Seen Recently...
"In God We Trust - The Guns Are Just Backup" (T-shirt featuring an eagle with an assault rifle in each talon)
"Trespassers Will Be Shot. Survivors Will Be Shot Again" (Metal sign)
"We Don't Dial 911" (Bumper sticker; also on t-shirt showing a pistol pointing at the observer)
"Keep Back - Driver Carries Only $20 Worth Of Ammo" (Bumper sticker)
"Don't Mess With My Family - Faith - Firearms - Freedom" (T-shirt)
Wow.
When I was a little kid, the NRA was the organization that taught you how to safely handle a gun. I don't know how political they were, but they didn't seem to be as much about advocating for gun ownership as they are now; they were more about making sure that people who did own guns used them wisely.
How times have changed.
When the Bill of Rights was first written, the most advanced firearm was the single-shooter. It wasn't very accurate, and in order to reload, you had to use a ramrod to tamp in gunpowder and a little lead ball. (There were, of course, cannons...but the same principle applied, on a larger scale.) On a battlefield of that age, you had one line of men firing at the enemy, then stooping to reload while the men behind them took their turn to fire. Close-in fighting was done with knives, bayonets, and sabers (those weapons carried by the officers weren't just for show). And most of the weapons named above had other uses in civilian life, such as hunting or self-defense. A man with a good knife could survive quite well in the wilderness, if he had a bit of knowledge to go with it.
So when the Founding Fathers wrote, "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," they were thinking of something quite different than what we have today.
Okay, So Here's What I'm Reading...
The English of the Constitution looks kind of weird, doesn't it? And of all its articles and amendments, the 2nd is the one folks have the most trouble with. That's because it's one long sentence with its clauses separated only by commas. My high-school English teachers would have red-penciled it and given me an F. I can see the comments now: "Unclear sentence structure." "Is this a single thought in three parts, or three separate thoughts?" "Comma placement confuses your intended meaning." And one of my instructors would have written simply: "Run-on sentence." (She thought shorter was better, and she loathed semicolons--she said they made for lazy writing.)
But if you break the amendment into its components, you notice that each part of it proceeds naturally from the part before it. Here's my layman's rendition:
1)We need a trained group of people who can fight.
2) We need them to help keep our country free.
3) Therefore, we have the right to own and use weapons as part of this fighting group.
See, since the time of the Revolution, our armed forces has always been made up of Joe Blow and all his kinfolk. They had their guns that they hunted with, and the knives they skinned deer with, and they took those to war with them. The idea of military-issued weaponry didn't exist at the time. And when we became a real country with a real government, even though we were small, the idea of the "citizen militia" remained - each citizen being trained to use his own weapons to defend his community, his state, and his country alongside his neighbors, whenever they were called to do so. (The later formation of the National Guard is perhaps the best example of the "well-regulated Militia" spoken of in the 2nd Amendment, but I consider local law enforcement groups to be in that category as well.)
Now, weapons have changed a lot since the 1700's. One man with an AK-50, or an M-16, or even a converted AR-15, can do a lot to defend his country...or, as we have seen in recent years, he can create a lot of mayhem. The mayhem is why we need to revise our understanding of the 2nd Amendment.
Two Things To Consider
The first is, there have always been limits.
Don't believe me? Try carrying a machete in a scabbard. Yeah, just walk around with it, and tell everybody you meet that you're exercising your second-amendment rights. After all, "arms" means anything you can use as a weapon, right?
Maybe so...but you could be arrested just the same. Same thing if you're carrying a switchblade, or a belt full of throwing stars, or even, in some states, a Taser or a can of Mace. In my state, the legal length on a knife blade is about pocket-knife length for concealed carry, but for open-carry it varies from state to state, and often cities and towns have their own variations. Once, when I went in for jury selection, I accidentally carried a large Phillips-head screwdriver into our courthouse--it was in an inner coat pocket because I had forgotten and taken it home from work, and I was intending to return it to its niche on my next shift. Of course, I set off the metal detector, and the cop took the screwdriver away. After the jury was chosen and I was free to go, I had the devil's own time convincing that cop to let me have my screwdriver back. When he finally returned it, I was sternly warned never to bring such a thing in again.
And if you remember, during the Prohibition era, sawed-off shotguns and Tommy guns were also considered illegal, mostly because that's what the gangsters carried. Up until recently, carrying a large number of guns in your car could get you in trouble, and in some states it still will. And even a single legal firearm becomes illegal if you conceal it in your car or truck, depending on where you live.
The second thing is, times have changed.
