Guns In America: Some Observations
Thank you for coming here to read some of my thoughts on this very contentious topic. Here's the spolier: You will read no political party-related finger-pointing, whether such parties be current or past. You'll read no quotes from famous people (unless you count a few quotes from the Constitution and NYS law). You'll see no cult-like devotion to a political philosophy or personage. Looking for a pat answer at the end? Sorry, you won't find one here. But I hope that in any case, you find the following at least interesting. Here goes:
There's a lot of debate/sloganeering currently in the wake of the horrific mass-murder of children and teachers in Newtown, CT, as well as the murders of the firemen in Webster, NY, around "gun control". (And just since those events, we've seen a college campus shot up in Texas and a 15-year-old in New Mexico kill his entire family with an assault rifle.) So, this debate and the attendant legislative moves by political leaders at the federal and state levels should come as no surprise, and neither should the resistance to them by people concerned about a slippery-slope style of elimination of the right-in-fact to own guns. (To make it a little easier to read and break up this writing, I give headings to different sections of it.)
The Second Amendment and Today's World
The Founding Fathers seemed to conceive of government as a necessary evil, existing primarily to coordinate the defense of the US's people against foreign powers, and the prosecution of patently criminal behavior by suspects whose crimes spanned state borders. (Many forget that our first "document of incorporation" was not the Constitution but instead the Articles of Confederation. This agreement soon proved to be not effective enough for the new states to operate well in concert together, but its relative weakness shows the degree to which the Founders wished to avoid a central government with too much authority.) Other than that, government at the federal level was to remain minimal in the quantity of authority it exerted. The role of the federal government has of course expanded since then because of America's subsequent history, but this seems to have been the original intent of the Founders.
Today, we're faced with some serious questions that arise from some parts of our Constitution. That is not because our Founding Fathers were wrong in what they wrote, given their time. On the contrary, they were among the most educated and capable men in the country. But they were not oracles. They did not have the benefit of being able to estimate conditions 100+ years into the future, nor even a mere 20 years from when they first completed the Constitution. They put a degree of faith and confidence in the discretion and wisdom of their political descendants, which is why they made the Constitution amendable. But as for the first ten amendments known as the Bill of Rights, Americans have been very reluctant to do anything to modify these in any way, treating them almost as sacrosanct. Given the reverence accorded their authors, this is understandable. But as worthy of our great esteem and respect as the Founders are, they were not gods; they had their flaws, personal, moral, and otherwise, and as I wrote above, they designed the Constitution to be amendable so people could keep it current with the times, since they knew they could not possibly anticipate the future with reliable accuracy.
Allow me to start with the source material, the Second Amendment:
"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 US Supreme Court ruled in the District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) case, that one had the right to bear arms even if he didn't serve in a militia. I think it's noteworthy that the District of Colombia is not a state; it is, according to Article I, sect. 8 of the Constitution, under the exclusive legislative jurisdiction of the Congress. But even so, the Court's decision extends to the entire country, not just the District.
For people living in any of the 50 states, it's more important to look at state law, since as you will notice, Amendment 2 does not define either "arms" or "militia". It is this fact that has led to a lot of controversy. Without a federal-level definition of "arms" or "militia," it is up to each state to decide what these words mean, since the Ninth Amendment of the Constitution specifically states that rights or matters not enumerated/addressed therein are reserved to the States or people collectively to exercise/decide.
In New York, state law defines "militia" to include the NY National Guard, but also defines the "unorganized militia" to include all able-bodied males between 17 and 45 (see here). It also defines the commander-in-chief of the militia to be the governor of NY (see here). That same clause gives the governor the power to order members of the "unorganized militia" to muster and submit to registration. So for those of you living in NY who are men between 17 and 45 years of age, you probably had no idea that you were a militiaman of New York and that Andrew Cuomo was your commander-in-chief, now did you? Surprise! This is the same kind of thing found in nearly, if not every, other state. As for men outside the 17-45 age range and for women, other laws exist that give them the right to own a firearm, with some restrictions, these also applying to 17-45 year-old men. The net result of these laws plus the recent Supreme Court decision is that the primary regulator of what kinds of weapons are legal, what makes them legally-owned, and who can possess them, are state laws having little to do with the word "militia" or membership in a militia, organized or not. But since the Constitution does not empower Congress specifically to create or define militias (but it does so regarding armies and navies), nor define "arms", as I said, it is left to the states to decide what these words mean within their own borders.
Militias Then and Now
The Founding Fathers felt most of the responsibility for defense of US lands should fall to the states in the form of militias. After their colonial experience of having UK troops quartered involuntarily among the colonists, they were leery of the concept of keeping a standing federal army and delegated routine military matters to the states. The provisions for raising an army were in the Constitution, but there was no requirement to do it. In addition, as originally written, the Constitution had the federal government at the mercy of the states for its funding. As a consequence, federal US armed forces were small and usually bolstered only as-needed. There were a few other times prior to WWI where the US Army and Navy were employed in national defense (the War of 1812 and the Civil War, as examples), but not until WWI did the US become aware that it could not get away with maintaining small military forces and raise more troops only as-needed without compromising readiness to be involved in significantly large military actions involving foreign enemies-- something which, it was apparent, we were increasingly likely to see.
Since then, the general trend has been the enlargement of our standing military forces, expanding them by conscription or energetic recruitment campaigns as deemed palatable or expedient by the government. At the moment, the US armed forces' membership exceeds 1.4 million, with about the same number of reservists. So it would seem that in fact, the "citizen-soldier" concept in the form of a traditional militia member has eroded to the point of it being irrelevant to current notions of a US citizen's (specifically, younger male citizens') obligations to his state of residence.
But regarding militias, there is another thing to note, too, and this is critical to understanding why they fell into irrelevancy by the 20th century in terms of practical state- or nation-wide defense readiness: after the US Revolution, the average man had little interest in militia duty. Despite it being a legal obligation in most if not all states, regular muster calls were generally poorly-attended; it took valuable time away from farm and family. In addition, men of modest means who didn't need to hunt and lived in states without imminent security threats didn't see a cost justification for a musket. Firearms didn't come cheap, nor did gunpowder and ammunition, and each man was required to supply his own weapon and ammunition. Using an inexpensive musket was risky, too; such were more likely to be poorly-manufactured, increasing substantially the likelihood that an explosion in the firing chamber would cause a piece of the firing apparatus to break off and strike the shooter in the eye or face, blinding, injuring, or even killing him. So it was safer not to have a musket at all than to have a cheap one. (This led to some laughable scenes at militia musters, such as men engaging in drill exercises using things like broomsticks or tree branches.) Eventually, counties and towns abandoned even trying to muster local men at all for militia duty.
