Thoughts on the 2nd Amendment

While I still have that other question about race to develop into a much larger post, I wanted to take a moment to discuss some things I was thinking about the 2nd amendment.

A decision is pending in the Heller v. D.C. case, and that has made me think about the amendment again. It seems likely that the conservative members of the Court will interpret the Amendment to allow an individual right to own guns. This is the true crux of this case, as a finding in this direction will then allow the conservative majority to overturn the D.C. handgun prohibition. In light of the conservative majority's potential ruling, I got to thinking about the ramifications of what the Court might do.

The question seems to me to revolve around what will actually change in the U.S. if the Court finds an individual Constitutional right to own guns, incorporates it to apply to the states through the 14th amendment, and strikes down the D.C. gun regulation paving the way for all gun regulations anywhere in the country to be struck down by future Federal court action.

I think about this question as this would be the perfect ruling from the perspective of the right wing gun owners and their lobbying group the NRA.

While those of us on the left might see a ruling such as this as disastrous, I do not understand why. Put another way, what is wrong with giving on the gun control front? To me, this issue appears similar to the issue with the ending of the federally mandated speed limit. At that time, there were some who posited that raising the 65 mph speed limit on rural interstates would result in a large increase in the number of highway deaths in this country. However, to the best of my knowledge, that hasn't occurred. It has been several years since I last looked at the speed limit issue, but I feel relatively confident in saying that at worst, the rate of decline of the number of highway deaths in this country slowed, but a spike from high speed limits never occurred. I could be wrong about that assertion though.

I believe a similar thing would occur if right wing gun owners got their wish. Is there really pent up demand in NYC, Chicago, SF, DC, and all the other cities with restrictions on handgun ownership? Are gun ownership rates in those areas going to skyrocket if the regulations are gone? If gun ownership rates skyrocket, does that mean that gun deaths are going to also skyrocket? I don't think that either of those two things will come about because I don't think that there is pent up demand for guns in those cities. Perhaps, if gun ownership rates in those cities do spike, there might be a spike in the number of accidental shootings or gun accidents, but in terms of widespread shootings I just don't see that developing.

This whole discussion leads to the question of the political effects on the liberal agenda as a whole on the devotion to gun control. Is this devotion costing votes in rural areas that could be garnered in attempting to develop a greater progressive majority? Possibly, but I also am not sure that even if gun control didn't exist that rural voters would reassess their positions and find themselves to be Democrats.

Additionally, I was thinking about one of the arguments some gun owners make frequently about the 2nd amendment. Namely this argument forwards the idea that the 2nd amendment allows Americans to defend themselves with force against a tyrannical government (hereafter, gubmint). This argument is ridiculous on several fronts. First, I want to discuss it one from a philosophical point of view. Then, I want to discuss this argument from a practical point of view.

From a philosophical point of view, the right to rebel against the gubmint doesn't make sense in the context of relatively free participation in that gubmint by the people of the polity. Put more simply, voters and citizens cannot rebel against themselves, and as long as free and fair (for the most part) elections take place on a regular basis, a tyrannical government is not likely to exist. On the one hand I think the gun owners who forward this argument are part of a broader group of conservative rejectionists who refuse to play by the underlying rules of democratic/republican government. On the other hand, I think that those who espouse this view are simply playing on larger cultural ideas of American history and are ignorant of any broader political philosophical ramifications of their beliefs. Obviously those things are not incompatible, but, to me, the degree of culpability of the two positions in making the argument is important. The conservative rejectionists being more morally and intellectually culpable than those playing on larger cultural ideas. The basic philosophical point remains however, which is that citizens in a democracy cannot rebel against themselves. (I am sure someone else has developed this idea much more thoroughly, and as soon as I know who that is, I will attribute them properly.)

Having discussed that aspect of this idea that the 2nd amendment will allow people the ability to engage in armed insurrection against the United States, let's talk about the more practical aspects of such a belief. To do this,we need to conceptualize, and this is going to be tough, how the United States Military would respond to an armed insurgency... Snark aside, using Iraq as an example for a tyrannical US gubmint fighting an armed insurgency, it is possible to see the ludicrousness of the belief that Bubba and his brother are going to be able to pull it off a successful resistance to the gubmint. Iraq is actually a much better example than the United States because of the lack of any authority to control the dispersal of military grade weapons in the period between the collapse of the Saddam regime and the implementation of the Coalition Provisional Authority. Given the success in which the USMC crushed the insurgents in Falluja, I find it very hard to believe that engaging trained U.S. Military personnel in a fire fight is a recipe for success. As the Iraqis have shown, destabilizing a U.S. military occupation is much more successful when one uses explosives. From this practical point of view, the idea that "bearing arms" in the form of private ownership of firearms provides a means by which "the people" can protect themselves from the gubmint is inherently flawed. Any citizens militia in this country faced with the combined military and para military forces of this country would not stand a chance at achieving their goals. I bet this part of the reason why, despite proliferation of such right wing groups in the U.S. in the 1990s, none of these groups have actually moved to engage in such a battle. They know their claimed right is a practical sham.

A Quick Question

I hope to follow up on this in a soon to be forthcoming post.

Are those on the political right knowingly or unknowingly racist?

Obviously, it is probably a continuum.

The business with a recommended blogger from Instapundit made me think of this question.

You are wrong

It has been almost a year, and I just wanted to take this time to say that you are wrong regarding your last post. So boo on you.