little unsporting to me. A hunt is supposed to prove that I have the right to eat the flesh of that animal because I beat it in a struggle. If I assassinate it with a sniper rifle, I’m really not proving anything except that I have better ordinance. When I’ve hunted (and again, it’s been a while) I hunt with a bow. I also reject “sport” hunting. To me, sport hunting = killing for fun, which is the same thing that serial killers do. Killing is not fun. My understanding of the gospels is that Jesus commanded us to revere ALL life, and so I try my best to do that.

Having said that…

With all due respect, whoever tries to parse this sentence to divorce the two clauses is unfamiliar with American history and the intent of the founders.

The founding fathers never wanted us to have a standing army. George Washington believed that a standing army, controlled by the federal government, could easily be used to take away the rights of the people by force. He and the other founders believed that, instead, each state should maintain a militia of citizen soldiers who could come to arms immediately. The OTHER George, King George, saw the arming of the American people as a threat, which of course it was. So he passed a law forbidden colonials to own guns. That was one of the many straws that broke the camel’s back and started the revolution. So the founders, not wishing to see that kind of mess again, granted Americans the right to bear arms.

You also have to look at this in a historical context. In 1800, just after the Bill of Rights was passed, there were just over 5,300,000 people in the US. There are now about one and a half times that number in NYC alone. At that time, if you didn’t have a gun then you became bear bait. Or wolf bait. Or you got killed by Indians, pissed that you had taken their land away from them. You were also a vegetarian, because there was no Safeway to go buy meat. As a matter of fact, there was no way to ship and store fresh meat. When you killed something, you relished the fresh meat for a day or two, and then turned the rest into jerky, so that it wouldn’t go bad.

In case you didn’t notice, we don’t have those problems anymore. Bears and wolves have almost been hunted out of existence, the Indians (for the most part) are content with casinos, and you get your meat at the store and keep it in your fridge. And, contrary to the wishes of the founders, we DO have a standing army at the command of the federal government.

So does that mean that I support abolition of the second amendment? I do not. As I said… I LOVE GUNS.

What I think that it DOES mean, though, is that we have to apply the second amendment to the situation that we’re living in today.

The first thing that you have to realize is that regulation was built right in to the amendment. “A WELL-REGULATED militia…”

Let’s take another little historical journey, shall we?

I love westerns. A loved one and I recently went to see the new western “Appaloosa”, and I thought that it was a pretty good film. My dad reveres westerns, so I grew up watching Gunsmoke and The Rifleman and Have Gun Will Travel. As a teenager, I read the bulk of the works of Louis Lamour and Zane Grey. I own Shane on DVD, and think that I’ve seen every western that John Wayne ever made. But the fact is that, historically, if you went into Dodge City or Tombstone or any of those other towns, the first thing that you had to do was surrender your guns to the town Sheriff. They didn’t want nuts shooting up their towns anymore than we do. YOU HAD TO SURRENDER YOUR GUNS. And then, when you left town, you went to the sheriff and got your guns back. That, my friends, is gun control in a nutshell.

Today, if a town tried to follow this western ideal and pass a law saying that you had to surrender your guns when you came into town, that town would be sued out of existence.

Let me ask this… can you name an item that is a potentially deadly weapon that has to be registered and you need a license to operate? That’s right. I’m talking about cars. Or dogs. Or motorcycles. The idea that America is a place where you can have whatever you want without regulation is simply insane.

I don’t have a problem with the assault weapon ban. People try to justify this by saying that they need automatic weapons to hunt or protect their homes is also insane. If you need two hundred rounds per second to kill a deer, you should probably learn to shoot before you go hunting next time. And do you need two hundred rounds per second to protect your home? Hate to break it to you, but if you fire two one-second bursts at an intruder, you’re not going to have much home left to protect when it’s all done. It is going to tear your place up. Assault weapons serve one purpose and one purpose only, and that is to kill a lot of people, very quickly.

And waiting periods? I have no problem with that. If I need a gun to hunt, or want a gun to protect my home, I’m okay waiting a couple of days before I get it.

And registration? Almost everything that you own that could kill someone has to be registered, for the simple reason that if someone DOES get killed with it, they know who to come to.

If you need an unregistered assault weapon RIGHT NOW, odds are that you really don’t need it because you’re pissed off and want to kill someone without anyone knowing who did it.

The late great George Carlin said that the quickest route to reasonable gun control would be to remove the metal detectors from around Congress and the White House. If our lawmakers lived with gun violence on a day to day basis like the rest of us do, the NRA wouldn’t hold the kind of sway over them that it does now. (I believe the same thing about education, by the way. If we really want to see major reforms in public education, we need to force our lawmakers to send their kids to public school… without that, they have no incentive to clean up public schools.)

So yes, brothers and sisters. I believe that the commandment “Thou shalt not take an American’s guns from him” should stand, but I also think that we need to temper it with common sense, wisdom, and historical knowledge.

Peace.

Randal