The Supreme Court’s first-ever ruling on the Second Amendment– a sharp 5-4 split striking down the Washington, D.C. ban on handguns that’s been in effect since I was a child– touched off a lively discourse between myself and my significant other about politics, guns, and the law. It also revives the “bitter-guns-religion” comment the RNC seeks to use against Obama every day between now and the general election.
So let’s talk about it for a minute. Let’s talk about why the handgun ban was (and remains) entirely appropriate, why Bittergate is founded on a comment that, linguistically, makes a whole lot of sense, and why the positions I hold don’t run counter to my belief that law-abiding deer-hunting, target-practicing, crime-avoiding citizens in all 50 states have a protected right to own firearms. (AND I support the Brady ban.)
First of all, the argument for gun ownership that’s predicated on the immediate availability of a citizens’ militia is a joke. It would take a catastrophe we can’t even imagine for United States citizens to get off their sofas, load up their guns, organize, and take on an enemy. Prime example: on 9/11, I didn’t see all the gun owners protecting the Pentagon or encircling the gates to airports cracking down on passengers and sniping potential terrorists. The U.S. military & government handled that. Besides, wars aren’t fought by troop formations in militias anymore. The closest thing I can foresee to minutemen enforcing the law of the land is a solo vigilante enforcing his own brand of justice across the land. We call those “mass shootings.” The closest thing I can see to Americans protecting their way of life from a meddling or misguided government? Waco. So don’t tell me that gun ownership is some form of national security. It isn’t. That’s why we have a military and defense budget that are beyond compare.
Next up: The handgun debate. I grew up an hour outside of Washington, D.C. and I remember (even after the handgun ban was in effect) being keenly aware that Southeast was a good place to go if you wanted to get clipped by a stray bullet. Now, I know what you’re going to say: Handguns legally purchased by law-abiding citizens aren’t the issue in gun crime. And you’re right. They’re probably not. But the D.C. handgun ban is an important tool for law enforcement agencies. If they spot pistols on petty criminals who can’t be charged with much else, there is a law on the books that allows prosecution of those individuals, instead of letting them drive up the rate of gun violence. Banning handguns in the District gives law enforcement reason to believe that anyone who would willfully break that ban and carry a gun is probably not going to use it for shooting Pepsi cans.
The handgun ban doesn’t necessarily stop handguns from getting into the hands of would-be criminals. But it does create a scarcity of handgun dealers within the District. If handguns are outlawed, you can bet fewer stores will stock the clips and magazines for 9- and 8mm guns or .357s. The ban does make it just a little bit harder to commit a gun crime… and when one is committed, it makes the punishment a little harsher.
So some do-good lawyers are up in arms about this (no pun intended, but I’m keeping it). It’s a total violation of civil rights. Right? Is it really, or is it a wedge issue that the right wing can dramatize to keep their coffers full of donations during a campaign cycle? If the self-professed small-government types were that concerned about civil rights, they’d take up the issue of tweezers and shampoo in a carry-on bag long before they’d take up handguns in D.C., don’t you think? Oh but wait. That’s no longer a civil rights issue, it’s a national security issue?
Washington D.C. is unique from all the other states in the union. It’s not a state, and it’s not a city belonging to the State of Maryland or the Commonwealth of Virginia. It’s an independent federal district governed by Congress. D.C. is the international representative of the United States across the world, home to our embassies, our agencies, and our entire judicial, representative, and executive system. There are all kinds of bizarre laws that apply to the District and its residents– diplomatic immunity, an absolutely zero-tolerance DWI policy (if you get pulled over after one beer, it’s off to the chokey), can’t build higher than the top of the Capitol. You can’t even carry a pocketknife there. Why? Because it’s the nation’s capitol. And it’s different.
If banning handguns in the District of Columbia is part of a program to dramatically reduce overall crime (which it did) and make D.C. that much closer to a model city, I don’t see the problem. Owners of rifles, shotguns, and anything else that could be construed as a recreational firearm are welcome to own them in D.C. But handguns don’t make law-abiding citizens that much safer– in fact, in situations where the victim pulls a handgun on their attacker, they’re more likely to have the weapon turned against them than they are to debilitate the attacker. If you’re really that worried about it, get some damn mace!
Now, onto Bittergate. Let’s parse this sentence, and I’ll explain to you why Barry would have defended it if the average American newsviewer didn’t have the attention span of a hamster. About the former Southern Democrats, the Blue-Collar Blue Staters who have gone red, Barack Obama said the following:
“So, it depends on where you are, but I think it’s fair to say that the places where we are going to have to do the most work are the places where people feel most cynical about government” … In a lot of these communities in big industrial states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, people have been beaten down so long, and they feel so betrayed by government, and when they hear a pitch that is premised on not being cynical about government, then a part of them just doesn’t buy it.”
And the kicker:
“You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”
Please tell me what is wrong with that statement? Because I understood it the first time I read the transcript. And this is not me parsing words, this is just me paraphrasing what I hear in that statement:
“People in working-class areas feel frustrated with their government because, 25 years after manufacturing jobs have packed up and left town, it feels like their government’s economic policy has forgotten them. They don’t feel like trusting government solutions anymore because they have been burned. This economic mistrust has translated into a broader general mistrust of the United States government. Since the broader economic worry isn’t something that’s easily divided or articulated, these voters focus on easy explanations and arguments about illegal immigrants stealing jobs, or whether the government is interfering with their right to own guns, because they are easier positions to debate and defend. Since the government isn’t listening to them about the economy, they speak up about more divisive, hot-button issues in order to express their frustration.”
Now are you seriously going to tell me that isn’t totally true?
In conclusion. President Obama isn’t going to take away your .386 deer rifle, and he’s not making fun of your religion. He might try and put some windmills on your Appalachian mountains in place of the mountaintop coal removal that’s decimating the landscape, but he’s not going to destroy your way of life. You don’t need a pistol in the District of Columbia and you don’t need a damn M-16A2 to shoot opossums.