And So...?
All the foregoing then leads back to the Constitutional issue: How does the Second Amendment apply here? Answer: It stopped applying *as such* in any practical sense a long time ago, with only the legal form of "militia" existing on paper, defined in various state laws.
"Feeling Lucky, Punk?"
Those who make the case that people should have the right to bear arms to defend themselves against the government should compare their own arsenal against the vast one possessed today by the US government and make an honest assessment: does a Glock stand up well to an M230 chain gun mounted on an Apache attack helicopter? Or will a few people with AR-15 assault rifles fare well against a company of Marines with high-explosive tipped RPGs?
As the foregoing suggests, "arms" have evolved significantly since 1787 both in deadliness and variety. A federal army back then would have been armed much the same way as farmers with muskets, except the army would have cannons-- though these were not nearly as accurate as they are now, which limited their usefulness unless there were enough of them given the size of the enemy force. Today, things are a lot different. Even if every 17-45 year-old able-bodied man in NY owned an assault rifle and turned out for drill exercises every week-end, could all roughly 2.2 million of them stand up to even part of the US Army with its sophisticated weaponry, substantial training and experience, and intelligence-gathering abilities, should they all unite to rebel against the US government? Even if they wanted to and could organize such an effort without being stopped way ahead of time, I doubt it'd be successful.
If you think the fact that you can use a "smart phone" or send email makes you a sophisticated user of technology, think again. The US government can and does track and analyze humongous amounts of communication data daily using computer technology that makes your "smart phone" look like one of those pet rocks from a 1970s gift shop. (There's no signs of a slowdown on this; in fact, it's only accelerating. Read this article on wired.com: The NSA Is Building the Country’s Biggest Spy Center.) Even if the US government sought to reduce utterly the condition of the people to serfdom and you tried to stop them, let me suggest they'd probably find out about your plans to coordinate a rebellion much sooner than they could in the past. Your uprising would never get off the ground, much less the planning stage.
If Militias are Bygone and Successful Resistance/Revolution Impractical, Why Bear Arms?
The reader at this point may be surprised that I support the right to keep and bear arms. I believe that especially for some people in particular, they are good to own as a defense against common criminals, most especially would-be assailants. One reason is that the US already has a little more than one firearm for every person in its population (and this is just non-police/non-military possessors only). This comes to about 310 million firearms, as of 2009: 114 million handguns, 110 million rifles, and 86 million shotguns (see here). As for weapons considered most dangerous these days, such as assault rifles, there are an estimated 2.4 million AR-15s alone in the US (see here); there are other less-popular models out there also.
Different states have different rules around the report of sales of firearms and to whom. It's been common for people to buy these and other weapons such as shotguns without needing to register them or report the purchase to their state or federal governments. The primary concern has been around handguns when clearly there should have been as much concern about other weapons. Getting all these types of rifles either registered/tracked or collected will be very problematic, even if most owners are willingly cooperative. I predict that more than a few won't be. And just as with the Newtown massacre and Webster murders, there will always be criminally insane people who, if they get ahold of weapons, will use them to commit such atrocities, whether the weapons are as deadly as the AR-15 semi-automatic assault rifle or not.
To defend oneself against common criminals or mass-murdering sociopaths in a country that has over 310 million firearms in it, a respectable number of which are not well-secured or accurately tracked, one cannot be blamed for wanting to own a firearm for self-defense, nor should the government categorically deny people the opportunity to do so, provided such people do not likely represent a danger to others or self.
Here's the Rub: Three Rubs, to be Exact
While I feel it's both impractical and unfair to deny people the right to own responsibly a firearm, we still have three big problems:
Next, the word "arms" needs to be defined so as to make clear to what extent all US citizens can expect access to legalized weapons. If it's preferable to the people that each state create its own definition, that ought to be spelled out. But in any case, more specificity is called for in this matter, as the number of types and deadliness of "arms" have grown a great deal since 1787. (It's my belief that the Founding Fathers were not quite specific enough in many places, possibly because they lived in "simpler times" or as in the case of certain rights, the Bill of Rights was the first place they had ever been formally declared, so perhaps they didn't know what issues would come up around them. Now, after over 200 years of judicial decisions and experience, I think not just a pass at the Second Amendment is overdue, but a few others as well. That's a different essay, though.)
Compared to the other two issues we have, (1) is easy, if only because it could, in theory anyway, be resolved in a matter of a couple years. But that's not saying much, unfortunately. The most recent amendment to the US Constitution occurred in 1992. It required that changes to Congressional members' compensation cannot take effect until the next session of Congress. This was originally proposed in 1789 and so it took 203 years to get approved. In the mean time, you know what was happening. (Your tax dollars at work!) So while other amendments did in fact get ratified a lot faster than this latest, it does give you an idea of how long it can be before things get done at a Constitutional level. And, trying to change the wording of one of the original ten amendments, even if it makes a lot of sense to do so, is for many Americans like changing the words in a 300-year-old religious hymn. It might make sense; it might be relevant; it might be practical; it might even be necessary for compelling reasons-- but it's gonna be an uphill battle no matter what, since for many people, it's no longer about what the words say but more about how long they've been around and who wrote them. (The first ten amendments have been likened by some to the Ten Commandments; a secularized, political version perhaps, but still just as important in their own way. Try tackling that.)
That's the easiest part of the three things I mentioned. (Oy!) What about item (2)? Just how do we find all these millions of firearms? The barn door was let open a long time ago and the horse is good and gone, in the form of millions of firearms scattered all over America. And even if we could locate them all and decide which were legally-owned, how long will it take and what will it take to collect them, assuming that's even what is ultimately deemed desirable? How many owners of such weapons will resist giving them up, possibly using them for that end? Search me on that one. Tighter firearms and accessory (high-capacity clips, etc.) regulations may reduce the number of new weapons legally bought/sold in a given state, but it does nothing about weapons like the AR-15 or high-volume round-feeding accessories currently among the population, nor can they stop illegal firearms from being trafficked. Like illicit drugs, the price simply goes up. I'd also like to point out that Mexico has some of the most restrictive gun laws in the world, but gun violence largely due to drug production and trafficking is out of control. (Laws are fine-- insofar as they are actually enforceable. This isn't to say we can't or shouldn't try to use legislation to affect the number of firearms in the country or their accessibilty to murderously-insane people. It does say that like any law or class of laws, they can only do so much to deter or prevent crimes. Prostitution, for example, is illegal; how well is that working to stop it?)
