The Fallacy of the RIGHT to Keep and Bear Arms

I believe that the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution should be abolished.

Now, this post will mark me as a screaming, left-wing, tree-hugging, limp-wristed, commie liberal. (I call myself that in this case so you idiots out there who object violently because you don't understand the issue don't have to call me those names. You're going to have to be more original than usual.)

Now, as I've written on many news sites and such, always after a story of mass murder in the U.S. (I only have to wait a day or two for one to happen), I feel the Second Amendment is the reason why we have more Americans dying every month by gunshot at the hands of other Americans than have died in the Afghanistan war since the invasion after 9/11.

Just so we're on the same page, the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution says the following:

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.

To explore my rationale, we're first going to go on a little history lesson to show how the Second Amendment is currently obsolete.

Back in England (from where most Americans originally came) for hundreds of years until they became obsolete, every Englishman between 12 and 60 was required to practice daily with the Longbow. It was not an option. It was a law and a mandatory activity.

To us, it may seem kind of odd for a monarchy to require their citizenry to practice shooting a weapon that was considered one of the most devastating ever put on a battlefield. You'd think they would want their people unarmed and unable to revolt. The truth of the matter was rather simple: England couldn't afford a standing army. Armies are expensive and the citizens tended to revolt when taxes were raised too much to pay for them. (Look at what happened in the 1770's in the colonies when King George decided to use them as his personal piggy bank to finance his war with France). Although by the late 1700's Great Britain was a constitutional monarchy with a more refined tax structure and could afford a standing army, the tradition of the right of individual weapon ownership was long-standing and ingrained.

So British citizens were taught to keep arms in defense of the country. Back in America, this tradition was maintained. It allowed the Colonists to hunt and defend themselves against aggressors. But the latter was supposed to be done only in support of the state at the call of the state. That state at the time was England. The French and Indian war in the 1760's proved the wisdom of allowing the citizenry of the colonies to keep their own arms and have regular practice in drills with them.

So far, so good. We have a citizenry that is well armed and trained in their use that can be called up as a main force for action against enemies of the state. This was the prevailing tradition during which the Constitution was drafted.

After the Revolutionary War, the United States government was funded with excise taxes and tariffs on interstate trade. There wasn't any way to fund a standing army. Knowing this and knowing the capital expenses involved in keeping a domestic army in cat food and kitty litter, the founding fathers performed the artful dodge. They relied on states to fund and train 'militias'. Each man was supposed to provide his own firearm and drill with other men of the community in preparation of being called up should the need to defend the state or country arise. The fact that America was still a frontier and personal defense rated rather high on the need scale, not to mention hunting, and you have full justification for never taking away a man's way of shooting things. But above all, for the State, they had a way of maintaining their army without having to pay for one 24/7/365.

That's the "a well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State" part of the Second Amendment that most people completely forget is just as much a part of it as the rest.

But all was not well in Second Amendment-land. When the War of 1812 broke out, the lack of a standing army almost lost us a country. The Capital and White House were burned and a large amount of the country was occupied. Once the war was over, the necessity of having a standing army had been made painfully obvious and one was created. But guns were still expensive so carrying personal arms was encourage. Keep in mind that this was generally pre-industrial age. Each weapon was essentially hand-made. There was no standardization of parts, so something made for one weapon wouldn't necessarily or even usually fit another. Also, at the time, there really wasn't any alternative weapon that could be mass produced cheaper than having everyone BYOG. So the Second Amendment hung around mostly because it was still the only (affordable) game in town.

During the Civil War, personal arms were the norm, but mass production was beginning to come into its own for weapons. Standardization of parts was more and more common. If you didn't have a gun, one would be issued to you, yet most brought their own. But the situation arose more and more often that the calibers of ammo didn't match the caliber (or type) of weapon someone had brought to the fray. Logistically, having to carry ammo or parts for a large variety of arms was a nightmare. The decision after the Civil War was to issue personal arms. But keep in mind that the military was down-sizing quite a bit and it was thought they could fight their own internal conflicts without the need for gigantic standing armies.

Despite this, there came a time when it was decided that personal arms on the battlefield was a bad idea. Most personal arms were discouraged for use in battle after the Spanish-American war when it became obvious that modern warfare - with modern weapons - needed more uniformity of arms in order to be of maximum effectiveness on the battlefield. By World War I, personal arms on the battlefield were actually prohibited or required special permission and approval.

