A Misunderstanding of the 2nd Amendment
Why gun sales go up after shootings, and other seeming conundrums.
American gun attitudes don’t make much sense outside of American “gun culture.” Outsiders tend to think that the right to keep and bear arms is overstated for one, and for another, has something to do with personal security. Why else would anyone want a gun, save for hunting if you are into that sort of thing. Accordingly, they expect gun ownership support to wane in the wake of shootings, as it did in the UK, Canada, and Australia.
Americans, however, stubbornly reject “common sense” restrictions, and gun sales routinely go up after mass shootings. This does not make sense to non-Americans or some Americans huddled in pockets scattered about the country. The disconnect occurs over a fundamental misunderstanding about the Second Amendment.
The right to keep and bear arms isn’t about safety precisely. It isn’t about hunting or controlling criminal or terrorist activity. It is an idea, and ideas are where real motivating power lies. The Second Amendment is about sovereignty.
If you read the Constitution in one sitting — it is short and won’t take long — We the People got together and decided what we would allow the government to do and how we would allow them to do it. It lists the powers that We the People grant to each branch of government. It sets forth how We the People choose who is in that government. At the end it provides another list: what rights We the People do not permit the government to trespass upon. The last two items in this list note that the list of rights does not imply that the people don’t retain other rights, and that all powers which have not been surrendered are retained by the States or the people.
Thus, as a practical matter, while non-Americans usually approach the question of rights by looking for permission —by what leave does a citizen have the right to do some thing — Americans assume we have the right. We ask whether we gave the state leave to limit us.
Such a subtle but fundamental difference to approaching problems plays out like the classic pessimists vs optimists scenario. But the effect is at its most stark when the questions reach life and death issues. We know — it is embedded in our cultural DNA — that ultimately each one of us, as an individual, is responsible for our own safety, our own freedom.
In short, We the People are the sovereign. All governmental power issues from us, not the reverse. The right to keep and bear arms is a duty for maintaining that sovereignty. It is both a deterrent and defense against any government that would seek to overthrow us. We have experienced such governments in the past and we remain wary of any that might come to our present or future. If the Iranian authorities want to enforce women’s dress codes, they simply arrest, detain, and in some cases beat, women who protest. In the US, that kind of enforcement is rarely tried and has a cascade of complicated effects — usually not in the authority’s favor — if attempted.
Now it is true that we could amend the Constitution and permit Congress to repeal or limit the Second Amendment for public safety. We have not and likely will not for two reasons, one practical and minor, and the other paramount. The practical reason: we’ve seen other countries disarm law abiding citizens and have not seen them become safer societies. People who view American ‘gun culture’ negatively stubbornly cling to a belief that simply is not true: that permissive private gun ownership increases gun violence. The U.S. falls between Canada and France — two very restrictive countries — on a list of gun deaths per capita. Restrictions see an increase in violent crime and leave the population more vulnerable, especially to mass crime as citizens grow accustomed to waiting for the authorities.The Norway shooter rampaged for 90 minutes and took 77 lives. The London riots raged for days while people locked doors. The Woolwich killers stood for 20 minutes over the soldier they had slain — knives in bloody hands, lecturing the spectators, but unchallenged. In the Paris theater, the terrorists had the opportunity to reload, and that more than once. And in the recent Florida shooting, the authorities failed on every level, up to and including sheriff’s deputies (plural) not engaging the shooter. And yet we’re asked to rely on the authorities who have failed so consummately?
The paramount reason we will not accept Second Amendment restrictions, however, is because it reduces our sovereignty to fading words on an old piece of parchment. If the government breaks faith with us and we are not armed, then we are not capable of enforcing the terms of the contract. In other contexts, for instance with #BlackLivesMatter and concerns of police brutality, this is easier to see. Recall that just a few months ago, that was the concern, that police have become a quasi-military force of particular threat to minority communities. But now the cry is that only the police should be (effectively) armed? Or take the satire from The Babylon Bee:
Either his detractors don’t really believe Trump is comparable to one of the world’s most violent dictators with the potential to become an iron-fisted totalitarian, or they do but are so emotionally overwrought (understandably so) about the school shooting that for the moment they have lost sight of the gaping flaw in their logic. Teen Vogue illustrated: trying to stay in business by being politically provocative on social media, the publication sent this tweet out last week, quoting one of the Florida students.
“We will not be silenced by an oppressive government.” She has never lived under an oppressive government, and the reason she has not is because of a piece of paper backed up by an everpresent citizens’ militia that goes about its days in the background of our daily lives. Because of them, she will be able to talk, and even to rail at elected officials in public town halls publicized for all the nation to see. And it might surprise her to learn that even curmudgeonly conservatives like me smile a bit at her willingness to speak to a US Senator so directly. They are public servants, after all.
It will also surprise her, and many others, that the so-called “common sense” schemes will fail again because they ask us to trade the promise of a future with freedom for an unlikely chance of short term security. We will not make that trade for ourselves or our posterity. Or at least those of us who know history will not make that trade. And yes, despite complaints against higher education, there are enough of us who do know history. Plus, as a famous lady once said, the facts of life are conservative.
Immigrants often come to our shores because they have known government oppression, and they seek respite from it in a country that they know has successfully resisted it. Though would-be oppressors are always lurking in the background of any country, ours not excluded, immigrants understand that here at least, oppression may not do more than lurk.
Between those who know history and those who know — really know — oppression, there will always be citizens who understand that the Second Amendment is really a duty, one that must not be abandoned.
An earlier version of this article was published in The Conservative Woman UK in December 2015.