Now for (3): Ever see the TV show Person of Interest? Even if law enforcement had such a machine, could they stay on top of the many leads it would generate? And it's a fantasy to say in any case the government has a machine like that. I mentioned above that the government indeed has the means, and uses it, too, to parse and analyze a large amount of communicated information daily. So technology can help the authorities catch multi-actor conspiracies much better than in the past. However, insane people frequently act alone. They may not do or say anything that could reasonably tip off either the authorities or mental health professionals.
Of course, with greater vigilance and an increase in legal requirements for mental health care providers to report on potentially-dangerous clients, fewer violently-unstable people could get the chance to commit Newtown-like atrocities. However this assumes two things: the person has to be in treatment or under observation already, and/or he cannot be refraining from expressing his dangerous intentions. Knowing he may be reported if he does so, he is then less likely to say anything to raise suspicion. And besides, let's say someone does say something that could raise concern: what do you do with them? Should expressing a desire to do a criminal act without imminently doing anything to fulfill that desire be grounds for arrest, commitment to a facility for some length of time for observation, etc.? Who knows that an expressed thought is a serious threat or just an expression of transient hostility toward the world? Something like "Sometimes I feel like I could just kill everyone!" said in a psychiatrist's office shouldn't generally be grounds for mandatory arrest; as any psychiatrist could tell you, he or she probably hears that twice a day. Do we lock all those patients up?
More, Deadlier, Cheaper
But I suppose one way this issue can be viewed is as a combination of lethality and distribution. As each one of these two factors increase, the world gets to be more dangerous, generally. One can easily visualize the increase in both these factors over time.
For millenia, weapons technology limited substantially the deaths/injuries a single person could inflict on others. A sword for example could do only so much even in the hands of an expert before a deranged swordsman would be stopped, and the number of swords (or spears, too) found in any given population was usually limited. As for a lunatic with a firearm, for the first four centuries of its use, he could fire only one shot every 6-10 seconds at best since he needed to re-load it via muzzle after every shot. Eventually a breach-loaded rifle (the Henry rifle) was designed during the US Civil War that held 28 rounds in its stock and was put to use in a limited way by Union forces, allowing the shooter to fire multiple rounds in relatively quick succession. Still, the shooter needed to re-load the rifle and that would cause enough delay to make him vulnerable. Additionally, their distribution was tightly-controlled and a limited number of them were produced. And as for revolvers, they could hold only six rounds before needing to be re-loaded.
Automatic weapons were first used in earnest in the US Civil War (the Gatling gun), but this was an expensive and problem-prone weapon, and it saw very limited use. By WWI, a limited number of semi-automatic rifles and fully automatic machine guns were deployed, with two-operator machine guns making their effects widely-known (and feared). Toward the end of the war, a cheaply-producible, highly-portable, single-operator and fully-automatic machine gun (the Thompson submachine gun) was developed; it was hoped it would break the trench-war stalemate but the war ended before any were issued to Allied troops. The "Tommy gun" did however get extensive use a short time later, not by soldiers but instead by American gangsters as they fought police and each other during Prohibition. Again, such items were expensive and hard for a typical civilian to acquire, but the appearance of the Tommy gun in gangland violence in the 1920s marked a significant emergence of extraordinarily deadly firearms use by criminals in civil settings. Still, the number of even such deadly automatic weapons available in the country to anyone was relatively limited.
Consider this: Humans used spears and swords/knives for possibly 180,000 or more years (definitely so for spears), and sequed in only 400 years (from around the year 1600) to muskets, rifles, automatic machine guns, conventional explosives, missiles of all kinds, and of course, nuclear bombs. I don't believe anyone alive in 1900 could have imagined that between then and 2000, "doomsday weapons" would be both invented and also utilized in a war, and their presence appear on military bases all over the globe. But putting aside even this extreme example of weapons development, the mass-production and easy distribution of highly-efficient semi- and fully-automatic guns is enough to create anxiety in any population that has reasonable safety concerns.
Not until very recently in the history of weaponry (nevermind just firearms) is it true that so many ordinary people, military or not, have had access to ownership of such deadly kinds of weapons that are also so relatively inexpensive. In an incomprehensibly short amount of time (roughly 40 years), the US population has managed to acquire millions of powerful semi-automatic rifles and handguns. This kind of profuse and voluntary self-arming of as large a population as ours over such a short period of time without a clear threat from an external or internal foe is literally unparalleled in human history.
We've never seen an era wherein a single person with even minimal training (or none at all except what he's read somewhere) can, for the price of around $3,000 for the weapon and a large quantity of ammunition, have as much or more firepower than two squads of US Marines had during WWII (depending on how they were armed, of course). And with this, he can commit over 100 murders in less than two minutes, with only his circumstances and the reactions of his victims to slow him down. Unprecedented. And as insane a condition as this is, we are in it.
So if we were going to assign a lethality + distribution score to weaponry among humans, several thousand years ago, we might say it was a 10. Fast-forward to 1700 A.D., it jumps to 100. Now on to 1900 A.D. It's at 1000. Now, to 1950 A.D. Do we include nuclear bombs? Just for the sake of simplicity and acknowledging that, at least at this point, such weapons are very hard to procure/build and great efforts are expended to keep them from potentially irresponsible/insane owners, we exclude them. Still, the score is now up to 5000. Now, we're up to the year 2000 A.D. Still excluding nuclear bombs, and even let's exclude high-yield conventional weapons and specialized military combat hardware (again, hard to acquire, very expensive, closely-guarded), we have millions of automatic and semi-automatic weapons not just in America but in many places in the world, too, and billions of rounds of ammunition at any given time in existence. What's the score now? 20,000? 30,000? Now, it's 2013 A.D. The score is now maybe 30,200? Your guess is as good as mine. But you see my point. If for the sake of argument you accept my "scores", the world has gone from 10 to 30,200 in terms of distribution + lethality of weapons in what... 3,000 years? 2,000 years? Take your pick. The result's the same. And, we're not even counting nukes, missiles, weaponized drones, aircraft carriers, battleships, ... the list goes on.
Effectiveness of New Laws: How Do You Know What's Working?