This is how it is today.

Today, we no longer require men of fighting age to possess, train with or bring a personal weapon in defense of the country. If they want to enlist and fight, we (We being the federal government) give them all their weapons, all their provisions and all of their training.

Therefore the first half of the second Amendment - the REASON for the Second Amendment - is utterly invalid today. A couple of hundred years worth of advancements and changes in government structure and financing, not to mention some hard-learned lessons over the years, have proven that state militias armed by citizen soldiers with their own guns is pure foolishness. States aren't raising local militias, the government does that. Reserve units may take on state and local names, but the federal government arms them, supplies them and trains them. The states have control over state militias for local emergencies, but those militias are at the ultimate beck and call of the federal government. Today, they're called the National Guard. And they are provisioned in such a way that they prove the obsolescence of the Second Amendment.

So the REASON for the second Amendment is, quite literally, history. The first part - the reason we even have it - no longer applies.

Now, let's move forward.

We have a constitutional right to keep and bear arms for a reason that is no longer applicable. People can go out and buy a gun - as many guns as they want - any time. And these guns aren't the Founding Father's guns. Back in the late 1700's the flintlock had a rate of fire of no greater than four rounds a minute. Plus, it wasn't terribly accurate. Today's cheapest handgun is more accurate at fifty feet than the best flintlock of the day. Today's weapons shoot easier, farther, faster and hit harder than ever before. The upshot (pun intended) of this is that killing is easier with a modern weapon than the older one. Even a revolver can be fired (with fast reloads) nearly a hundred rounds a minute.

That's a lot of firepower.

So we have more deadly weapons today than anything the founding fathers imagined.

Next let's look at the "well regulated" part. I take it to mean that the militia is well trained, well disciplined and competent to use their firearms in the heat of battle. That's what the amendment SAYS, but what do we have today? Bubba Joe and the Band out wasting tree stumps with a sub-machine gun that could have won the Battle of Lexington single-handed who have never taken any formal training in military discipline or firearms safety.

There is a vast difference between a gun that takes fifteen seconds to load, prime, cock and shoot just laying around the house and one that is already loaded, primed and can self-cock by a light pull of the trigger. In short, the modern gun is far more likely to be set off by accident than one with which the founding fathers would be familiar. This means more accidents. In a military environment, there aren't a bunch of family members around who have no training who can pick up "daddy's gun" and accidentally (or on purpose) kill someone else. Like the difference between gunpowder and Nitroglycerin, you can kick the former around and not have to worry, but if you do that to the latter, you'll end up finding out what the bullet feels like when it's shot.

The long and short of it is that these guns are deadlier, easier to misuse or abuse with far more people around them who know less about safely using them than the average gun owner did (or even had to) back in the early days of the country. They are babies playing with dynamite and it's a constitutional right.

Anyone can go out and buy one, anytime, anyplace in the U.S. no questions asked.

The results of this situation are beyond tragic.

Each year, in the U.S. 30,000 or more people die due to gunshot wound for all reasons. Of these, 30 are killed in defense of home and hearth by an armed homeowner. Another 500 or less are killed by police. Given the margins, this means a solid 1000 Americans die by gunshot from (in order) suicide, accident, crime and other reasons for every single one killed to defend the home.

And defense of the individuals home was NEVER PART OF THE CONSTITUTION!

It's a right in order for the ordinary citizen to have something to use to defend the COUNTRY. Home defense is simply a holdover from the frontier days when one needed to protect themselves from the Native Americans or (more likely) each other. The Indian Wars ended in 1887. The number of intruders deliberately and correctly shot to death each year by gun-toting home defenders is less than one in a thousand gun deaths.

Today, people have forgotten why we have a Second Amendment. It's right there in the thing, but they ignore it. What's even worse, is that they keep harping on the second half, without remembering the first half, as some strange justification to fight against the state itself. Rather than for the defense OF the STATE, people today look upon it as a sacred right to allow them to ATTACK the state, to keep the State in line or to overthrow the government.

Never mind that the government will make a total hash out of any group who tries because regardless of what kind of guns the private citizen brings to the fray, the government has bigger, better and more powerful toys and can afford the best. If it comes to a revolution, my money's on the federal government. A few doses of Firemist, a couple of hundred rounds of HE from thirty miles away or a few precision-guided smart bombs and the rebels will be wannabe pate' on toast and the rest of us can go back to paying our taxes and being law-abiding citizens. Let's face it, no government today is going to be afraid of a bunch of dingbats carrying any kind of small-arms who think they can topple that government.

