Second Amendment Notes 03/13/2013

Yesterday on NPR a program quoted a poll saying that approximately 50% of people interviewed owned guns for self protection, and about 25% said their gun was for hunting. These outcomes were a flip-flop from polls some years ago which showed 49% for hunting and 25% for self defense.

1) This follows the change from Rural to Urban American society: as the rural nature of the country dissipates, hunting tends to be less prevalent;

2) the need for self defense emphasizes that there originally was a need for "group defense" which has also dissipated away since the time of the Founding Fathers.
The armed groups known as militia were obviously not for self defense of an individual, but for group defense of a society or subsection thereof, such as a town or city or state.

The idea of self defense of a radically atomistic individual which we have today seems to be relatively recent, say going back to WW II.

It is quite possible that 200 years ago, polls would have shown people valuing group defense against slave insurrection or Indian incursions as paramount.

--

New Rationals for the Second Amendment

Recently, I stated that the Second Amendment was put in place to make sure that large armed groups could be readily established for whatever purposes society requires.

These purposes were those of

(1) War for societies of the late 1700's; a militia would have no place in today's wars of atomic weapons and drones,

(2) fighting against Native populations, and

(3) fighting against slave rebellions.

Since militias have no place in our society's wars - except in films like Red Dawn - and the Indians have been through genocide and back, and the slaves have been freed, what happens to things like the Second Amendment?

Obviously, it either withers away, or it seeks a new rationale for existence.

(I do not mean to imply anything about gun ownership; I am only interested in the dynamics of what is going on with guns in America today.)
--

The Sources Of Militia

The Second Amendment is concerned with maintaining militias, that is, groups of armed men (usually men in those days) who were necessary for whatever purposes groups of armed men are needed.

The Founding Fathers could identify at least three needs for militias:

1) to fight in war, with the Revolution in mind,

2) to fight against Native Americans, which the country had a long history of by the time of the writing of the Bill of Rights, and

3) to fight against slave insurrections, which were more common than we usually think. I recall the first time I read Mary Boykin Chestnut's journals - some years before Ken Burns' Civil War was ever shown - and remember being surprised how large a role fear of insurrection played.

Need #1 was a memory and might be needed again (1812), but needs #2 and #3 remained acute for much longer; #3 until the end of the Civil War, and #2 a bit longer.

Now, if indeed the Bill of Rights reflected active and acute needs, what happens when those needs become moribund?
--

Second Amendment Sacrifice 12/11/2012

PORTLAND, Ore. - A masked gunman wearing camouflage opened fire Tuesday in a busy Portland, Oregon, mall, leaving the gunman and two others dead and forcing the mall's Santa Claus and hundreds of Christmas shoppers and employees to flee or hide among store displays.

. . . . . The gods' thirst for blood will be slaked.
--

The Second Amendment

Branch Davidian Pennant

I support owning guns. I do, however, maintain that insane people should not possess them. If this seems odd and duplicitous, it is exactly what our society believes about guns, and I am a member of this society. One possible interpretation of the intent of the Founding Fathers is that the 2nd Amendment was designed to allow the citizenry to rebel against a tyrannical central government. Most people think that tyrannical central governments have disappeared.

The Tories at the time of the Revolution believed that proposition: that the central government, the reign of King George was no tyranny; it was a benign autocracy. Tyranny has remarkable genes, however. It tends to live long...and prosper.

I support the rights of the Branch Davidians who wished to, if not rebel, to withdraw from the social tyranny and protect themselves. They were cruelly slaughtered. Somehow the government wants me to believe they set themselves on fire. Possibly all the intelligence here is wrong, also. Our early experience of terrorism was domestic, brought on as a response to the government slaughter of the Branch Davidians at Waco. And there still are militias. Or did you forget that? If this financial crisis turns into depression, I believe we will hear of the militias again. And...get a gun, for pity sake.