Do I think the recent changes in NY law around how many rounds a chamber-feeding accessory can hold will make much difference? Or the new law requiring registration on a list for assault weapons ownership? Or indeed, any of the other new laws? Well, maybe these laws will have some positive effect in terms of actually reducing the effects of one or more mass-victim shootings, or may even prevent the same. But at this point, we don't know. And if we do see a positive return on these laws in terms of reduced homicides or mass-shootings, it may not be for some time. We have another issue here too: How do we know the new laws have actually prevented a mass-shooting? Or reduced the number of deaths that occur during one? As any scientist can tell you, proving a negative theory is a lot harder than proving a positive one. But this isn't science, it's politics; perhaps the best source of evaluation we can have here is grim statistics. You deal with things as best you can, I suppose.
The Pharmaceutical Factor
I also want to mention that many of the recent high-profile mass-murderers have been adolescents or post-adolescents who were under psychiatric care that included use of certain medications with an acknowledged ability to cause, in a very few patients in that age group, to become violent or irrational. This is an avenue that deserves exploration. But it should also be noted that of the many patients in the 12-21 YO age range taking these psychotropic meds, the vast majority do not react negatively by finding assault rifles and going on mass-murder sprees. Still, if there's a heightened risk of extreme violence associated with certain populations taking psychotropic medications of some kind, it needs to be explored. (One article addressing this link is here.)
Scorpions vs. Vermin
A pertinent and good point that some have made: When it comes to murders in the US, assault rifles or rifles of any kind are unlikely to be used. The #1 weapon used in murders in 2011 was the handgun, used 49% of the time. Overall, firearms were used 68% of the time, with rifles of any kind used only 3% of the time. After firearms, knives were the second most-used deadly weapon, at 13%. Finally, in that year alone, America saw 12,664 murders (official FBI count), or 34.69/day. (See here.) From a grimly-cold standpoint, you can see that death by knife is much more likely than death by rifle. So what makes people so focused on firearms, assault rifles in particular? I think it has to do largely with the ease of use and speed with which just one of them can kill so many people in such a coldly-efficient way. They also have a much greater lethality range than do knives; with knives, you need to get into hand-to-hand fighting distance of your victim. And as with swords, an attacker is usually easier to stop by bystanders than if he is using a firearm. Handguns are clearly much more the culprit in murders where weapon type is concerned, but as firearms go, their effective range is much less than that of rifles, unless they're in the hands of a true expert. Rifles allow even relatively under-trained people to fire effectively at victims from a "comfortable" range due to the increased accuracy of the shot that the longer barrel and higher-quality site alignment provides. So while we know that more people die (a lot more) each year by means other than rifles, rifles (especially assault rifles) just plain scare the hell out of us a lot more. They're like scorpions while handguns are like vermin. Both are considered scary because scorpions are poisonous while vermin could carry bad diseases via the mites in their fur. But if you ask most people which are scarier, they'll say scorpions. Meanwhile, mite-carrying vermin have brought far more deaths to humanity than have scorpion bites. And finally, let's never forget Timothy McVeigh's many innocent victims, children and adults. He didn't use a handgun or a rifle but something much worse. He took many more lives via his huge explosive truck than he could have using an AR-15. And are rental trucks and fertilizer illegal to possess?
The Sick Society Factor
Arguably, America's problems rest in no small way with the degree of real and make-believe violence we allow ourselves and our kids to revel in, and perhaps also the side-effects of our increasingly disconnected society. As institutions once trusted and emotional support systems once stronger continue to decay, individuals' investments in one another decline markedly. For most people, this leads to any number of things: for some less needful of these things, a greater sense of freedom, but for others a greater sense of disinvestment in the world around them and perhaps emotional and psychological problems develop that, under the right conditions, can cause them to do unthinkable things. This in no way excuses their crimes. But when most of the mass-murderers that act out usually end by committing suicide either by self or by officer, then how exactly are we to hold them to account after the fact? You can't put a dead person on trial.
Clearly, America has a marked problem with a higher violence rate than other First World countries. So we have to ask ourselves: Even if Americans had no guns at all, what would the murderously-insane among us use instead to attempt mass-murders? Poison? Home-made bombs, like the one McVeigh used? No matter, they'd find other means. Perhaps there'd be fewer "successes" for them, but they'd try anyway. Aside from its gun issues, Americans have other stuff they need to look at-- some of it not too pretty, as it will surely reflect badly on our collective character. But one can't find a cure unless he identifies the disease first. Hard part is, who'll make such a national self-examining inquiry happen? Religious leaders, who command less and less respect as each year passes? The politicians in Washington, D.C., who have the same problem? Our nation's psychiatrists/therapists? Again, same problem. The people at large? Really, what would that look like? Hard to answer this question.
Recommendations? Search Me!
By this time, you must be wondering if there is a conclusion or if I have recommendations associated with all the foregoing observations. But alas, I don't see a clear path out of our current state that does not require taking actions that will be intolerable to the American people. Such actions would entail mass-searches of homes for weapons, just for openers. Here in America, we won't go for that, and for good reason. Stuff like that brought us to revolution over 200 years ago in the first place. No politician in America would dare even suggest it, even if he or she knew an end-run around the Constitution would be successful. My guess is that if mass-shootings are to become a thing of the past, they will do so only gradually, as the distributional-suppressive effects of new "gun control" laws have some effect (*possibly* -- this remains to be seen) and new medical technologies are develped that can help medical professionals and other people in public service or public service-like roles identify individuals who are at high risk for acting out in such extraordinarily violent fashions. (Whether this kind of technology is in development or being researched now, I can't say. But it'd be a real good resource to have!)
This uncharted territory we are in, like America's move to rebel against and eventually overthrow British rule, is very divisive among Americans, and the outcome is as unpredictable. I wish I had a solid conclusion for the reader, something to make you feel like this issue has a reliable, satisfying outcome. But I can no more say that truthfully than could the Founding Fathers be sure the colonies would successfully break away from British rule. (A lot of them weren't, and we almost didn't succeed at winning the war.)
One thing I think everyone can agree upon is this: No more Newtowns, period, while at the same time, seeing that the right of law-biding, sane people to carry firearms for defense against crime or tyranny is upheld in a practical way. That's the order of the day, and it's a tall one that we've never even had to try to fill like this before. But somehow, we have to, since the alternative has become unbearable.
