The Second Amendment is a Litmus Test
It's what the whole "consent of the governed" thing is all about
The gun grabbers and their media allies are once again on a rampage, invoking the “common-sensical” in their Quixotean windmill tilting against the “guns” that kill people - as if there’s an alternative design - vice the deranged lunatics who murder for the sheer sport of it.
Now for the record, on the whole issue of innocent people getting killed - I’m strongly in the against camp. I find these slaughters abominable and a crime against conscience and ones’ sanity. Monstrous crimes. Horrific. Roget’s could print an entire addendum to capture the sense of shock and repulse these incidents invoke in me.
And I don’t know of anybody, especially those of us lifetime members of the NRA, who don’t share that sentiment. Because those of us who’ve dedicated a part of our lives to promoting gun safety alongside the secure exercise of one’s Second Amendment freedoms - aside from the victims’ families and first responders themselves - feel these crimes especially viscerally and personally.
To understand, it’s as if you are an outspoken proselytizer for a peaceful religion and then some crazed whack job, in the name of your religion, blows up a synagogue - and the world wants to take it out on you and your religion. “Let’s have some commonsense reforms of that religion” they’d say. Or, “Enough is enough! My God! What’s it going to take!” they lament. There’s always, it seems, an exhortation to do something to infringe on religious freedoms whenever…
Or perhaps not. Because we’re a pluralistic and tolerant society and we would never infringe on the First Amendment rights of innocent, law-abiding, worshipful, peaceful citizens, would we? We would never paint with so broad a brush, when it comes to religion. Unless of course, the affected are Christians perhaps.
But when it comes to the Second Amendment: not so much. We’re all to blame for whatever some crazed lunatic undertakes. Always.
This is getting really old and stale.
In the last week alone, I’ve witnessed the president commit absolute lies, distortions and logical fallacies on this subject, the likes of which are without parallel, even among the trenches of the hard core anti-gun left. These aren’t all minor technical points either (though there’s cause for great humor in unpacking those) - but malignant and intentional falsehoods designed to spread fear and loathing. And to undermine our faithful witness to the Constitution itself.
What the Second Amendment is really about
The Second Amendment isn’t about deer hunting. It isn’t about sport shooting. It isn’t about target practice or collecting. And it isn’t even really about personal security against “crimes” some other citizen might try to inflict upon you. Those are secondary benefits.
The Second Amendment is about ensuring the legitimacy of government itself.
The Founders’ reasoning is simple: for a government to be legitimate among the people, it must be formed with the consent of the governed. This isn’t a one-off, either. The Second Amendment exists in perpetuity to forever guarantee that our government will be formed among a consenting people. That is, a people with the power to choose compliance - or resistance.
Without the right to keep and bear arms, the people don’t have a right of consent, or dissent, as the case may be. The people become a nationwide “gun free zone” to impose upon whatever a ruler or governor might wish. Not much of a choice.
That’s what’s at the heart of this issue - not “deer hunting” or whatever other straw man the president invokes.
Now you might be of the opinion that the Second Amendment has gotten too old-timey in the modern sense. You might think this was all well and good when the people only accessed flintlocks and percussion-cap long rifles. You might feel it wasn’t meant for a modern age, where the powers of government are transcendent throughout our lives and viewed as stable and inherently legitimate. Or that it wasn’t intended to cover so-called “modern” firearms. Modern complexities and the governmental backbone of our existence implore reason! It’s not like you’re going to fend off F-15s and nuclear bombs with your deer rifle, so what’s the point?
I would ask: are you really considering sending F-15s and nuclear bombs after 130 million Americans? Because that’s how many of us have guns, more or less. And we’re distributed throughout the population - we don’t congregate in any one state or county. And that’s the point. Our gun ownership is a deterrent force en masse. A decentralized check on federal power and an animation of the posse comitatus writ national.
If you don’t like it, amend the Constitution. Go for it. Propose an amendment that reverses the Second Amendment. That’s the only legitimate means to your ends. And if you can’t - or don’t have the guts - to do that, leave us alone!
