Stick 'em up!

(As a brief aside, let me just say: Happy Second Birthday to Jesus. Or would Happy Rebirthday be more appropriate? What does Hallmark have in the Resurrection section?)

Big news for me, and I think for all of us, this past week, which is still hanging in the air at the moment: the Supreme Court is hearing a Second Amendment case. Washington, D.C. has had a ban on handguns for three decades, and it has been challenged by a cop who finds it offensive that he can carry a gun on patrol but not at home, when the right to keep and bear arms is guaranteed by our Constitution. For the last 70 years, the courts have found, over and over again, that the right guaranteed by the Second Amendment is meant for militias, not for individuals, but this time, the Circuit Court of Appeals found for the plaintiff, stating that the Amendment does indeed refer to an individual right, and the man has the right to sue the D.C. government for the right to own a handgun and keep it in his home. D.C. appealed to the Supreme Court, and they agreed to hear the case -- despite the preferences of the Executive Branch, which stated that the case should be remanded for further review by lesser courts, that though they think the Amendment does guarantee an individual right to keep and bear arms, they don't believe the Supreme Court should make a ruling on this case, for fear that the precedent would open up challenges for every federal gun law. In an interesting twist, the Vice President of the United States, in accord with 55 Senators and 250 Representatives, has disagreed with his own government (The President and his Solicitor General, who expressed the White House's opinion) and stated that there should be no further review but that the court should immediately confirm that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right to bear arms.

Let's just dispense with this right now, shall we?

Of course the Second Amendment does not guarantee an individual's right to bear arms. The Amendment actually reads, "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 people have the right to keep arms as part of a militia, not as individuals. Beggar all considerations of how a militia's armaments can best be maintained, the point is that the militia has the right, not an individual -- unless you are a militia of one. Even as a militia of one, you are not protected as an individual, but as a group, and for one specific purpose.

Of course the Second Amendment does not prevent the government, federal or local, from passing reasonable gun control regulations. Second and third words of the Amendment, people, even before keep and bear arms: well regulated. Regulations would be required for regulating, and that means laws. Controlling guns. You know: gun control laws.

Any questions at this point? Ah yes, what of historical considerations? After all, every single household in Colonial America owned a gun; they were necessary for hunting and basic survival needs. This fact allowed the militias such as the Minutemen to help the Continental Army in fighting off the British. I saw The Patriot. Hell, I grew up in Boston; I was raised on the Boston Massacre, on the Battle of Breed's Hill (Bunker Hill was the next hill over, of course), on the Shot Heard 'Round the World and Paul Revere's Midnight Ride.

Fun fact: Paul didn't finish the ride. He did receive the signal and head through the first several towns, but then another rider or riders took over. I have heard two versions: one stated that the Ride was meant to be carried out by a series of different riders with fresh horses stationed at different spots along the route, Pony-Express style. The other, far more interesting version, says that Revere went to the central gathering place of each town he was alerting, which was, of course, the inn, and that he accepted a drink to quench his thirst at each tavern, until he finally got too drunk to continue and fell off his horse. A passing doctor found him, and heard his drunken mutterings of "The British are coming," (Presumably something more like "Zzzuh Critish 'r' bumminnnn . . .") and finished the ride for him.

Anyway, the argument goes: surely the Framers meant for each individual to have a protected right to own, as a private citizen, such a useful and universal tool.

But let us examine these historical considerations. First, the necessity of hunting weapons in a household. I think we can all agree that in places where people can actually hunt for food, the household rifle is fairly well accepted, even by the most liberal of gun control advocates -- which would be me. If you live on the tundra outside of Nome, go ahead and get a 30-30. I can live with that. Hell, have two. But I think it entirely reasonable to separate such circumstances from a discussion of gun control laws within major metropolitan areas, and from any discussion of militias -- because if we end up relying on the Nome Elk Hunting Club for our protection from external invasion or an internal junta, we're pretty much doomed.

Unless we get invaded by elk.

Until that happens, if the right to bear arms was intended to give people the right to gather food, then the real basic right being protected is the right to get food, not the right to own guns. So it should be perfectly acceptable to eliminate all guns, as long as we make sure people have enough to eat.

Hmm. Almost sounds like a good idea.

So, apart from hunting needs, and recognizing the fact that recreational hunting, like any other amusement, is not in any way even remotely guaranteed by the Constitution, the historical argument relies on the idea that the Framers believed that individual ownership of guns is necessary to secure liberty. But let's think seriously about the role of the Minutemen in winning the American Revolution. The American Revolution was won because the British Empire recognized that continuing the armed conflict across an ocean, which had become increasingly unpopular at home and abroad, would simply be too expensive to justify, considering the minor rewards of being able to boss around the colonists and say, "The sun never sets on the British Empire!"

Weird. Just had a moment of deja vu there. The top guy was named George, too. Fancy that.

