A few of my friends
on Facebook have decided that they want to post, almost exclusively, on 2nd
Amendment issues. They are the few
percentage points of the NRA membership that seem to be absolutists about guns
in America, but there are just a few things that they are trying pass off as
obvious that are really not. One friend
recently posted a picture with the words "The purpose of the Constitution
is to limit the power of federal government not the American People."
This just stuck me
as absurd. That's not to say there
weren't a lot of concerns over the size and power of the federal government as
it related to the states own governments, but the purpose of the Constitution
was spelled out pretty clearly in the preamble.
And nowhere in that preamble does it say "We the people, wish to
limit the power of federal government."
The actual limits to federal government were drawn up and included in
the document as a compromise to allow states to have their rights without
falling back into the crippling and ineffective Articles of Confederation.
It seems to me that
the 2nd amendment absolutists have thoroughly missed the point. The main concern of the
Democratic-Republicans of the mid to late 1700s was the possibility that the
federal government would either a) not have enough power to hold the union
together and defend it or b) create standing armies that would be able to
defend it but which could be used to oppress the citizens of the states.
We have gone so far
beyond what Jefferson and his bunch would have approved of (at least before he
was elected President) that the 2nd Amendment seems like a little boy sticking
his finger in the one of the holes of a crumbling dike. For instance, one of Jefferson's biggest
fears was that the US would create and maintain a standing army of professional
soldiers. Nobody arguing for gun rights
and claiming that everyone is a member of a militia agrees with Jefferson
anymore about not needing a standing army.
Jefferson himself was the first to use that standing army in a foreign
conflict, vastly expanding the power of the federal government and doing
something as President Jefferson that he very likely would have howled bloody
murder about had it been Adams who had done it.
(Not that I think he shouldn't have gone after the Barbary Pirates, but
then again, nobody asked me.)
The point is, the
purpose that Jefferson advocated the second amendment for is already
outdated. When a state militia,
regulated by the states as a counter to federal power, was something that every
man was expected to be part of, the act of banning weapons from them would have
been tantamount to disenfranchising the states of their check on the federal
government. Sure they got to select the
Senate and that gave them some sway on federal policy, but now even that is
gone. We have been chipping away at the
state's sovereignty from day 1. And we
have been doing so because it was all based on a very justified paranoia. But these days, unless you are planning on
letting the states buy their own aircraft carriers and nuclear weapons, as well
as all other forms of modern warfare, we the people have no chance of being able to stand up against our own military with the few semi-automatic weapons we can buy or the banana clips we think we need. But also, we are no longer paranoid. We have decided that we can trust our
federal government. Don't believe that
we trust the feds? Try taking away our
Medicare.
"You'll keep your gubmint hands of my Medicare if ya know what's good fer ya!"
"You'll keep your gubmint hands of my Medicare if ya know what's good fer ya!"