There's a lot of debate/sloganeering currently in the wake of the horrific mass-murder of children and teachers in Newtown, CT, as well as the murders of the firemen in Webster, NY, around "gun control". (And just since those events, we've seen a college campus shot up in Texas and a 15-year-old in New Mexico kill his entire family with an assault rifle.) So, this debate and the attendant legislative moves by political leaders at the federal and state levels should come as no surprise, and neither should the resistance to them by people concerned about a slippery-slope style of elimination of the right-in-fact to own guns. (To make it a little easier to read and break up this writing, I give headings to different sections of it.)
The Second Amendment and Today's World
The Founding Fathers seemed to conceive of government as a necessary evil, existing primarily to coordinate the defense of the US's people against foreign powers, and the prosecution of patently criminal behavior by suspects whose crimes spanned state borders. (Many forget that our first "document of incorporation" was not the Constitution but instead the Articles of Confederation. This agreement soon proved to be not effective enough for the new states to operate well in concert together, but its relative weakness shows the degree to which the Founders wished to avoid a central government with too much authority.) Other than that, government at the federal level was to remain minimal in the quantity of authority it exerted. The role of the federal government has of course expanded since then because of America's subsequent history, but this seems to have been the original intent of the Founders.
Today, we're faced with some serious questions that arise from some parts of our Constitution. That is not because our Founding Fathers were wrong in what they wrote, given their time. On the contrary, they were among the most educated and capable men in the country. But they were not oracles. They did not have the benefit of being able to estimate conditions 100+ years into the future, nor even a mere 20 years from when they first completed the Constitution. They put a degree of faith and confidence in the discretion and wisdom of their political descendants, which is why they made the Constitution amendable. But as for the first ten amendments known as the Bill of Rights, Americans have been very reluctant to do anything to modify these in any way, treating them almost as sacrosanct. Given the reverence accorded their authors, this is understandable. But as worthy of our great esteem and respect as the Founders are, they were not gods; they had their flaws, personal, moral, and otherwise, and as I wrote above, they designed the Constitution to be amendable so people could keep it current with the times, since they knew they could not possibly anticipate the future with reliable accuracy.
Allow me to start with the source material, the Second Amendment:
"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 US Supreme Court ruled in the District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) case, that one had the right to bear arms even if he didn't serve in a militia. I think it's noteworthy that the District of Colombia is not a state; it is, according to Article I, sect. 8 of the Constitution, under the exclusive legislative jurisdiction of the Congress. But even so, the Court's decision extends to the entire country, not just the District.
For people living in any of the 50 states, it's more important to look at state law, since as you will notice, Amendment 2 does not define either "arms" or "militia". It is this fact that has led to a lot of controversy. Without a federal-level definition of "arms" or "militia," it is up to each state to decide what these words mean, since the Ninth Amendment of the Constitution specifically states that rights or matters not enumerated/addressed therein are reserved to the States or people collectively to exercise/decide.
In New York, state law defines "militia" to include the NY National Guard, but also defines the "unorganized militia" to include all able-bodied males between 17 and 45 (see here). It also defines the commander-in-chief of the militia to be the governor of NY (see here). That same clause gives the governor the power to order members of the "unorganized militia" to muster and submit to registration. So for those of you living in NY who are men between 17 and 45 years of age, you probably had no idea that you were a militiaman of New York and that Andrew Cuomo was your commander-in-chief, now did you? Surprise! This is the same kind of thing found in nearly, if not every, other state. As for men outside the 17-45 age range and for women, other laws exist that give them the right to own a firearm, with some restrictions, these also applying to 17-45 year-old men. The net result of these laws plus the recent Supreme Court decision is that the primary regulator of what kinds of weapons are legal, what makes them legally-owned, and who can possess them, are state laws having little to do with the word "militia" or membership in a militia, organized or not. But since the Constitution does not empower Congress specifically to create or define militias (but it does so regarding armies and navies), nor define "arms", as I said, it is left to the states to decide what these words mean within their own borders.
Militias Then and Now
The Founding Fathers felt most of the responsibility for defense of US lands should fall to the states in the form of militias. After their colonial experience of having UK troops quartered involuntarily among the colonists, they were leery of the concept of keeping a standing federal army and delegated routine military matters to the states. The provisions for raising an army were in the Constitution, but there was no requirement to do it. In addition, as originally written, the Constitution had the federal government at the mercy of the states for its funding. As a consequence, federal US armed forces were small and usually bolstered only as-needed. There were a few other times prior to WWI where the US Army and Navy were employed in national defense (the War of 1812 and the Civil War, as examples), but not until WWI did the US become aware that it could not get away with maintaining small military forces and raise more troops only as-needed without compromising readiness to be involved in significantly large military actions involving foreign enemies-- something which, it was apparent, we were increasingly likely to see.
Since then, the general trend has been the enlargement of our standing military forces, expanding them by conscription or energetic recruitment campaigns as deemed palatable or expedient by the government. At the moment, the US armed forces' membership exceeds 1.4 million, with about the same number of reservists. So it would seem that in fact, the "citizen-soldier" concept in the form of a traditional militia member has eroded to the point of it being irrelevant to current notions of a US citizen's (specifically, younger male citizens') obligations to his state of residence.
But regarding militias, there is another thing to note, too, and this is critical to understanding why they fell into irrelevancy by the 20th century in terms of practical state- or nation-wide defense readiness: after the US Revolution, the average man had little interest in militia duty. Despite it being a legal obligation in most if not all states, regular muster calls were generally poorly-attended; it took valuable time away from farm and family. In addition, men of modest means who didn't need to hunt and lived in states without imminent security threats didn't see a cost justification for a musket. Firearms didn't come cheap, nor did gunpowder and ammunition, and each man was required to supply his own weapon and ammunition. Using an inexpensive musket was risky, too; such were more likely to be poorly-manufactured, increasing substantially the likelihood that an explosion in the firing chamber would cause a piece of the firing apparatus to break off and strike the shooter in the eye or face, blinding, injuring, or even killing him. So it was safer not to have a musket at all than to have a cheap one. (This led to some laughable scenes at militia musters, such as men engaging in drill exercises using things like broomsticks or tree branches.) Eventually, counties and towns abandoned even trying to muster local men at all for militia duty.
And So...?
All the foregoing then leads back to the Constitutional issue: How does the Second Amendment apply here? Answer: It stopped applying *as such* in any practical sense a long time ago, with only the legal form of "militia" existing on paper, defined in various state laws.
"Feeling Lucky, Punk?"
