Anti-Gun, Pro-Second Amendment

I started writing the initial draft of this article back in 2012 shortly after the Sandy Hook school shooting. In the years since, every time there was another mass shooting in the US, I’d dust off the draft and try to find the right words to finish what I needed to say.

I have had far, far, far too many opportunities over the last 5 years to try and find those words. Perhaps it is time, as tragedy has struck yet again, that I finally put this out there. Maybe what words I do have will help…

The first thing I need to say is that both sides of the debate around gun control are wrong. Gun rights advocates who refuse to accept any attempt to regulate gun ownership, in even the smallest way, are right to be concerned about defending the Second Amendment, but they are wrong about the importance of gun ownership. Those who desire to see guns more heavily restricted are right that it should not be so easy for individuals to get a hold of such deadly weapons, but they are wrong to think that this justifies undermining the Second Amendment.

How is it that I can claim, simultaneously, that guns should be restricted and that the Second Amendment must be protected at all costs?

A Change In Perspective

The US Bill of Rights is elegant in its terseness. In just 461 words it outlines some of the most fundamental rights and core principles of the United States. Because of its terseness, it is easy to interpret the amendments it contains in many different ways. Certainly, as it represents the collaborative compromise of delegates from each of the 13 colonies, there are a multitude of different intentions wrapped up in those amendments. This makes it difficult to argue that any one interpretation is more correct than the rest. What I would like to present is one interpretation that allows the Second Amendment to be seen in a different light. To do so, we must consider its textual and historical context.

To begin, let’s look at the First Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Religious freedom, free speech, freedom of the press, free assembly, and the right to petition the government…that is a lot to cover in just one amendment. In terms of the freedoms most often discussed in American politics, the Bill of Rights is heavily front-loaded.

What’s the common thread? Why are all these various rights gathered together in the First Amendment? To understand we must consider the era. The enlightenment was a period of revolutionary thought. Many of the United States founding fathers had just participated in overthrowing one tyrannical regime, while their most fervent supporters in Europe, the French, were just over a year away from overthrowing another. We need look no further than the words of the one of those founding fathers to understand that tyranny and revolution heavily influenced their thinking:

…what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance?

— Thomas Jefferson

Speech, and written communication via the press, is necessary to disseminate revolutionary ideas. The ability to assemble and publicly confront the government is necessary for individuals to asses the degree to which revolutionary ideas are supported by their fellow citizens. And religion? History has shown that there are few means as effective as religion to influence large groups all at once. A government sponsored religion is potentially a very dangerous weapon for suppressing revolutionary thought.

In other words, the First Amendment is all about protecting the right of people to speak out when they feel the government has become oppressive and to engage with any of their fellow citizens that feel similarly.

Continuing on, after all of those various rights crammed together into the First Amendment, the Second Amendment follows up with a scant 27 words:

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.

Why, after the lengthy and involved First Amendment, would the authors of the Bill of Rights feel the need to follow it up by giving guns their own amendment?

Again, we should consider the period. Not more than a hundred years before the Bill of Rights was drafted, there was an attempt in England (ultimately unsuccessful) to prevent a revolution by seizing the arms of private citizens. The American colonists, themselves, needed little more than the arms of private citizens and a guy with a fast horse to repulse an attack by one of the most powerful armies in the world at the time. Guns in the 18th century still represented an unprecedented force multiplier and any government, any military was right to fear a motivated group of individuals in possession of even a small number of muskets.

If the First Amendment can be interpreted as protecting the rights of people to think about and plan a revolution, then the Second Amendment can be interpreted as protecting the right of people to carry out a revolution. One could argue that the authors of the Bill of Rights were short-sighted in assuming that guns would continue, in the future, to be the implements people needed to effect a revolution, except that the Second Amendment never specifically mentions guns.

Amendments Don’t Protect People…

When the Bill of Rights was drafted, I doubt any of the original authors expected that the mere existence of these amendments would prevent the government of the United States from becoming a tyranny. A tyrant, by definition, is not bound by the rule of law. Rather, the First and Second Amendments are designed to stand as sign posts. If we understand their intent as protecting the means to both propose and carry out a revolt against a tyrannical regime, then one would expect them to be first on the chopping block of any aspiring tyrant.

Of course, only the most inept of tyrants would attack the Second Amendment directly. If a fledgling tyranny honestly believed that the ownership of guns by private citizens was a threat, it would begin to chip away at the Second Amendment in small pieces. It would suggest that “only criminals and terrorists need guns” or that it would be reasonable for police to have some sort of “remote key” to disable the use of guns.

For this reason, it is perfectly logical to oppose even the tiniest of encroachments on the Second Amendment. There’s just one problem: a government that controls the most powerful military in the world, that has distributed surplus military hardware to local law enforcement, that can remotely assassinate its own citizens from half-way around the globe with a remotely piloted stealth drone…has absolutely nothing to fear from privately owned guns.

The Right to Keep and Bear Encryption

At some point it the last 217 years, those patriots who held defense of the Second Amendment as paramount lost their way. Somehow, most likely thanks to those who stood to make a profit from the private ownership of firearms, Second Amendment patriotism morphed from defending the right of the people to poses the tools needed to revolt against a tyrannical regime, into defending gun ownership for the sake of gun ownership.

It should not be surprising that the government has not made an effort to paint firearms as used only by criminals and terrorists. In fact, the hypothetical arguments I suggested a tyrannical regime might make against private gun ownership have been made, repeatedly…about encryption!

One need only look at how much money is spent by the government defeating encryption compared to the utter lack of action taken to limit gun ownership to understand which it fears more. When politicians tell you that “encryption makes the lives of criminals and terrorists easier” or when they suggest that the government should have a master key to unlock any encryption, what they are really saying is that the government is scared. To a tyrannical government, revolutionaries are criminals.

So, I am in favor of a strong Second Amendment. It makes me sick when I see how the very people against whom the protections of the Second Amendment are intended, have managed to neuter it’s effect, simultaneously convincing well meaning but naive patriots that they are defending their rights while deflecting attention as they quietly restrict the “arms” that might actually keep them in check. Until we wake up to this fact, and so long as the debate about gun ownership in the United States is framed by the Second Amendment, without consideration for what the Second Amendment actually says, we will inevitable continue to add to the list: Columbine, Virginia Tech, Aurora, Sandy Hook, Marysville, San Bernadino, Pulse, Las Vegas, Majory Stoneman Douglas…