Students substitute gun control protest for active shooter drill

boing
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There’s a thread about this, and almost everyone is.

Scanning for others who are generally pro-gun on the boards, I note that they actually rank more authoritarian than average (average for BB, still well below the line). If that sounds counter-intuitive, like more libertarian ought to be more against regulation and therefore pro-gun-if-gun-is-what-the-individual-wants then I think there are two possible answers:

  1. Tests that measure this sort of thing are wound up in contemporary politics and the signifiers they use to determine your position don’t always match your actual position.
  2. Actually being pro-gun is kind of an authoritarian position.

I’d say it’s more the latter. Oppression can come from anywhere: the government, landlords, creditors, neighbours, strangers. More guns in the hands of everyone means more oppression by threat of deadly violence. Guns symbolize oppression, and while this isn’t true for everyone, I think a substantial portion of the people who would argue that guns symbolize freedom to them have confused freedom for the ability to oppress others.

Unfortunately the US supreme court is so politicized that we really don’t know what passes constitutional muster. Keep in mind you are talking about what the second amendment means based on a 2008 ruling and a 2010 ruling. The second amendment didn’t support an individual’s right to own guns for personal use for 211 years, and it has supported it for 10 years. Precedents get overturned.

That said, if rephrased to, “The current court is likely to uphold rulings that would overturn barring private ownership or renewing the AWB,” you may be right. But I wouldn’t discount the chance those craven excuses for jurists cave to public pressure, since caving to political interest is basically what they did to make the rulings you cite.

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And so many people fail to understand the second amendment, as it was written and intended.

“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.”

The third (god damn) word is “regulated.” And the idea of keeping and bearing arms is tied to the concept of a regulated militia. It doesn’t say “a well regulated Militia” AND “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms.” The clause on arms is subordinate to the first. The right to the Arms is specifically tied to regulation. The regulation of the militia, shall not be infringed.

People have this whole thing so fucked up in their heads. Nowhere is there written an absolute right to any weaponry you personally desire.

Consider the “big guns” of the day. Cannons, armies and navies. Did they feel any asshole in western Massachusetts could raise an army, or construct a navy and arm them with cannons, as their personal right?

Highly doubt it. Consider Hamilton’s writing in Federalist papers #29:

“Little more can reasonably be aimed at, with respect to the people at large, than to have them properly armed and equipped; and in order to see that this be not neglected, it will be necessary to assemble them once or twice in the course of a year.”

In other words, militias are the place where people exercised their right to keep and bear arms. Not as individuals. Most people felt this way, not just Hamilton. He happened to be who put it into words.

When the 2nd was conceived, a well-regulated militia was the dominant idea over the subordinate idea of keeping and bearing arms. You had to buy your own weapon, but your duty was to State and Country.

We have lost this ethos. Now, the gun lobby has twisted the second into being all about individual rights. It was never conceived that way. It was conceived as individual responsibility, subject to overarching regulation. Organized. Not chaos, like we have now.

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From what I’ve read about right-wing authoritarian followers, they have a great deal of fear and anxiety about the world around them that can only be assuaged by trusting in something or someone with characteristics representing power that promises take their side (e.g. a strong father, an autocrat, a movement focused on exerting political will through force and intimidation). I could see a firearm representing that to a left-leaning person who was otherwise far more concerned with individual liberties than your typical authoritarian follower.

By a one-justice margin in the case of Heller. The dissents in that case were very compelling. Given the right case, I could see Roberts (who cares mainly about corporations), Kennedy (the swing vote), or Alito (now unmoored from his “originalist”* Sith Lord) switching things the other way.

[* to call Scalia an originalist when it comes to the Second Amendment verges on the absurd]

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Scalia wasn’t an “originalist” he was a “whatever I say”-alist on anything. I heard a lot of people praise his intelligence after his death, it’s a shame he devoted his intelligence to arguing in favour of stupid positions.

If he cared so much what the founders meant to say, then he shouldn’t have been on the bench at all. I’d wager that if the founders even conceived that a person through would have regarded as Italian might one day be on the court they would have explicitly banned it.

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Dealing only with high-capacity semi-autos stands to reduce terror attacks in the US, however, not dealing with handguns allows the homicide (particularly, domestic) and suicide rates to remain unacceptably high.

We’re adults. We can do more than one thing at a time.

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To add to the “do anything but deal with the actual problem” pile, which at this point is so tall it could probably double as an inexpensive space elevator…

What could possibly go wrong?

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Yes, for example noted fascist George Orwell once wrote:

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.

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Of course. I am trying, despite late onset ADHD, to stay on this specific topic. I think the causes and remedies for handgun violence are a few shades different than this domestic terrorism thing with AR-15’s that we are facing.

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When the anything but deal with the actual problem pile gets too high, it falls over onto the what could possibly go wrong? pile, knocking that one over, too.

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pwned  

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Orwell isn’t the god of anti-authoritarians, and I don’t take his thoughts as gospel. Whether a gun symbolizes democracy or fascism is largely a question of who it is aimed at. Orwell’s vision of the noble everyman who would put his life on the line to stand up for democracy is either outdated or it was a fantasy to begin with. If fascism comes to the USA in the next few years the majority of gun owners will be on the side of the fascists, and those guns will be the tools of posses that round up dissidents.

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