The carnage continues unabated. The only reason we have so many shootings (We have a higher murder rate than any of the top 25 industrialized countries in the world) is because we have so many guns.

So let's attack the fallacies that the right-wingers and radical wannabe's use when talking about repealing the Second Amendment. They say if you outlaw guns only outlaws will have guns.

On the face of it, yes. If a formerly law-abiding citizen uses a gun in a crime, they become outlaws. But before they were outlaws, they got their gun legally. Outlaws get their guns from people who have bought them legally in the first place. Cut off the supply of guns and you cut off their availability. As more and more guns are taken out of circulation, fewer and fewer of them will be out there ready to kill someone. Our death rate by firearm is so high simply because guns are so available, so simple to use and so efficient in action. Remove their availability and the number of deaths will go down.

In short, get rid of the RIGHT to keep and bear arms. Abolish the Second Amendment.

Another thing these moronic nitwits tend to cite is the gun control measures in Germany and other places that went into effect before a totalitarian regime took over and started killing citizens. They say the government first took away their tight to defend themselves then enslaved them. Yes, that happened, but re-read the above paragraphs about governments taking on its citizenry and you may understand that even if the citizens could have defended themselves back then, the difference in the outcome would have only been more dead citizens. And back then, the guns citizens had and the weapons the government had were closer in firepower to one another than they are today.

Just as the second Amendment was once relevant and useful, but is not longer so, personal gun ownership today would do nothing to stop a government from taking over its citizenry.

Finally, the most fallacious argument used to keep guns in the hands of Americans is the one citing WWII and the Japanese not invading America. Gun rights proponents would have you believe that the Japanese feared to invade the United States because the citizenry was all armed.

Bullshit.

The Japanese never wanted a protracted war with the United States in the first place. They thought a hard, decisive blow at America's ability to defend herself would bring America to the negotiating table where they could coerce the US into agreeing to end embargos of oil and iron from and through Indo-China (Indonesia today). This is why Hawaii wasn't invaded or occupied. The only occupation of American territory by the Japanese in WWII was a few minor spots in the Aleutian Islands, which itself was a distraction intending to draw out the American carriers so the Japanese could attack and invade Midway. They eventually withdrew from the Aleutians without a fight.

The Japanese never feared American citizens or their guns for the same reason a government doesn't fear its citizenry today: They had bigger, better weapons to bring to the table than anything Joe Average American may have had.

Common sense isn't, and citing that kind of history isn't applicable to today where precision munitions have little chance of missing their targets.

Now, all that said, I'm not against gun ownership. I own a gun myself. I'd never use the thing against another person, of course (it's a pretty dangerous thing to do to both you and them), but I enjoy the challenge of hitting a target at long range. Of course, I use a black powder rifle (more of a challenge), but that's beside the point.

The point is, gun ownership should not be a constitutional right. Driving is almost as essential to life today as hunting was back in the day. But driving is a privilege. So should be gun ownership.

The people who want to own guns should be required to state why they want one then have an intensive background check, including a mental health examination - and do this for EVERY PURCHASE OF FIREARMS OR AMMUNITION. They should be required to prove competence in handling their weapon (both on and off the range). They need to be required to pass frequent surprise inspections to prove they comply with all regulations and basically train with them on a regular basis. ANYTHING less than 100% compliance means you lose the privilege for life.

After all, this is the historical basis for the private ownership of weapons: Responsible weapon ownership. Even if it's not going to be in defense of the state, it's only prudent to make sure the people who have that kind of firepower at their command are fucking responsible for it ALL OF THE TIME. The firearm today is far more deadly than it was back when the founding fathers were drafting the Constitution. It requires a much higher standard of ability, understanding and training than before.

It's time that Joe Average Citizen had his guns taken away and we start screening who should and more importantly should not have guns. But in order to do that, we need to revoke the Second Amendment.

Unfortunately, I don't see that happening anytime soon and will probably happen only when people get tired of seeing 30,000+ Americans die at the hands of other Americans every year. We seem to take issue with terrorists killing one tenth that number, but we have killed more Americans in one year than the "bad guys" have killed in 9/11, Iraq and Afghanistan COMBINED.

You'd think we'd have a clue. If you want to find out why I think we don't, read the post before this one.