It seems to me that the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School was a tipping point in this country. I cannot say why it was not one of the numerous mass shootings before this, some of which took place in elementary schools, and what tipped seems to be different for different people. Some Americans found the courage to argue for weapons control, and others seem to have seen it as reason to go a little crazy. It would be easy to misunderstand that statement, so let me explain. I do not mean that everyone who does not support weapons control is crazy, but rather that some people abandoned political discourse in favor of lunacy. The NRA offered an idea that, by putting police in every school, would expand the size of government and raise taxes on the order of $27,000 per person per year. The idea that the NRA would be advocating bigger government and a tax rate increase of 50% of median income strikes me as crazy. Then there was Alex Jones, whose attention grab involving Piers Morgan was, well, crazy. Inevitably, the Second Amendment was pulled into the fray, including both crazy and not discussion.
I like the history of the documents that have created a new vision of democratic republics and democracy. The Magna Carta and English Common Law are as important as the Declaration of Independence when it comes to shaping the American government and legal system. Looking further back into history Ur-Nammu's and Hammurabi's codification of laws have shaped our modern interpretation of the importance of codified laws. Yet, when I read the Constitution, I am overcome with the sense that the Founding Fathers did not want to codify laws, but rather create a system of how to codify laws. I do not think the Founding Fathers would passionately commit to every word in the constitution, which is probably good, because we have changed much of it.
While in Puerto Rico recently, I learned about the Nationalist movement of the first half of the 20th Century on the island. One of the things I found profoundly interesting about it was that no one outside of the island seems to have heard of it. With any political movement, it is difficult to know when to start, but I think the best place to start is with Law 53 of 1948, better known as the Gag Law. The law, which would eventually be overturned as unconstitutional, banned the flying or ownership of a Puerto Rican flag, discussion or writing about the nationalist movement, or speaking against the US Government. This clearly violated the First Amendment rights of Puerto Ricans.
Puerto Ricans were suffering under other affronts to their liberties as well. They were, and are, being taxed without representation (as are the residents of all US protectorates, it is actually on the DC license plate). A standing army (unconstitutional by the original text) was being garrisoned on their island (arguably their "home"). Essentially, the Puerto Ricans were/are a colony suffering the same oppression that the original 13 Colonies were.
While an elementary school in Connecticut in 2012 seems far removed from Puerto Rican independence, the ties are remarkably strong when you consider the arguments of many of those who oppose weapons control. In the wake of the tragedy, and really any time weapons control comes up, Charlton Heston may have chosen the crazy path, shouting, "from my cold, dead hands," after Columbine, others have sought to tout the benefits of having one firearm per person. Some of these people claim that the Second Amendment is to keep the American Government "afraid" of the American people - afraid of violent uprising at the first sign of tyranny.
The preferred example of this is the Battle of Athens, where the, admittedly oppressed, residents of a county in Tennessee rose in violent revolt against the local government. The whole thing boiled over regarding concerns of election fraud, a shoot-out with police ensued, and the people overcame the oppressive local government. The use of firearms to preserve freedom in this incident is celebrated by those who read the Constitution as having only one 27 word sentence. I do not support killing police officers under any circumstance, but the NRA does, so I will, for the sake of argument, concede that firearms, have, once in the history of the country, been used by civilians to fight for lawfulness. Once.
At this point, it becomes tricky to me. I think those concerned citizens could have found a peaceful resolution, but they chose violence. So when, is it okay to choose violence, and when does a government become tyrannical? Two questions that we must ask ourselves before the argument that the Second Amendment protects anyone from the possible tyranny of the American Government.
Asking when it is okay to choose violence is difficult to answer, and I think the pacifists have it right. One may choose violence only when someone else has made that the only available choice (arguably, when it is no longer a choice). A pacifist can hit back when they get hit. They may choose not to, but doing so does not violate any sacred text. A Buddhist Monk, if in fear of his own life, or the life of another, would not be denied enlightenment if he sought to defend life. I would like to think they could be more clever, saving lives like a non-violent superhero, but they are only human, and at some point, for all humans, violence may well be the solution. So, when someone else chooses to leave you no other option, violence is okay. If you look at all the wars in American history, I think World War II meets this requirement, and had people been enlightened enough to not fight World War I, it probably never would have happened. Again though, for the sake of argument, I will grant that in some hypothetical situation, violence may be the answer.
So the next quandary is the definition of tyranny. Every government, at all times, is considered tyrannical by someone. I do not think Ted Kaczynski bothered to write a manifesto, and conduct a campaign of terror for sport, rather, he thought he was protecting people from the tyranny of society. Timothy McVeigh, sympathizing with the Militia movement, thought he was combating tyranny. At Ruby Ridge the US Government's handling of the situation was decidedly a debacle, but Randy Weaver's paranoid views probably saw it as tyrannical. David Koresh was probably not alone among those accused of pedophilia at perceiving tyranny in a government that does not tolerate their behavior, and I think anyone under siege for 50 days probably sees the government as being tyrannical. While no violence (that I am aware of) has come out of the polygamists communities, certainly they are subjected to a bit of social tyranny. Every civil rights activist, regardless of cause, has probably felt like they were up against some form of tyranny as well. While some of this tyranny is more real than others, and some more justified, society demands that the victims seek a peaceful resolution. