Anyone giving this page even the most cursory glance will see that firearms hold a significant interest to me. Some of you are understand that, some don't. But, even if you aren't a gun owner, I'd ask you to read this particular post. And, if you are a gun owner, I still think you will find something in this one to think about and talk about with friends and family.
In future posts we'll cover some of the more pointed issues about gun control. However, I'd like to take a different tack today, one that affects all Americans - liberal, conservative, even the ambivalent. It has to do with the course we set for ourselves and our country.
For years, the gun culture has warned about marginalizing the Second Amendment. I'm not going to go into Constitutional scholarship, but a bit of background is important for a person to understand what is at stake and why non-gun owners need to care about this issue.
The Second Amendment 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 anti-gun crowd, including the the ACLU, talks about the right to arm ourselves as a collective right. That means it belongs to society as a whole, specifically the government, not an individual. They cite a few Supreme Court decisions from the 1800's and one from the early 1900's to support that position. During that time frame, the entire Bill of Rights was viewed as recognizing collective rights, with the individual states having power to regulate such things as freedom of speech and of the press.
Today, we have correctly gone back to the original intent of the founding fathers and the idea of inalienable, individual rights. Even the typically liberal law journals have been forced to recognize that when "the people" is referred to, it identifies the private citizen. In "The Embarrassing Second Amendment," Sanford Levinson, a Harvard law professor, detailed this for the Yale Law Review.
That's a quick background and, like I said, we'll go into the agonizing details of Constitutional Law at another point in time. Even if you don't completely agree with the individual rights interpretation of the "the right to keep and bear arms," I'll ask you to admit that the Second Amendment is part of the Bill of Rights and has never been rescinded.
When we ignore entire segments of the Constitution, and individual and civil rights by extension, we begin down a slippery slope. What happens when we allow one part, any part, of the Constitution, to be ignored, is that we accept the idea that our laws and rights are amorphous, changeable by the government and public opinion. Of course, the entire idea of the Constitution is to protect society from that very thing.
We live in a society with two very distinct evils in our midst: a government hungry for more power and a growing population who wish to abrogate the responsibilities of adulthood. That means there are fewer and fewer challenges from the people when rights are infringed.
I vote Republican. I admit that. It's not that I have any love for the Republican party, but it's that the Democrats scare the beejeebers out of me with their desire for a nanny state. Sadly, the Republicans no longer stand for individual rights, either.
Alright, am I am alarmist?, I mean, the government needs to be allowed some regulation such as interstate commerce. Yes, but, let's look at some big and small things happening in our country today. We have Hillary Clinton's "village" to raise children. That's not a nice "community" thing where someone watches your kid while you run to the store. She means that the government knows better than you do about what your child needs to learn and who they should be, and that they have the right to enforce their will over your very own children. She has said exactly that. We have Rudy Giuliani who, as Mayer of New York City, used his prosecutor's background to "creatively" interpret laws in ways they weren't meant to be used but which allowed him to go after the people and groups he wanted to affect. He even brags about such issues in his book Leadership. People accepted it because they liked the result, but was it the right thing to do? Shouldn't he have gone through the proper process to pass actual laws doing what he wanted?
Agree or disagree, this is a problem. We complain about The Patriot Act, but we cower and cringe when it comes to defending ourselves. Just the other night, I was dumbfounded when a news anchor talked about a recent murder, "but the good thing is that a witness called 911 so quickly that the police found the suspect before he could get away." Geez how good was that for the victim? Wouldn't it have been better if the witness stopped the murder? Is our response to a random killing to pick up a telephone? It is because we have been led to believe that it's the government's job to protect us.
We often hear about police chiefs saying, "yes, fighting back saved a person this time, but they shouldn't have taken the law into their own hands." I have a huge problem with this on many levels. For one, self-defense is not vigilantism. Two, in a government for the people and by the people, the law is inherently in our hands to begin with. Vigilantism is wrong because it denies a person due process under the law, not because citizens want a wrongdoer off the streets.
How is a society supposed to maintain individual rights when we ask the the government to do for us what we won't do for ourselves? You say, "that's dramatic, of course we need the police!" I never said we didn't. But, I point out that societies collapse slowly, not in a dramatic parking lot attack. If we won't take charge of our lives at the dramatic moments, we are going to have a difficult time with those things that bring about doom through slow erosion.
The answer, of course, is our Constitution. It's the document that has made our country unique in all of history. Even when it was first drafted, it was something very special, unique in putting the person before the state. Today, John Edwards talks of a politician's "followers," not supporters, not constituents, but "followers," sheep following obediently behind their master.
