I have no problem with gun ownership. My father had a shotgun for hunting. When not in use it was locked up, and from time to time its security was checked by the police to stop bad people getting hold of it. This is the situation in nearly all countries that have the rule of law and common sense safety regulations.
The Second Amendment reads: “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 words “a well regulated Militia” imply that the Framers intended only to restrict Congress from legislating away a state’s right to self-defense. Scholars have come to call this theory “the collective rights theory.” A collective rights theory of the Second Amendment asserts that citizens do not have an individual right to possess guns, and that local, state, and federal legislative bodies therefore possess the authority to regulate firearms without implicating a constitutional right. The context is the State militia. Those words are key. Until the 1980s the Second Amendment was interpreted as relating to militias. All of a sudden this accepted reading was changed.
No government in history, with the task of keeping the peace is going to seriously encourage every Tom, Dick or Harry to tote loaded guns around the streets. An organized and trained militia is one thing – self-appointed vigilantes acting on suspicion and no evidence are something else altogether, and point to a society that has lost its way. The Founders, children of the Enlightenment and intelligent human beings, would have been appalled at the idea of armed men drinking in bars, for instance. This is a recipe for bloodshed and disaster.
Epicurus, by the way, was no libertarian (a libertarian I define as someone who is a freeloader, totally focused on “me”, caring nothing about the community, and deeply resentful about paying tax for the facilities he uses). Epicurus, on the contrary, stood for pleasure, happiness, friends, companionship, and lack of fear, none of which can be promoted by the death by gunshot of 30,000 Americans every year. If any reader can explain how this rate of slaughter makes life more pleasant, safe and free would they please explain?
(I owe the legalese of the second paragraph to the Legal Information Institute, attached to the Cornell University Law School).
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I accept that the horse is out of the stable. Even if the 70% or more of the US population who favor some sort of safety control of guns had their democratic way, it would be impossible to collect all the guns and keep them only for the use of State militias only.
Aside from the major-war-scale number of deaths, what is so sad is the unsettling effect on little children, who have to go through airport-style security and see armed guards at the entrance to their schools. What sort of a world have the gun advocates created for them, and what is the point of life when it has such a high component of fear?
This is the telling phrase: “a society that has lost its way.” A society without community life will ultimately wither because communities are the backbone of any culture. By 300 A.D., Rome, for example, was a totally atomized society–held together by armed force which, in the end, could not sustain it.
A very rich acquaintance of mine is intending to buy an aircraft carrier, equipped with a dozen suitable aircraft. She argues that if she is constitutionally entitled, according to Alito et al, to buy an armory of guns, she is entitled to equip herself with a navy. This is because having a navy (and in due course an army to go with it), constitutes free speech. She is telling us all, “Don’t, like, park your tanks on my lawn,” It will be bought, after all, with money, and money is speech. Furthermore, developing a private military force is only an amplification of the right to bear arms. True, she cannot now literally bear an aircraft carrier, but, given a large supply of inexpensive immigrants, paid below the minimum wage, she hopes to have them drive the aircraft carrier to the dock and man the rocket- equipped planes at a modest cost, thus illustrating the principal of trickle-down economics as well as frightening the bejeebers out of the rest of us. This happy prospect is, she claims, reasonable and civilized. Nothing is too much trouble to return the country to its 18th Century origins.
Some good arguments Rhanrott.
I agree that the horse is out of the stable.
Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire ex-mayor of New York, is to spend $50m of his fortune on a major new campaign aimed at countering the power of the pro-gun lobby group, the National Rifle Association. Bloomberg 72, said the goal of “Everytown for Gun Safety” was not to ban weapons, but to help elect politicians who will stop the wrong people owning them – for example, through tighter background checks at purchase. “Nobody’s going to take anybody’s gun away,” said Bloomberg. “Nobody’s going to keep you from hunting or target practice or protecting yourself. It’s just making sure that a handful of people who we all agree shouldn’t have guns don’t get their hands on them.”