Less than a month after the December 2012 Newtown massacre, the National Rifle Association’s then-president, David Keene, warned that the new White House task force on gun violence would “do everything they can to strip Americans of their right to keep and bear arms, to essentially make the Second Amendment meaningless.” Three weeks ago, after a killer shot three people and wounded eight near Santa Barbara, California, conservative activist “Joe the Plumber” posted an open letter to the victims’ families. “Your dead kids,” he wrote, “don’t trump my Constitutional rights.”
Before you begin thinking that gun nuts care more for their guns than life itself…well, the truth is most care for their guns more than life itself. What kind of monster can say that “Your dead kids don’t trump my Constitutional rights?” (Samuel Wurzelbacher) Too many on the Right cling to their guns in the feverish and misguided belief that government exists primarily to deprive them of their beloved, God-given firepower.
Gun nuts cling to their belief that the 2nd Amendment is some sort of all-encompassing shield that allows them to possess whatever form of firepower they desire in whatever amount and forum they may choose. It’s a barbaric attitude, one that displays an almost total disregard for human life. Of course, when someone’s else’s kid or loved one is cut down in a mass shooting, it’s an abstract concept. I would never wish the loss of a loved one on anyone, no matter how barbaric and/or inhuman their beliefs may be. Still, even I have to wonder if that’s what it’s going to take for gun nuts to understand that common sense gun control is not a precursor to prying their guns from their cold, dead fingers. It’s a means toward an end- that end being preventing some of the more than 10,000 deaths from guns each year.
Despite convincing themselves otherwise, the 2nd Amendment doesn’t mean what they believe it to. So many gun nuts demand the Constitution be interpreted literally…until it comes to the 2nd Amendment. The historical context is key to fully understand the most misunderstood and misinterpreted 27 words in the American lexicon.
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.
What gun nuts conveniently gloss over is the first part of the sentence in order to embrace the latter as if their lives on it. During the late 18th century, maintaining peace and enforcing laws was something much different than it is today. A militia- a citizen army- was necessary for the collective security, and citizens kept firearms for the purpose of helping to maintain that security. They couldn’t call 911, nor was there today’s complete separation between the military and the civilian. In short, it was a different world, one the 2nd Amendment no longer addresses.
Gun nuts have elect to focus on “the right of the people to keep and bear arms,” while ignoring the “well regulated militia” section of the 2nd Amendment. They’ve chosen to ignore what they find inconvenient in order to justify their self-interested interpretation of their “rights.” The fact is that the “right of the people to keep and bear arms” was directly related to the security protected by having “a well regulated militia.” The Founding Fathers could hardly have imagined what zealots like the Open Carry movement in Texas would twist the 2nd Amendment into. Do you REALLY think the Founding Fathers meant for angry White zealots to go grocery shopping with an AR-15 slung over their shoulder?
I’m fully cognizant of the truth that my desire to remove guns from America isn’t going to happen. That extreme simply won’t fly among the vast majority of Americans who favor gun ownership. I’ve accpeted that…but why is the other extreme considered acceptable? How many innocent Americans have to die before common sense gun control becomes acceptable? Is it really going to take the deaths of people that gun nuts actually care about for them to understand that we’re not debating an abstract concept?
More than 10,000 innocent Americans die each year from gun violence…yet there are still those who believe “Your dead kids don’t trump my Constitutional rights.” That’s an easy thing to say when it’s not your child being buried. That gun nuts could be so thoroughly inhuman, self-absorbed, and dismissive of the suffering of others is as disturbing as it is typical.
As long as its not your kid being buried, right?
