How Nutty Are the Gun Nuts?
I find myself in a rather awkward position. I’m about to (sort of) defend the “gun nuts.” It freaks me out too, but what can I do.
It started when I noticed Senate bill 1317. The bill got my attention because it mentioned terrorists. And whenever a bill mentions terrorists, I start wondering what new civil liberty someone is trying to take away from us. I think of illegal spying and an end to habeas corpus. The bill says it is meant
S. 1317
To increase public safety by permitting the Attorney General to deny the transfer of firearms or the issuance of firearms and explosives licenses to known or suspected dangerous terrorists.
Now that sound reasonable. No sane person wants terrorists to get their hands on weapons. There is that word “suspected” though. We all know what happens when “suspected” is sufficient to take away someone’s rights.
In a nutshell, this hinges on how much you trust the Attorney General’s idea of “reasonable belief.” For me, the verdict is not yet in on this particular attorney general. I can say with certainty that the last couple did not have an idea of “reasonable belief” that came even close to mine. Who knows about the next ones. And let me remind you that our government already has a history of labeling innocuous student groups as terrorists.
Now, you may say “So what. People shouldn’t have guns anyway.” I understand that sentiment. I’m not a fan of guns. I am a pacifist after all. But the truth is that most gun owners aren’t out killing people or joining racist militias. And given what our food industry does to animals, hunters are often a hell of a lot more humane than the people who put our meat in pretty little packages.
All of the above made me think about the two essential claims that the “gun nuts” make. The first is that the right to bear arms is in the constitution. The second is that there are people (democrats mostly) who want to take their guns away. I have to admit that both of those claims are true. I happen to be one of the people who has wanted to take their guns away.
I won’t pretend to understand gun owners love of their guns. And I think the idea that having a rifle will protect you from your government is a bit insane at this point. The government has bombers and nukes. Shooting your gun up at a bomber might make a good scene in the new Red Dawn remake, but it ain’t going to do a whole lot to protect you. Then again, those Iraqis had a pretty low tech arsenal and managed to kick our asses, so…
Much as I hate to come out on the side of the gun lobby, here I am. Do we want to give the DOJ the power to start designating people as “suspected terrorists” and then assigning their rights (or lack thereof) based on that designation?
If people are plotting to use those weapons to commit crimes, we need to investigate. We have RICO statutes and criminal conspiracy charges that can be brought against them. We have an imperfect, but functioning, judicial system where they should be tried.
There may be people who don’t think there should be a right to bear arms. That’s a perfectly legitimate opinion. They should be honest about it and say that they want to amend the constitution.