Those who make the case that people should have the right to bear arms to defend themselves against the government should compare their own arsenal against the vast one possessed today by the US government and make an honest assessment: does a Glock stand up well to an M230 chain gun mounted on an Apache attack helicopter? Or will a few people with AR-15 assault rifles fare well against a company of Marines with high-explosive tipped RPGs?
As the foregoing suggests, "arms" have evolved significantly since 1787 both in deadliness and variety. A federal army back then would have been armed much the same way as farmers with muskets, except the army would have cannons-- though these were not nearly as accurate as they are now, which limited their usefulness unless there were enough of them given the size of the enemy force. Today, things are a lot different. Even if every 17-45 year-old able-bodied man in NY owned an assault rifle and turned out for drill exercises every week-end, could all roughly 2.2 million of them stand up to even part of the US Army with its sophisticated weaponry, substantial training and experience, and intelligence-gathering abilities, should they all unite to rebel against the US government? Even if they wanted to and could organize such an effort without being stopped way ahead of time, I doubt it'd be successful.
If you think the fact that you can use a "smart phone" or send email makes you a sophisticated user of technology, think again. The US government can and does track and analyze humongous amounts of communication data daily using computer technology that makes your "smart phone" look like one of those pet rocks from a 1970s gift shop. (There's no signs of a slowdown on this; in fact, it's only accelerating. Read this article on wired.com: The NSA Is Building the Country’s Biggest Spy Center.) Even if the US government sought to reduce utterly the condition of the people to serfdom and you tried to stop them, let me suggest they'd probably find out about your plans to coordinate a rebellion much sooner than they could in the past. Your uprising would never get off the ground, much less the planning stage.
If Militias are Bygone and Successful Resistance/Revolution Impractical, Why Bear Arms?
The reader at this point may be surprised that I support the right to keep and bear arms. I believe that especially for some people in particular, they are good to own as a defense against common criminals, most especially would-be assailants. One reason is that the US already has a little more than one firearm for every person in its population (and this is just non-police/non-military possessors only). This comes to about 310 million firearms, as of 2009: 114 million handguns, 110 million rifles, and 86 million shotguns (see here). As for weapons considered most dangerous these days, such as assault rifles, there are an estimated 2.4 million AR-15s alone in the US (see here); there are other less-popular models out there also.
Different states have different rules around the report of sales of firearms and to whom. It's been common for people to buy these and other weapons such as shotguns without needing to register them or report the purchase to their state or federal governments. The primary concern has been around handguns when clearly there should have been as much concern about other weapons. Getting all these types of rifles either registered/tracked or collected will be very problematic, even if most owners are willingly cooperative. I predict that more than a few won't be. And just as with the Newtown massacre and Webster murders, there will always be criminally insane people who, if they get ahold of weapons, will use them to commit such atrocities, whether the weapons are as deadly as the AR-15 semi-automatic assault rifle or not.
To defend oneself against common criminals or mass-murdering sociopaths in a country that has over 310 million firearms in it, a respectable number of which are not well-secured or accurately tracked, one cannot be blamed for wanting to own a firearm for self-defense, nor should the government categorically deny people the opportunity to do so, provided such people do not likely represent a danger to others or self.
Here's the Rub: Three Rubs, to be Exact
While I feel it's both impractical and unfair to deny people the right to own responsibly a firearm, we still have three big problems:
- The practical national-defensive basis for the Second Amendment is outdated, but even if it wasn't, it fails to define adequately the critically-relevant terms it uses: "arms" and "militia". Nonetheless, people have a defensible and reasonable justification for wanting to own firearms for self-defense.
- We have 100s of millions of firearms in the US, many of which have not been tracked well and remain unaccounted-for, necessitating further the allowance of citizens' rights to carry firearms for self-defense and
- We have no way at the moment of ensuring either well-tracked or not-well-tracked weapons stay out of the hands of murderously insane people. (Neither the Newtown, CT mass-murderer nor the teenager who recently murdered his entire family in NM were the licensed owners of the assault rifles they used; still, they had access to them.)
Next, the word "arms" needs to be defined so as to make clear to what extent all US citizens can expect access to legalized weapons. If it's preferable to the people that each state create its own definition, that ought to be spelled out. But in any case, more specificity is called for in this matter, as the number of types and deadliness of "arms" have grown a great deal since 1787. (It's my belief that the Founding Fathers were not quite specific enough in many places, possibly because they lived in "simpler times" or as in the case of certain rights, the Bill of Rights was the first place they had ever been formally declared, so perhaps they didn't know what issues would come up around them. Now, after over 200 years of judicial decisions and experience, I think not just a pass at the Second Amendment is overdue, but a few others as well. That's a different essay, though.)
Compared to the other two issues we have, (1) is easy, if only because it could, in theory anyway, be resolved in a matter of a couple years. But that's not saying much, unfortunately. The most recent amendment to the US Constitution occurred in 1992. It required that changes to Congressional members' compensation cannot take effect until the next session of Congress. This was originally proposed in 1789 and so it took 203 years to get approved. In the mean time, you know what was happening. (Your tax dollars at work!) So while other amendments did in fact get ratified a lot faster than this latest, it does give you an idea of how long it can be before things get done at a Constitutional level. And, trying to change the wording of one of the original ten amendments, even if it makes a lot of sense to do so, is for many Americans like changing the words in a 300-year-old religious hymn. It might make sense; it might be relevant; it might be practical; it might even be necessary for compelling reasons-- but it's gonna be an uphill battle no matter what, since for many people, it's no longer about what the words say but more about how long they've been around and who wrote them. (The first ten amendments have been likened by some to the Ten Commandments; a secularized, political version perhaps, but still just as important in their own way. Try tackling that.)
That's the easiest part of the three things I mentioned. (Oy!) What about item (2)? Just how do we find all these millions of firearms? The barn door was let open a long time ago and the horse is good and gone, in the form of millions of firearms scattered all over America. And even if we could locate them all and decide which were legally-owned, how long will it take and what will it take to collect them, assuming that's even what is ultimately deemed desirable? How many owners of such weapons will resist giving them up, possibly using them for that end? Search me on that one. Tighter firearms and accessory (high-capacity clips, etc.) regulations may reduce the number of new weapons legally bought/sold in a given state, but it does nothing about weapons like the AR-15 or high-volume round-feeding accessories currently among the population, nor can they stop illegal firearms from being trafficked. Like illicit drugs, the price simply goes up. I'd also like to point out that Mexico has some of the most restrictive gun laws in the world, but gun violence largely due to drug production and trafficking is out of control. (Laws are fine-- insofar as they are actually enforceable. This isn't to say we can't or shouldn't try to use legislation to affect the number of firearms in the country or their accessibilty to murderously-insane people. It does say that like any law or class of laws, they can only do so much to deter or prevent crimes. Prostitution, for example, is illegal; how well is that working to stop it?)
