Guns

When you’re caught between apoplexy and despair, your writing might get a little disjointed. You’re prone to ask too many rhetorical questions. Like this:

For hundreds of years, we have understood in this country that “keeping and bearing arms” is different from “having a loaded gun in the drawer of your nightstand.” Now we don’t. Devolution. What else could it be?

Antonin “Tony the Mouth” Scalia says Second Amendment protections extend only to “weapons in common use, like rifles and pistols.” There’s strict constructionism for you. Strictly pulled from the justice’s well-constructed colon. I guess a notion like “arms control” doesn’t fit there, let alone a bazooka.*

If the Founders (or Framers, actually) didn’t think the Second Amendment had to do with communal defense, why did they add the “militia” clause? What’s the point? Were they drunk at the time? They also used the term “bear arms,” which has a distinctly military connotation. (You don’t bear arms to go hunting—you take your rifle.) Was it a slip of the collective pen? Yet it goes perfectly with the militia clause. (Just to confuse future generations, they drunkenly threw in another couple of words, making it “keep and bear arms.” But they also said “the people,” which sounds like “We the People,” which is a collective entity. When speaking of individuals in the Constitution and Bill of Rights, didn’t they tend to say “person” or “the accused” or some such singular, noncollective noun?)

Several people in the blogosphere have said “well-regulated” = “well-equipped.” Say again? Is English their native tongue? It’s this kind of crap that makes one want to put a gun to one’s temple.

Washington’s mayor says, while it will now be legal for DC residents to have a handgun in their home “for self-defense,” it’s still illegal to carry that gun outside the home. Makes you wonder how the damn thing gets into your home. I mean, even if you buy it on the web (is that even legal? as if I know), someone has to deliver it, right? What about when you want to go out and shoot a few paper people for practice? There’s bound to be a bit of distance between your doorstep and the friendly neighborhood firing range.

Okay, enough kvetching. My solution (probably not original): let anyone have bear a handgun, but make it illegal to keep ammunition. Second Amendment protections do not extend to ammunition, now, do they? All ammo will be stored in licensed facilities, where you can shoot your gun to your heart’s content. When you leave, you will be checked—and I mean airport-security, see-through-the-clothes checked—for shells. Don’t try to leave with even one cartridge. It’s sort of like the inkjet printer scam. The printers themselves are dirt cheap—it’s the consumables that’ll kill ya. In the case of bullets, of course, this is literally true.

The Framers certainly left open the possibility that their fancy new system wouldn’t work and might even need to be overturned in accordance with something other than Marquess of Queensberry rules. In the scenario limned above, if The People decide they want to rebel, they need to make sure the ammo dump guys are on their side. Chances are good, since these working stiffs are likely to be more akin to The People than to bluebloods and plutocrats like [fill in your favorite bluebloods and plutocrats—mine may not be yours, but added together ... did someone say “class warfare”?]. The simple and very strictly constructed formula is:

r = d(a/g),

where r is revolution, d is widespread discontent due to longstanding grievances, a is ammunition, and g is guns. If a or d equal zero, r = 0, no matter how large g is.**

The New York Times noted that Tony the Mouth Justice Scalia, in his dissent in the recent Guantánamo habeas corpus case, warned portentously that the decision “will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed”; yet he seems not to notice or care that Americans will die with much greater certainty because of his gun ruling. And, if I were a betting man with no scruples about wagering on a person’s life and death, I would lay heavy odds on most of them being innocent folks—bystanders at a stickup, kids in a gun-infested home, philandering spouses, bilking business partners, and so on. Clearly, by “innocent” I mean “no physical threat to you or me or anyone,” not “pure as the driven snow.” That is to say, people like you and me, who don’t deserve one-man justice delivered from the barrel of a gun, or the boilerplate newspaper comment about being “in the wrong place at the wrong time.” Just so some people—the ones who lack any feel for the statistics that actually govern our lives—can feel secure against the boogeyman who never comes. They can sleep soundly, dreaming of how they will be able to point their Smith & Wesson Model 910S (American Pride Series™) at a burglar with one hand while calling the police with the other. Just like on TV.
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*Okay, “Tony the Mouth” is a cheap shot. That son-of-a-gun brings out the absolute worst in me. Apologies to all my Italian friends and family. And remember: my favorite food is spaghetti. [back]
**I don’t have a lawyer, but if I did, she would insist I point out that I am advocating neither (1) nastiness toward my social and economic betters nor (2) armed insurrection. (Not yet, anyway.***)
***Kidding.****
****Maybe. [back]