If we are to keep the Constitution meaningful, then all of it has to be meaningful or it is doomed. Divided we will surely fall. And that is really the point here: if you believe in one part of it, you need to believe in all of it. We can't pick and choose for all of society and for the generations who follow us. We must hold our government to the letter of the law and the intent of the Constitution. If you even for a moment believe the Second Amendment supports an individual right when it says "the people," or if you even slightly believe it just might, maybe mean the individual, then it has to be part of the bundle of rights which we stand together to defend. If you believe that the issue needs to be decided by the courts, then it needs your support until due process has had it's day.
History is not over and attacks on our rights continue. Don't like the Patriot Act, don't like McCain/Feingold, don't like wire taps, don't like people being quarantened without even having a judge review the facts, don't like Guitmo, don't like anything you feel infringes on civil rights? The cure for ambivalence is in the individual caring and taking part in the process. And the tool to use and the shield behind which to withstand the assaults on our rights is the Constitution.
Let no child be thrown out of the lifeboat. Those journalists who feel their First Amendment rights are being trampled supported the trampling of the Second Amendment. Those churches who supported gun control due to (erroneous, IMHO) pacifist beliefs have seen their First Amendment rights severely limited. Those same groups such as the ACLU who supported the collective/"only government should have guns" position now can't understand how we got to the point where we have government invading our privacy electronically and literally having men in black masks and toting machine guns kicking down our doors with little cause or provocation.
It goes beyond the straight Constitutional issues as applied to institutions such as the press and church and it goes beyond issues such those with which the ACLU concerns itself. We see the results and consequences everyday when small, well funded special interest groups are allowed free sway to reinterpret a document labored over by the men who fought to make America free. Parents who saw guns as instruments capable only of evil have seen their children murdered in the classroom, unarmed teachers having no way to fight back. City councils who wanted easy answers for inner-city crime and directed their police forces to focus on gun confiscation and gun buy back programs have seen their crime rates sky rocket while those cities and states which enacted right to carry laws have seen their crime rates plummet.
The McCain/Feingold Campaign Reform Act took away the First Amendment rights of all groups, groups formed because individuals of like minds had no way for their voice to be heard otherwise. Agree with their voices or not, they do have a Constitutional right to free speech. Now, that right is no longer recognized. In the meantime, wealthy millionaires such as George Soros can still be heard and have the financial means to plaster the media with their own views. I can hear the Left cheering. But, it goes the other way, too. The NAACP is now limited in what they are allowed to promote, and people like Rupert Murdoch, the owner of Fox News, can say whatever he wants, too. Disturbingly, the cry seems to be that limits should be put on the Big Money, which is what McCain/Feingold said it was to do. There seems to be no outrage over the limitation on the Little Guy's First Amendment rights.
Just as with the "war on drugs," the "war on terrorism" has seen a large escalation in governmental power. The Patriot Act was hated by many, but it still passed. Wire tapping without court order, something done by every president, not just Bush, went into overdrive. We know that terrorists use our loopholes to hide from the government, but, as Benjamin Franklin said, "They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security." Or, as I tend to less eloquently put it, "it's all fun and games until it ends up on your doorstep."
If you don't want to see your rights taken away, then you need to make sure no one else has their rights taken away. The fight over gun control and the Second Amendment is where the most vicious fighting for the integrity of the Constitution is taking place. The tip of the spear is the National Rifle Association. They never say everyone must own a gun, but they unwaveringly say the Constitution can not be bargained away or it's the beginning of the end. Many non-hunters buy a hunting license each year because they support the game and fish departments of their state in conservation and recognize that such departments get a huge part of their funding through the sale of hunting and fishing licenses. Likewise, many non-gun owners pay the $35/year for an NRA membership because they recognize the Second Amendment as the focus of the attacks which, if successful, will mark the beginning of the end for the document which has made America unique in the history of the world.
If you are a gun owner and you don't have an NRA membership, you are letting the rest of us do the heavy lifting for you while you reap the rewards. If you aren't a gun owner but have a heart felt desire to see America continue on as one in which we celebrate individual rights, I would encourage your to consider the annual membership fees to the NRA as a small price to pay in order to back the one organization doing the most to support the Constitution. At the very least, be aware of the gun control debate and what is at stake so that you can respond and support the idea that the Constitution was meant for the people, not the government, when attacks on individual rights are made.
If you won't do it for everyone, one day you will find the issues you care about under assault, and who will be left to stand by you?
This idea was captured so well by Pastor Martin Miemoller in his poem, "First they came..."
They came first for the Communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me,
and by that time no one was left to speak up.
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