Now for (3): Ever see the TV show Person of Interest? Even if law enforcement had such a machine, could they stay on top of the many leads it would generate? And it's a fantasy to say in any case the government has a machine like that. I mentioned above that the government indeed has the means, and uses it, too, to parse and analyze a large amount of communicated information daily. So technology can help the authorities catch multi-actor conspiracies much better than in the past. However, insane people frequently act alone. They may not do or say anything that could reasonably tip off either the authorities or mental health professionals.
Of course, with greater vigilance and an increase in legal requirements for mental health care providers to report on potentially-dangerous clients, fewer violently-unstable people could get the chance to commit Newtown-like atrocities. However this assumes two things: the person has to be in treatment or under observation already, and/or he cannot be refraining from expressing his dangerous intentions. Knowing he may be reported if he does so, he is then less likely to say anything to raise suspicion. And besides, let's say someone does say something that could raise concern: what do you do with them? Should expressing a desire to do a criminal act without imminently doing anything to fulfill that desire be grounds for arrest, commitment to a facility for some length of time for observation, etc.? Who knows that an expressed thought is a serious threat or just an expression of transient hostility toward the world? Something like "Sometimes I feel like I could just kill everyone!" said in a psychiatrist's office shouldn't generally be grounds for mandatory arrest; as any psychiatrist could tell you, he or she probably hears that twice a day. Do we lock all those patients up?
More, Deadlier, Cheaper
But I suppose one way this issue can be viewed is as a combination of lethality and distribution. As each one of these two factors increase, the world gets to be more dangerous, generally. One can easily visualize the increase in both these factors over time.
For millenia, weapons technology limited substantially the deaths/injuries a single person could inflict on others. A sword for example could do only so much even in the hands of an expert before a deranged swordsman would be stopped, and the number of swords (or spears, too) found in any given population was usually limited. As for a lunatic with a firearm, for the first four centuries of its use, he could fire only one shot every 6-10 seconds at best since he needed to re-load it via muzzle after every shot. Eventually a breach-loaded rifle (the Henry rifle) was designed during the US Civil War that held 28 rounds in its stock and was put to use in a limited way by Union forces, allowing the shooter to fire multiple rounds in relatively quick succession. Still, the shooter needed to re-load the rifle and that would cause enough delay to make him vulnerable. Additionally, their distribution was tightly-controlled and a limited number of them were produced. And as for revolvers, they could hold only six rounds before needing to be re-loaded.
Automatic weapons were first used in earnest in the US Civil War (the Gatling gun), but this was an expensive and problem-prone weapon, and it saw very limited use. By WWI, a limited number of semi-automatic rifles and fully automatic machine guns were deployed, with two-operator machine guns making their effects widely-known (and feared). Toward the end of the war, a cheaply-producible, highly-portable, single-operator and fully-automatic machine gun (the Thompson submachine gun) was developed; it was hoped it would break the trench-war stalemate but the war ended before any were issued to Allied troops. The "Tommy gun" did however get extensive use a short time later, not by soldiers but instead by American gangsters as they fought police and each other during Prohibition. Again, such items were expensive and hard for a typical civilian to acquire, but the appearance of the Tommy gun in gangland violence in the 1920s marked a significant emergence of extraordinarily deadly firearms use by criminals in civil settings. Still, the number of even such deadly automatic weapons available in the country to anyone was relatively limited.
Consider this: Humans used spears and swords/knives for possibly 180,000 or more years (definitely so for spears), and sequed in only 400 years (from around the year 1600) to muskets, rifles, automatic machine guns, conventional explosives, missiles of all kinds, and of course, nuclear bombs. I don't believe anyone alive in 1900 could have imagined that between then and 2000, "doomsday weapons" would be both invented and also utilized in a war, and their presence appear on military bases all over the globe. But putting aside even this extreme example of weapons development, the mass-production and easy distribution of highly-efficient semi- and fully-automatic guns is enough to create anxiety in any population that has reasonable safety concerns.
Not until very recently in the history of weaponry (nevermind just firearms) is it true that so many ordinary people, military or not, have had access to ownership of such deadly kinds of weapons that are also so relatively inexpensive. In an incomprehensibly short amount of time (roughly 40 years), the US population has managed to acquire millions of powerful semi-automatic rifles and handguns. This kind of profuse and voluntary self-arming of as large a population as ours over such a short period of time without a clear threat from an external or internal foe is literally unparalleled in human history.
We've never seen an era wherein a single person with even minimal training (or none at all except what he's read somewhere) can, for the price of around $3,000 for the weapon and a large quantity of ammunition, have as much or more firepower than two squads of US Marines had during WWII (depending on how they were armed, of course). And with this, he can commit over 100 murders in less than two minutes, with only his circumstances and the reactions of his victims to slow him down. Unprecedented. And as insane a condition as this is, we are in it.
So if we were going to assign a lethality + distribution score to weaponry among humans, several thousand years ago, we might say it was a 10. Fast-forward to 1700 A.D., it jumps to 100. Now on to 1900 A.D. It's at 1000. Now, to 1950 A.D. Do we include nuclear bombs? Just for the sake of simplicity and acknowledging that, at least at this point, such weapons are very hard to procure/build and great efforts are expended to keep them from potentially irresponsible/insane owners, we exclude them. Still, the score is now up to 5000. Now, we're up to the year 2000 A.D. Still excluding nuclear bombs, and even let's exclude high-yield conventional weapons and specialized military combat hardware (again, hard to acquire, very expensive, closely-guarded), we have millions of automatic and semi-automatic weapons not just in America but in many places in the world, too, and billions of rounds of ammunition at any given time in existence. What's the score now? 20,000? 30,000? Now, it's 2013 A.D. The score is now maybe 30,200? Your guess is as good as mine. But you see my point. If for the sake of argument you accept my "scores", the world has gone from 10 to 30,200 in terms of distribution + lethality of weapons in what... 3,000 years? 2,000 years? Take your pick. The result's the same. And, we're not even counting nukes, missiles, weaponized drones, aircraft carriers, battleships, ... the list goes on.
