Nothing can possibly go wrong (Part 2- Guns)

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.

Much has been made of the exact wording and even the punctuation of this sentence.  But that doesn't mean too much- that's how lawyers work, the exact wording of a thing is the material of your trade there.



Instead let's break this down, in practical terms.  It says three basic things.

1. People can keep and bear arms.
2. This is necessary to the security of the State (that is to say, of the country).
3. These arms should be regulated.

So in the end, the law as written must end with the People having a right to arm.  That's the right, the rest relates to how the law should approach that right.

I'm going to file away the second part for a minute.

The third part of course is where the disagreement comes from.  The phrasing of "militia" means that one possible reading is that "a well regulated militia", historically meaning men who could be called if their town was under attack which in modern parlance would actually be the National Guard or US Military, must be well-regulated, and the right to arms held by The People is an entirely separate aspect of the amendment.  The other common reading is that, since all men of age and property were part of a militia in those days, the right to bear arms too must be regulated (though without, ultimately, infringing upon it.)

But let's cut to a point of agreement- the People have a duty to ensure the responsible use of arms.  As the government is of, by, and for the People, they can of course delegate that duty back to the government should it be required, and on the whole it's probably best to be able to call the police if your neighbor is shooting up your windows rather than having to count on yourself or your neighbors to remove his firearms.  Using the force of law as a means to sort those who will be responsible with their guns from those who will not, essentially.  And while there's no universal agreement on this point, there is quite a lot of it; people will generally agree that a brief background check is a reasonable step.

Now, the default liberal position goes a few steps past this.  The reasoning goes that there's essentially no responsible use for certain kinds of weapons- the only possible use for a high-caliber semi-automatic is killing people, that is.  Which seems reasonable if you don't know much about guns, but if you really know your guns you would immediately counter that there's no practical distinction between an AR-15 and a glock in terms of killing power and then you've gotten tangled up in a case of exceptions and technicalities.  Which as previously mentioned, is great if you're crafting legislation but useless in persuasive argument.  There's similar arguments to be had about the practical effect of gun bans when so many are in circulation, and whether this is allowing the perfect to be the enemy of the good, which again is not useful in discussion across ideological gaps.  And while of course I have my own idea of a reasonable technical distinction that I think would prove effective without needlessly curtailing liberties, that's not helpful for making a broader case.

I instead wonder if we haven't focused too much on the arms and not enough on the People.  There are countries in this world with high guns-to-people ratios (though if memory serves the US wins by a lot even so) that manage to avoid our per-capita bullet-filled corpses.  But most of them have required military service or other forms of mandatory gun training- the practical effect being that if someone isn't going to be responsible with a gun, there's first-hand evidence proving it before they're old enough to just go buy one before anyone notices.  I'm not sure if I seriously advocate that position, but this is an arena where I tend to question if what we're trying to do is actually working or ever likely to come to pass.

Back to that bit about Security.

Now.  Having a standing military rather than relying on militias means that the original reading of that term is moot in the 21st century.  However, a reading supported by the letters and other writings of many founders suggests that arms among the People are a hedge for their security in the event of government overreach.  There's a popular quote, apparently often misworded and the proper attribution lost-

"Where the people fear the government you have tyranny. Where the government fears the people you have liberty"

That is, should the government know the People have means to resist them by force, their inclinations towards tyranny will be curbed.

But I think there is more wisdom in this quote.  I hear the man who said it is quite trendy right now:

"If circumstances should at any time oblige the government to form an army of any magnitude that army can never be formidable to the liberties of the people while there is a large body of citizens, little, if at all, inferior to them in discipline and the use of arms, who stand ready to defend their own rights and those of their fellow-citizens. This appears to me the only substitute that can be devised for a standing army, and the best possible security against it, if it should exist."

And herein lies the rub.  

A private citizen has no hope of using a fighter jet.  Even should they have the skills to fly one, the mean to acquire, fuel, arm, and maintain the thing are beyond them.
If the federal government opts to send a missile-armed drone after you, well, better hope you live in the mountains where nature might take it out for you.
There are no explosives you can make from household chemicals that dent a modern tank.

One of the legacies of the Cold War and its massive escalation of military technology is that it created many tools that were simply beyond the ability of an armed partisan to fight.  It took the financial and technological might of a nation to do it.  And after the cold war, after a good 20-odd years of fighting primarily terrorists in conjunction with harvesting the fruits of privately-developed programming and computer technology, we've managed to largely remove visible targets from warfare.
God, we've managed to put technology in the hands of police officers that render them largely impervious to civilian arms, let alone if the United States Military actually were to enforce martial law.

All that to say; the world changed, and the old symbols of freedom are no longer also its tools.  While symbols are important, and almost every gun owner I personally know is responsible and finds all sorts of valid uses for their arms, it's also important to acknowledge the world of today and its problems.  Defending the Second Amendment is important, because a right once lost can only be recovered in blood, but don't let it become a slavish devotion that blinds you into thinking anyone defending it is always your friend.