Gun Play
I am no anti gun caricature. I grew up on a farm where guns were tools that protected the gardens and the livestock, and the means to participate in a pastime with your father and friends. I grew up looking at the adds in Boys Life magazine and dreaming about the new deer rifle I would buy if suddenly I had the money. This dreaming would later be replaced by the objects advertised in Car and Driver.
I appreciate that a market once dominated by sportsmen has changed. Hunting is declining as a national pastime. Gun manufacturers have figured out they can sell much more sophisticated and therefore expensive weapons by appealing to men who desire to imagine themselves as soldiers. The weapons issued to soldiers took a turn toward awesome during the Vietnam War. I can remember at Fort Leonard Wood when we turned in our M14s and picked up our M16s. The new weapons were lighter, easier to use and much, much more lethal. The thought of being the only guy on the block with one of these could be empowering. The thought of moving through the jungle facing people with very similar firepower, not so much so.
So I understand and respect guns and I do not think there is any good reason on God’s green earth for civilians to have assault weapons or large magazines of any kind. If you want to enjoy shooting or hunting as a sport learn to aim and hit your target with one shot. If you need to shoot again, learn to work a bolt or a pump action.
BUT, some say we would lose the ability to take on our government without our own assault gun. Then the argument quickly falls back on the Second Amendment. It’s time to call this for what it is, absolute unmitigated, nonsense. I do not want to encourage rudeness, but people who make this argument should be given the same weight as people who talk about an invasion by a life form from another planet. First, any weaponry a civilian force can muster is a toy collection against a determined American military force under orders to use all force necessary to take a target. There are times in the history of mankind when the average person can stand up to the King in a military showdown. The years after the invention of the longbow were such a time. The 21st century is not.
Well, what about the 2nd Amendment? Wasn’t it adopted to enable us citizens to stand up to government with our own firepower. NO! The men who wrote the Constitution to replace the Articles of Confederation were men worried about the excesses of democracy, Events like Shays Rebellion actually triggered the Constitutional Convention and motivated George Washington to return to service to service of his country and build a government which could put an end to such treasonous behavior. The notion that these men would ever pass an amendment to encourage armed rebellion is less imaginable then the current Republican Government socializing all big business. The Second Amendment by its own terms is about the state militia. Those were the forces used at that time to put down rebellion, because back then we did not have a large national armed force.
I know the folly of hoping that reason will turn the tide on this issue. Bringing thoughtful argument to this debate is a kin to bringing a knife to a gunfight. Somehow we have lost sight of what used to be a common understanding, that our freedoms had to be limited so as not to take freedoms away from others. If we don’t rekindle this spirit we will soon cease to be a democracy. The first freedom mentioned in the Declaration of Independence is liife. Yet when, on almost a weekly basis, unstable people armed with automatic weapons kill our children on mass, our federal government does nothing to “interfere” with the right to possess firepower such as our founders could never imagine. Now our President wants to arm teachers. It beggars belief. One doesn’t know whether to attack the total lack of feasibility or the dystopian world this proposal would create.
Here is my modest counter-proposal. Before we turn our schools into armed camps let’s start with the Congress and the White House. Instead of spending millions of dollars keeping armed and dangerous men away from our leaders. let us simply give each official a handgun and then remove the Secret Service and the Capitol Police. Let’s just give up on the liberal notion of depriving our citizens their right to carry their fully loaded M16s into the Senate or the White House. Isn’t it their right to stand up to government. And hey, why settle for the notoriety they can get from shooting kids when they can gun down a handful of lawmakers.
When I was in the Maine Senate, many decades ago, we were debating opening a season on Moose hunting after a long ban on the practice. The leader of the opposition was my late friend Senator Conley and during the battle he received a letter from a Maine citizen who shared Jerry’s opposition. Senator Conley read the letter to the full Senate. It said in part, “instead of permitting the slaughter of the harmless Moose why not create a open season on the most dangerous predators, the members of the legislature.”
My modest proposal is offered in the same spirit.
I appreciate that a market once dominated by sportsmen has changed. Hunting is declining as a national pastime. Gun manufacturers have figured out they can sell much more sophisticated and therefore expensive weapons by appealing to men who desire to imagine themselves as soldiers. The weapons issued to soldiers took a turn toward awesome during the Vietnam War. I can remember at Fort Leonard Wood when we turned in our M14s and picked up our M16s. The new weapons were lighter, easier to use and much, much more lethal. The thought of being the only guy on the block with one of these could be empowering. The thought of moving through the jungle facing people with very similar firepower, not so much so.
So I understand and respect guns and I do not think there is any good reason on God’s green earth for civilians to have assault weapons or large magazines of any kind. If you want to enjoy shooting or hunting as a sport learn to aim and hit your target with one shot. If you need to shoot again, learn to work a bolt or a pump action.
BUT, some say we would lose the ability to take on our government without our own assault gun. Then the argument quickly falls back on the Second Amendment. It’s time to call this for what it is, absolute unmitigated, nonsense. I do not want to encourage rudeness, but people who make this argument should be given the same weight as people who talk about an invasion by a life form from another planet. First, any weaponry a civilian force can muster is a toy collection against a determined American military force under orders to use all force necessary to take a target. There are times in the history of mankind when the average person can stand up to the King in a military showdown. The years after the invention of the longbow were such a time. The 21st century is not.
Well, what about the 2nd Amendment? Wasn’t it adopted to enable us citizens to stand up to government with our own firepower. NO! The men who wrote the Constitution to replace the Articles of Confederation were men worried about the excesses of democracy, Events like Shays Rebellion actually triggered the Constitutional Convention and motivated George Washington to return to service to service of his country and build a government which could put an end to such treasonous behavior. The notion that these men would ever pass an amendment to encourage armed rebellion is less imaginable then the current Republican Government socializing all big business. The Second Amendment by its own terms is about the state militia. Those were the forces used at that time to put down rebellion, because back then we did not have a large national armed force.
I know the folly of hoping that reason will turn the tide on this issue. Bringing thoughtful argument to this debate is a kin to bringing a knife to a gunfight. Somehow we have lost sight of what used to be a common understanding, that our freedoms had to be limited so as not to take freedoms away from others. If we don’t rekindle this spirit we will soon cease to be a democracy. The first freedom mentioned in the Declaration of Independence is liife. Yet when, on almost a weekly basis, unstable people armed with automatic weapons kill our children on mass, our federal government does nothing to “interfere” with the right to possess firepower such as our founders could never imagine. Now our President wants to arm teachers. It beggars belief. One doesn’t know whether to attack the total lack of feasibility or the dystopian world this proposal would create.
Here is my modest counter-proposal. Before we turn our schools into armed camps let’s start with the Congress and the White House. Instead of spending millions of dollars keeping armed and dangerous men away from our leaders. let us simply give each official a handgun and then remove the Secret Service and the Capitol Police. Let’s just give up on the liberal notion of depriving our citizens their right to carry their fully loaded M16s into the Senate or the White House. Isn’t it their right to stand up to government. And hey, why settle for the notoriety they can get from shooting kids when they can gun down a handful of lawmakers.
When I was in the Maine Senate, many decades ago, we were debating opening a season on Moose hunting after a long ban on the practice. The leader of the opposition was my late friend Senator Conley and during the battle he received a letter from a Maine citizen who shared Jerry’s opposition. Senator Conley read the letter to the full Senate. It said in part, “instead of permitting the slaughter of the harmless Moose why not create a open season on the most dangerous predators, the members of the legislature.”
My modest proposal is offered in the same spirit.