Effectiveness of New Laws: How Do You Know What's Working?
Do I think the recent changes in NY law around how many rounds a chamber-feeding accessory can hold will make much difference? Or the new law requiring registration on a list for assault weapons ownership? Or indeed, any of the other new laws? Well, maybe these laws will have some positive effect in terms of actually reducing the effects of one or more mass-victim shootings, or may even prevent the same. But at this point, we don't know. And if we do see a positive return on these laws in terms of reduced homicides or mass-shootings, it may not be for some time. We have another issue here too: How do we know the new laws have actually prevented a mass-shooting? Or reduced the number of deaths that occur during one? As any scientist can tell you, proving a negative theory is a lot harder than proving a positive one. But this isn't science, it's politics; perhaps the best source of evaluation we can have here is grim statistics. You deal with things as best you can, I suppose.
The Pharmaceutical Factor
I also want to mention that many of the recent high-profile mass-murderers have been adolescents or post-adolescents who were under psychiatric care that included use of certain medications with an acknowledged ability to cause, in a very few patients in that age group, to become violent or irrational. This is an avenue that deserves exploration. But it should also be noted that of the many patients in the 12-21 YO age range taking these psychotropic meds, the vast majority do not react negatively by finding assault rifles and going on mass-murder sprees. Still, if there's a heightened risk of extreme violence associated with certain populations taking psychotropic medications of some kind, it needs to be explored. (One article addressing this link is here.)
Scorpions vs. Vermin
A pertinent and good point that some have made: When it comes to murders in the US, assault rifles or rifles of any kind are unlikely to be used. The #1 weapon used in murders in 2011 was the handgun, used 49% of the time. Overall, firearms were used 68% of the time, with rifles of any kind used only 3% of the time. After firearms, knives were the second most-used deadly weapon, at 13%. Finally, in that year alone, America saw 12,664 murders (official FBI count), or 34.69/day. (See here.) From a grimly-cold standpoint, you can see that death by knife is much more likely than death by rifle. So what makes people so focused on firearms, assault rifles in particular? I think it has to do largely with the ease of use and speed with which just one of them can kill so many people in such a coldly-efficient way. They also have a much greater lethality range than do knives; with knives, you need to get into hand-to-hand fighting distance of your victim. And as with swords, an attacker is usually easier to stop by bystanders than if he is using a firearm. Handguns are clearly much more the culprit in murders where weapon type is concerned, but as firearms go, their effective range is much less than that of rifles, unless they're in the hands of a true expert. Rifles allow even relatively under-trained people to fire effectively at victims from a "comfortable" range due to the increased accuracy of the shot that the longer barrel and higher-quality site alignment provides. So while we know that more people die (a lot more) each year by means other than rifles, rifles (especially assault rifles) just plain scare the hell out of us a lot more. They're like scorpions while handguns are like vermin. Both are considered scary because scorpions are poisonous while vermin could carry bad diseases via the mites in their fur. But if you ask most people which are scarier, they'll say scorpions. Meanwhile, mite-carrying vermin have brought far more deaths to humanity than have scorpion bites. And finally, let's never forget Timothy McVeigh's many innocent victims, children and adults. He didn't use a handgun or a rifle but something much worse. He took many more lives via his huge explosive truck than he could have using an AR-15. And are rental trucks and fertilizer illegal to possess?
The Sick Society Factor
Arguably, America's problems rest in no small way with the degree of real and make-believe violence we allow ourselves and our kids to revel in, and perhaps also the side-effects of our increasingly disconnected society. As institutions once trusted and emotional support systems once stronger continue to decay, individuals' investments in one another decline markedly. For most people, this leads to any number of things: for some less needful of these things, a greater sense of freedom, but for others a greater sense of disinvestment in the world around them and perhaps emotional and psychological problems develop that, under the right conditions, can cause them to do unthinkable things. This in no way excuses their crimes. But when most of the mass-murderers that act out usually end by committing suicide either by self or by officer, then how exactly are we to hold them to account after the fact? You can't put a dead person on trial.
Clearly, America has a marked problem with a higher violence rate than other First World countries. So we have to ask ourselves: Even if Americans had no guns at all, what would the murderously-insane among us use instead to attempt mass-murders? Poison? Home-made bombs, like the one McVeigh used? No matter, they'd find other means. Perhaps there'd be fewer "successes" for them, but they'd try anyway. Aside from its gun issues, Americans have other stuff they need to look at-- some of it not too pretty, as it will surely reflect badly on our collective character. But one can't find a cure unless he identifies the disease first. Hard part is, who'll make such a national self-examining inquiry happen? Religious leaders, who command less and less respect as each year passes? The politicians in Washington, D.C., who have the same problem? Our nation's psychiatrists/therapists? Again, same problem. The people at large? Really, what would that look like? Hard to answer this question.
Recommendations? Search Me!
By this time, you must be wondering if there is a conclusion or if I have recommendations associated with all the foregoing observations. But alas, I don't see a clear path out of our current state that does not require taking actions that will be intolerable to the American people. Such actions would entail mass-searches of homes for weapons, just for openers. Here in America, we won't go for that, and for good reason. Stuff like that brought us to revolution over 200 years ago in the first place. No politician in America would dare even suggest it, even if he or she knew an end-run around the Constitution would be successful. My guess is that if mass-shootings are to become a thing of the past, they will do so only gradually, as the distributional-suppressive effects of new "gun control" laws have some effect (*possibly* -- this remains to be seen) and new medical technologies are develped that can help medical professionals and other people in public service or public service-like roles identify individuals who are at high risk for acting out in such extraordinarily violent fashions. (Whether this kind of technology is in development or being researched now, I can't say. But it'd be a real good resource to have!)
This uncharted territory we are in, like America's move to rebel against and eventually overthrow British rule, is very divisive among Americans, and the outcome is as unpredictable. I wish I had a solid conclusion for the reader, something to make you feel like this issue has a reliable, satisfying outcome. But I can no more say that truthfully than could the Founding Fathers be sure the colonies would successfully break away from British rule. (A lot of them weren't, and we almost didn't succeed at winning the war.)
One thing I think everyone can agree upon is this: No more Newtowns, period, while at the same time, seeing that the right of law-biding, sane people to carry firearms for defense against crime or tyranny is upheld in a practical way. That's the order of the day, and it's a tall one that we've never even had to try to fill like this before. But somehow, we have to, since the alternative has become unbearable.
posted by Matt Campbell at 12:35 PM
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