In the wake of the latest headline-grabbing school shooting in Oregon, we Americans find ourselves once again deep in debate about guns. It has mostly been two main sides talking past each other, those on the left side pleading to no one in particular that the country needs stronger regulations and background checks on who can purchase firearms, and those on the right furiously fighting any of these proposals. While when pressed, gun enthusiasts fall back on the fallacy of tradition, that the second amendment guarantees their right as individuals to own as many firearms as they want. Pressed further, their utilitarian argument is that people need to be armed in order to overthrow the government if it turns tyrannical. At its heart this is a simple appeal to authority, 'the founders said I can have guns, who are you to question them?' This does not hold any logical weight, as Australian comedian Jim Jeffries argues during his now-famous stand up routine, the only reason people have guns is that they like guns. That is the only defense that is valid, every other reason is rationalization for simply liking guns. Some rationalizations come out of fear, fear of crime in particular, but also fear that the system does not work, that you need to defend yourself because the police and justice system are unreliable. The fear that stems from insecurity is real and comes from many more areas than the simple belief that evil exists. Economic security for the vast majority of Americans is slipping away and simply gone in many cases, many people are afraid that the other people victimized by the travails of free-market capitalism are out to get them.
Robert Parry recently wrote an excellent examination of the other, darker side of gun rights activists' argument, that of overthrowing the government. That somehow the founders' imagined that the future would necessarily be one of barely-constrained anarchy with a population everready to the founders' creation were it to get out of line. Parry demonstrates that this line of thinking is the exact opposite of the founders' intent, the second amendment was designed to "ensure domestic tranquility" and maintain the rule of law and order in case of populist uprisings, slave revolts, or attacks by Native American tribes or other foreign nations. He notes that it was not until 2008 that the Supreme Court finally interpreted the second amendment as guaranteeing an individual right to own firearms.
“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.”There, it is one sentence. Simply liking guns does not give anyone license to ignore that the subject of that sentence is the "well-regulated militia" and that "the people" that the amendment describes is singular, not plural. But to understand why that is we need to look at the foundations of our republic through the eyes of the founders.
In his excellent book, Empires of Trust
One thing that did not change in ancient Rome was technology. From republic to principate, to dominate, to the fall of empire in the west people lived in the bronze age. Armies fought with sword and spear, there was no analog for the industrial and technological changes of American history. The founders of the American republic were extremely cognizant of what went wrong in Roman one, and were determined to sculpt our constitution and republic to prevent them. The "Roman" state lasted for two millennia to the fall of Constantinople in 1453 in the face of Turkish cannonfire. Not a bad run. The world is so incredibly different today from when the United States was founded just two and a half centuries ago. Are we following in the Romans' footsteps by not allowing a practical and sincere reexamination of the right to bear arms?
Bob Cesca and Chez Pazienza often remark on their show that the founders could not have imagined the state of technology in the twenty-first century, much less of weaponry. Imagine what one platoon of M1 Abrams Main Battle Tanks with ample stocks of fuel and ammunition could have done on the side of the American Patriots during the Revolutionary War. Recall the plot of The Final Countdown