Anyway, the thing that made it too costly was the Continental Army and the French Navy. Not the freaking Minutemen. The best thing the Minutemen did (Other than fire the first shot and set off a brutal and devastating war, of course -- way to go, Farmer John!) was gather information on British movements -- information they passed on to the Continental Army -- and harass the British supply lines; two things that required knowledge of the area, mobility, and the element of surprise. Not guns. The guns in the hands of the Minutemen made no difference at all. Individuals with muskets did not save us from tyranny: an organized military and cooperation with other sovereign nations and their organized militaries did that. Our best weapon was diplomacy, because that is what won the French to our side, and without their navy, the British could have kept pumping thousands and thousands of troops into the colonies, while blockading any Hessians or allied troops from sympathetic nations, or shipments of materiel, until they simply wore us down.

Now look at today. What is the best weapon we have against tyranny? Well, the military, first; I'll give you that. Though I'll also note that the military is the number one source and creator of tyranny: look at Myanmar. Nazi Germany. Idi Amin's Uganda. Noriega's Panama. But apart from the military, as private citizens, the best thing we can do to prevent tyranny is make sure the world knows what's going on. Tyranny is impossible without secrecy; that's why the first amendment, the one actually intended to fight tyranny, guarantees the freedoms people really need: freedom to speak truth, freedom to print truth, freedom to avoid religious zealotry (the most powerful propaganda device ever used to create popular tyranny), and the freedom to assemble and rally against the government. Peacefully. Because that's how you stop tyranny: you get the middlemen, and the rank and file, to recognize that what they are doing is wrong, and then you get them to join you in turning against their masters. That's what Gandhi did, and it's what gets rid of Central and South American dictators like Papa Doc Duvalier. The Second Amendment doesn't amount to a hill of beans next to the First.

Here's the last thing to remember about the historical context of the Second Amendment. To the Framers, the Militia was the military. The United States did not have a standing army (other than the British one, which the King wouldn't let them borrow), and as Thoreau would argue sixty years later in Civil Disobedience, it should not have a standing army. The only military we should have (and we definitely should have a military, one that is well-armed and organized), the only protection against invasion or large-scale rebellion, is a sizable and healthy National Guard. One that stays in this country, that is.

You know any Guardsmen? I've known a couple, including a good friend from college. Know what he did in the Guard? Drove a tank. Know where the tank was? Hint: not in his driveway. Know what else he didn't have in his house? Guns.

So there it is. Problem solved. The average citizen has no need of firearms, and the Constitution doesn't guarantee any right for that average citizen to possess firearms in any context other than as a member of a well-regulated militia -- which shouldn't mean, in this day and age, that the guns should be anywhere but at military installations. The Amendment isn't intended to protect anything other than the citizen soldiers of an organized militia like the National Guard, who may need to keep weapons in their homes as part of their role as soldiers but probably don't, and the right to get food, which today does not require private ownership of guns for hunting.

Please note, at this point, that I have not even mentioned home security. This is intentional. It is a specious argument: the Amendment doesn't mention it, the Constitution doesn't mention it, it has no place in the discussion. In addition, guns are neither necessary nor beneficial in maintaining home security; in the average home, in the average neighborhood, urban, suburban, or rural, the best home security is attention. Wailing alarms, barking dogs, lots of bright lights and people around watching out for your stuff and ready to call the police. In an area where there is so much crime, and so many armed criminals, that a gun would be needed to fend off the waves of crackheads, the guns in the hands of the crackheads, and of the crack dealers, have a much greater impact on the danger level than do the guns in the hands of the citizens defending themselves. Count how many people get killed in drive-by shootings, and compare that to how many people win shootouts with home invaders. Actually, the very best way to prevent crime is to end the economic inequities in our society: if you make sure the poor people have a decent standard of living, and the rich don't flaunt their wealth quite so blatantly and with so much disregard for the health and well-being of others, you would have very little crime. And the crime you had still wouldn't be deterred by guns.

But here's the thing. I've been arguing about this for years, and I can't get past one simple point. Some people like guns, and if those people are responsible gun owners, do I or anyone else have the right to take their guns away? Honestly, I don't think we do (Please note, the important word there is "responsible." And "if.") and so I don't advocate the law I would actually like to see: a complete ban on all firearms in any hands but the military's, and maybe not even in theirs. Here's what I think we should do to control guns.

I think we should stop loving them so damn much. Stop watching movies about Rambo and the OK Corral, stop idolizing and whitewashing the military and gangsters (but I repeat myself . . .) and their acts of violence and large-scale mayhem. Stop, for the love of all that's good and precious, shooting innocent animals so we can mount their body parts on our walls. Stop teaching our kids to plink away at signposts or dump rats or tin cans. Just stop seeing guns through rose-colored glasses. Let's look at them, and talk about them, and treat them as what they are: horrible, ugly machines that have one purpose and one purpose only: the destruction of life.

Guns do kill people. And animals. And the soul of anyone who gets too close to them. They shouldn't be controlled, they should be abolished, forever. But the only way that's going to happen is through the control, not of guns, but of people's baser urges. Starting with ourselves, and then spreading out to others, through clear, unequivocal statements of belief and of purpose.

The first step (after a personal decision to oppose guns and destruction) should be the elimination of the Second Amendment (Because the founding document of our nation should not include a legal hosanna to firearms), followed by a slow and steady increase of gun control, with the eventual goal of the elimination of personal firearms, starting with criminals, and then individuals, and finally the police.

I wish I could live to see it.