The 2nd Amendment

Oh no!  A liberal nightmare! 

I watched a segment of 60 Minutes tonight about how easy it is for foreign nationals to buy guns in the U.S. and transport them out of the country.  As I sat there listening, I thought about my feelings on gun ownership.  I found that I wasn’t horrified by the prospect of access to guns.  Crisis!  I decided to do some extremely fast research: According to the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, 39% of American households have a gun.  There are approximately 192,000,000 privately owned guns in the U.S.  In 1996, handguns were used to murder 2 people in New Zealand, 15 in Japan, 30 in Great Britain, 106 in Canada and 9,390 in the United States.  Those figures should send any good lefty into a panic.  So why didn’t it?

Being the card-carrying liberal that I am, I have always thought that a few less guns in the U.S. would not be a bad thing.  I’ve often thought that bans on assault weapons, semi-automatics, handguns, and other weapons that are more properly used by the military rather than for sport or personal defense should be expanded.  I’ve heard the arguments from both sides about the second amendment, and I have to believe that "a regulated militia" has nothing to do with a personal arsenal rivaling that of an active-duty national guardsman. 

I cannot forget, however, my heritage.  I was born and raised (mostly) in Michigan.  Michigan, it is widely joked, has three seasons: Winter, road construction, and rifle season.  Michigan is the home to more than one million deer, and every winter thousands of men and boys alike leave their homes for weeks at a time for "deer camp."  Somehow I was spared this rite of passage into manhood, and yet I know all too well how entrenched hunting is in the minds and psyches of the men of Michigan and other states with sizable numbers of game animals.  I would not take my father’s hunting bows or rifles from him.  My father is an ig’nant Republican, but he is peaceful.  He would never take up a gun or other weapon in enmity.  He talks big, but I question whether he’d really be able to shoot someone else even if he doubtless knew he himself would die if he didn’t. 

My liberal crisis was not allayed by my father’s hunting, however.  As I reflected on Ed Bradley’s piece, I realized that my feelings about gun ownership were more influenced by my ideal of American liberty.  Michael Douglas, acting in one of my favorite movies, The American President, said that America is advanced citizenship.  To accept American ideals of freedom means that you have to take the good with the bad.  Freedom of speech means someone might say something I don’t like, but I have to let them say it.  Freedom of religion means that foolish rednecks everywhere can try to use the Bible to prove I’m an infidel, but I have to let them believe it.  And Americans own guns.  It is part of our identity.  Good or bad, right or wrong, American liberty says we have to accept the consequences of our freedom. 

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. "  Benjamin Franklin, 1759.