If you don't remember Part 1 it's because it was written a little over two years ago (or you never saw it). At the time, the news that gun shops were being bought out of guns and ammunition was making the national news. It seemed to many that the nation was arming itself to defend something. I chose to remind readers that this was not unprecedented. It had happened the last time a Democrat won the Presidency, although interestingly at no time of electing a Democratic President prior to that.
The nation could not articulate what it feared to much substance in 1993, it just bought guns. The only reasonable fear that gained celebrity was that Clinton might move to ban guns sales or worse. It seemed as if we might go to war over the ability to go to war to save our 2nd Amendment rights. The 2nd is viewed as a political last resort in many circles. This is not totally crazy. To a gun guy, taking his gun equates in every degree to taking his last right to vote. Hell, people that don't even vote think a gun equates to their right to vote.
The more ammo your gun can be loaded with, the more votes you have. It is as simple as that, certain operational and ballistic issues aside. This is a recurrent apparition in our collective nightmares as a nation. We need votes to protect liberty and we need guns to back them up. In the past though, politicians were not so impolite or impolitic as to mention it overmuch.
It's now, after Tucson, when an undefended and by all accounts splendid member of the House of Representatives has been stricken by a gun, that the subject of guns is again a national issue. The debate begins anew, again. We tend to let it lie, as too hard to solve, for extended periods and never really solve it.
In a very real sense of egalitarianism, we are more free because we can own guns than other societies where they are restricted. That through all the carnage and calamity collateral to the gun right we have upheld it, and through public debate redefined and focused the public on what is appropriate use of private firearms, has been an heroic burden on America. At times and so now, the price of irresponsibility has been very high in accidents and mayhem that couldn't have happened without guns. Right now we are failing our own trust in each other with 30,000 lives a year ending through gunfire. With 16,000 accidental gun injuries annually it seems at least we need to go to gun safety school.
If we are going to have guns around we need to think about them, onerous as that may seem to some on both sides of the issue aisle.
What we have right now is a domestic arms race. The reason private citizens now have access to thirty round Glock ammunition magazines is that the police and military have access to them. This access is in the truest sense of the marginal belief that one gun equals one guaranteed vote. It is a very dark issue in which to delve.
The practical evidence of a public/private arms race is in sales volumes of high firepower guns and large orders of ammunition. It may have started with the 1985 FBI Miami Shootout. The North Hollywood Bank Shootout of 1997 may have sealed the deal with the unconvinced that assault rifle firepower wins against typical police service revolvers which hold six rounds and even old school semi-auto pistols, like the venerable Colt Government model that holds seven rounds.
That the law abiding public should be armed as well as criminals are is a compelling argument. That the public should want to be as well armed as the government indicates a distrust of government as high as its distrust of criminals.
A little history. Until the advent of the M1 Garand semi-automatic rifle of WWII, the public was armed as well or better than the government. The Continental Army had inaccurate smooth bored muskets and the militia had much more accurate arms with grooved bores called rifiling. In the eighteenth century, the public had access to repeating rifles and the U.S. Army was armed with breech loading single shot rifles. During WWI, the public had parity in their hunting rifles with the Springfield 1903 that Gary Cooper used in his portrayal of Sgt. York. The M1 Garand rifle changed all that. Millions of military surplus M1 Garands were destroyed by the U.S. Government after cessation of WWII hostilities and millions were sold to the instant Cold War allies following the war. It was thought that a weapon so powerful should not be trusted in the hands of U.S. civilians. Few other countries would even stop to think about it.
It might be that they were right to withhold the M1 semi-automatic rifle from the public. War has created weapons so destructive that nations now devote billions of dollars to sorting out the threats to society that such weapons enable. Then again, the 5 shot repeating rifle of Sgt. York might have seemed a weapon of mass destruction to his contemporaries. After all, he is said to have neutralized 160 men with it when they were on guard and equally armed.
The gun, or bomb, or cyber attack, is an equalizer of power. The Colt .45 revolver was known as "The Great Equalizer" for limiting the advantage of stature the way sufficiently powerful personal weapons equalize the advantage of governments.
This is a question that goes to the root of civilization as the specter of withering firepower now constantly, weekly or yearly, presents itself in the hands of the irresponsible. This is a national debate that we must have. It is even a global debate. Can the suicidal or paranoid ideations of one or a few gunmen or bombers or hackers be allowed to bring governments to their knees? If they can, what will replace them? These are essential questions in understanding why the issue of gun ownership plagues us.
What plane is it that we must break through before government, even globally, is so trusted that we feel no need to be able to resist it like a Minuteman? How can we know that our ruling body represents us in such a way that grievance need not be redressed by arms? If the 2nd Amendment is a political amendment, under what circumstances might we find it obsolete? If we don't, the collateral damage of the 2nd will increase with the military industrial complex's charter of dealing in more and more advanced weapons. Organized war, in the end, finds its way to the streets in weapons technology.
The GOP might find that the NRA is a bright red flare over the nation, the world even. I already see it as such.