Some Second Amendment Thoughts

Countering The BS

Hello, my name is David, and I am a retired cyclotron physicist. I am interested in the course of our country and the world, especially regarding the potential of a slide into tyranny. To that end, I am starting a Substack. This is the first.

Second Amendment Thoughts

The culture war brims over with skirmishes over the Second Amendment. The modern Left maintains that it is dangerous and leads to higher crime rates, and that it was only important in our pioneer past. Some members of the Left may believe this, while others just don't like that it is a check on arbitrary power. The Right, whatever that means, sees it as a protector of individual rights. (What is the Right, anyway? The Left claims that the German Socialist Workers Party were on the Right, as though Hitler was passing out handguns to Jews to keep them out of the camps.)

It was not always the case that Democrats were so against the Second Amendment. Consider:

“The right of the citizens to bear arms is just one more guarantee against arbitrary government, one more safeguard against tyranny which now appears remote in America, but which historically has proved to be always possible.” Hubert Humphrey – Democrat, U. S. Senator, Presidential Candidate and Vice President

Notice that Humphrey said nothing about hunting or protection from crime, but that it is a safeguard against tyranny, a view now considered to be extreme right wing, but just a typical American attitude at that time. Also, the word is arms, not guns in particular.

Going with that same point of view, here is Mr. 1984 himself:

"The totalitarian states can do great things, but there is one thing they cannot do: they cannot give the factory-worker a rifle and tell him to take it home and keep it in his bedroom. That rifle hanging on the wall of the working-class flat or labourer's cottage, is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there." George Orwell

Orwell's “rifle” would have been the “assault rifle” of his day.

What about all of those school shootings, one may ask. One may note that school shootings did not begin until after the passage of the Gun Free School Zones Act in 1990. A cynical view would be this:

School shootings. Pass a law legally prohibiting the adults in a school from protecting the children, wait for the occasional nut case, blame Republicans and guns, never mention said law or how the shooters are on psycho-active drugs, rinse and repeat. Frequently talk about school shootings on the news so the nut cases never forget. (So people will give up their guns. After all, people will not willingly get in the boxcars.)

This might be a little strong, but the coastal elites should be aware that many people see things in something of this light.

But clearly, one may opine, any truly decent, well meaning and spiritual person would never condone an armed populace since that would just not be right.

“Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act of depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest.” Mahatma Gandhi

So, is it just a matter of if you are for the powerful or for the people?

We always hear, considering the latest proposed restriction, that if it saves just one life it's worth it. They neglect to say that if it costs just one life it's not worth it. How about, if removing a given firearms restriction saves just one life, it's worth it? The fact that such thoughts are anathema to the left makes one suspect that saving lives is not the issue.

Are there any cases of gun control costing lives? A couple come to mind. At one time airline pilots were required to carry handguns if there was U.S. mail on board, so in effect they always did. (Most pilots were ex military anyway, and they simply had them in their carry on bags, not on their hips.) Rules slowly changed, going to optional until, not too long before 9/11 they were completely banned. After 9/11 there was great resistance to allowing pilots to be armed, and was done only with great regulation.

To reiterate, the other obvious case is school shootings. School shootings were unheard of before the Gun Free School Zones act of 1990. Why is it that the act was not rescinded after the school shootings started? Similarly, before 1968 one could simply buy a gun with cash and walk out of the store with it, yet we did not have mass shootings.

Clearly, at least for the leaders, the issue is not public safety.

Popular among 2A supporters is the idea of the four boxes. The idea is that the protections to liberty contained in the Bill of Rights consist of the ballot box, the jury box, the soap box and the cartridge box. Upon inspection one notices that only the last consists of real, physical objects. A tyrannical government may simply do away with voting, corrupt the court system and eliminate freedom of speech. They would no doubt declare the private possession of arms to be illegal, but collecting them would be a monumental task.

Before all else, be armed. - Niccolo Machiavelli

A disturbing aspect of the 20^th century is the large number of people killed by their own governments. Total numbers vary depending on the source, but it's fair to say that at least 100 million people died in this way. (It's hard to pin down; if you died while serving a hard labor sentence in the Soviet Union, does that count?) One may turn around the saving one life argument and say, “If it prevents just one genocide, it's worth it.”

There is the entire issue of the effect of gun control on crime. The tone from the media is always to the effect that, of course, gun control reduces crime, but they do not provide evidence. A big issue is just the fact that there is much that does not come through in official statistics. A person who fends off a burglar in New York City with an illegal gun cannot report it to the police. (He may realize that the criminal will then go on to victimize an unarmed New Yorker, but he can't do anything about it.)

Then there are the crimes that simply don't occur do to the presence of arms. Businesses that do not suffer the from organized crime perpetrating protection rackets, for instance, as they often do in the more heavily restricted areas. Indeed, it seems probable that organized crime is drawn to such areas,and avoids the others.

For Second Amendment quotes:

Well, that's a few thoughts on this inflammatory subject.

Stay brave, stay free.