The point is unchanged and will never change unless you amend the Constitution. Because the government’s legitimacy itself derives from the consent of the (armed) governed. Heretofore, the government’s intent has been kept at bay because of this fact, and the circumstances of the fact are not changed - in fact, in light of the demands to disarm the population, appear more relevant than ever.
The Second Amendment is part of the Constitution - without the Bill of Rights, states would not have ratified the Constitution in the first place. So it’s not an optional or archaic delusion - it’s an essential part of the Constitution. We’d have no Republic at all without it. And as described above, it forms the lynch-pin of legitimacy itself.
To that end - that government legitimacy itself depends on an armed people - our elected representatives are beholden to, literally sworn to, defending the Second Amendment. They don’t get to pick and choose which parts of the Constitution appeal to them - they swear to uphold the whole thing.
“The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”
— U.S. Constitution, Article VI, clause 3
And that’s the litmus test. Or better put, the legitimacy test.
If your elected officials are habitual gun-grabbers, reaching for infringement on law-abiding citizens as their first reaction to every mass shooting, then they can’t be trusted. Their oath of office is “just words” - meaningless. And they’ve no intent to abide by them. And that goes for both parties.
So what’s the answer to mass shootings?
So what to do about these terrible crimes then? Honestly, among the raft of nonsensical proposals I’ve read that are being considered, I have seen little that would have prevented any or most of these attacks, or would have mitigated the extent of violence. Because these laws are mostly predicated on a criminal first giving a damn about ten year sentences for lying on applications or fines for transporting loaded firearms or carrying loaded weapons onto school property or the jail time for violating the “high capacity magazine” law. Smaller magazines would only involve more frequent changing of magazines, not limit the total number of bullets he could bring to bear over a 45-minute uninterrupted murder spree. Limiting the number of bullets purchased is similarly insane - it just takes a little longer to build the desired inventory.
Changing the age of eligibility to purchase is similarly wrongheaded - just as 21-year old requirements for drinking don’t have any measurable effect on teen drinking, in fact, make matters worse. A teenager with murderous intent can get into Dad’s gun safe (or access a friend’s guns) with little more effort than he can get into the liquor cabinet or pinch a few beers from the fridge. No “law” is going to change that.
And we’ve been down the whole “assault weapons ban” road before. It’s really hard to define what an “assault weapon” even is, considering the ease with which one can swap out wood stocks for plastic, or vice versa. Giving your “deer hunting” rifle that “combat” look is a simple matter of screwdrivers and allen wrenches. Does a gun become less deadly when it’s clad in wood or the detachable magazine only holds ten rounds? And would any of this have changed the resulting massacre? The answer is no, of course.
What would actually have prevented any of these massacres? The same thing that does prevent these massacres, though doesn’t get nearly the reportage. Good people with guns prevent a great deal of crime, including mass shootings. Dispense with the idiocy of the gun-free zones - the criminals at best don’t care, at worst they know to target these places. Harden the target. Allow the potential victims to protect themselves and others in an emergency. Increase and up-arm security staff. They don’t have to look like Robocop either. The president’s Secret Service detail has that “look” down perfectly.
And train. Train to respond in an emergency and not just stand there helplessly. Some 80 to 100 cops with bulletproof vests and semi-automatic pistols, shotguns and carbines shouldn’t stand around outside when a killer is inside. You breach with what you’ve got. You don’t - you cannot - wait for the Robocops to show up. The people inside are improvising to the best of their ability. You can too.
I don’t say this to be mean or derogatory to police, who face terrible challenges every day. I say this to confront the prevailing wisdom in many police departments that “officer safety is our number one priority”. It never was and it shouldn’t ever be. That’s like saying winning wars takes a back seat to our military personnel’s safety. The priority is the mission first. And in the case of these mass shooting events, that means improvising and adapting tactics in the moment to stop the innocent bloodshed. Whatever that takes.
This debate isn’t a tension between our Constitutional rights and stopping mass murder. That’s a false dichotomy engineered by people who wish to fundamentally alter our relationship with government. Considering how to further ensnare, infringe and victimize law-abiding citizens is not only not the answer - it’s inimical to a free state and threatens the legitimacy of government itself.