You know, even the Wild West wasn't as wild as the movies portrayed it. Many towns had their own gun-control laws, often requiring visitors to check their guns and knives at a hotel or with the local law office. You'd get a token saying that you had done so, and when you were ready to leave town, you turned in your token and got your weapons back. If this sounds draconian, remember that this was the edge of the wilderness, and folks living out there got used to making their own way by hook or by crook (pun intended). Coming into town, however, meant being willing to abide by community statutes intended to protect the residents. In many places, if you weren't willing to do that, you could keep on riding, because that town wouldn't welcome you.
Nowadays, there's almost no wilderness left, and when you go out to hunt, it's at set seasons, with set weaponry and a limit on what and how much you can bag. If you carry a gun in a city for self-defense, you are just as likely to provoke an attack as to fend off a bad guy already intent on attacking you. And if you fire a gun into the air on the Fourth of July or New Year's Eve...well, that's illegal now. Why? Because what goes up must come down, and in a densely-populated area, that means your chance of committing involuntary manslaughter with that random bullet becomes depressingly good.
In the past, there were crazies out there, just like now; but again, we live closer together nowadays. So the crazy guy with a gut full of dope or liquor and a gun in his hand is even more dangerous than he was in the old days. And the gun is not a single-shot dueling pistol anymore; it could be a six-shooter, or the Luger he captured from a dead German back in WWII, or even a Glock or a Magnum...you know, like Dirty Harry's. Do you feel lucky? Well, do you, punk?
Oh, and then there are the people who are just plain mad as hell, and they're not gonna take it anymore...and they're using firearms to solve the problem that made them mad. Kids who get bullied and go shoot up their school...spouses who open fire on their partners...drive-by shootings...et cetera, ad nauseam. Now that we all live in such close proximity, such events become more common and cause more loss of life.
So What Do We Do?
A gun is made to kill--whether an animal or a human, it doesn't really matter. As I noted before, hunting is regulated; but killing a human is murder. Sometimes killing a person is necessary, but only within the bounds of law enforcement, and the cops who kill had better be damned sure they're firing on a bona-fide Bad Guy...because once it's done, they can't resurrect the vic and say, "Oh sorry, we goofed--no hard feelings?"
And that is the real answer: we need to think.
Notice I haven't mentioned knives, or swords, or throwing stars, or Mace or Tasers or even screwdrivers, for quite a few paragraphs. That's because even though many of those items are lethal, they're chancier than a gun. A couple of simple self-defense movements can disarm somebody who has one of those items, and if all else fails, you can run away and have a good chance of survival. But any fool with a steady hand can pull a trigger and send a high-speed ballistic missile into another person's body, and even a quick movement on your part isn't faster than that. And even if you have a gun too, it won't gain you anything if the Bad Guy has the drop on you.
It would be nice if we could read minds and tell who was a crazy, or a criminal, or an angry person right off. But since we can't, here's what we should do instead:
1) Wait. By this, I mean there ought to be a waiting period for all firearms purchases. Time has a way of giving perspective to what we intend to do. If you really still want to kill your wife after three days, you might be ready to consider counselling instead. Which brings me to...
2) Some states have laws forbidding gun ownership to those with a history of mental illness or domestic abuse. Laws like this should be tightened, plus there should be involuntary-commital laws to get these dangerous people off the streets, with therapy and meds available for those who can be fixed. It has to be a two-pronged attack, or it won't help.
3) Registry of all legal firearms. Those who are against this are just plain silly. Sure, carrying a gun is a right...but so is voting, and we have to register to do that, too, and for the same reason: so that no one abuses or misuses that right! And if you could report your registered weapon as stolen, think how much easier it would be to find it, and the thief who stole it, before he could sell it or commit another crime with it. "But I don't want the government to know what guns I have, or how many." But you're happy to tell the cops all that if you get robbed, right? Why not before?
4) Trigger locks, or some kind of smart tech. This is mainly to prevent accidents, in particular when kids find Mom's handgun and start playing with it. Failing this, how about a gun safe with a key? Also, kids should be trained from their earliest years that guns are serious business. You can shoot out more than your eye with a .38. And speaking of that...
5) Training should be required for all gun users. I would suggest a two-month course of at least police quality, in which a person is trained both how and when to use a gun. Remember, the amendment talks about a "well-regulated Militia," right? That involves training. And no, the cops on the street don't always get it right, but a civilian is better off with the training than without.
6) Change the mindset. Here in this country, we love our guns. We seem to think they can actually solve our problems. But other countries don't think the way we do, and I don't think it's an accident that the violent-crime stats are lower in many other developed countries than they are here. I don't believe it's that they have better gun control; it's that they have a better way of thinking--about guns, sure, but also about crime, punishment, mental illness, and even about social interaction. Would we really feel like we need a gun if we actually knew our neighbors? (I'm betting Trayvon Martin would still be alive if George Zimmerman had actually known Trayvon's dad's fiancee, and known that the boy and his dad were visiting.) A gun is only an object. But as long as we Americans keep thinking of it as a solution, things will never get better.
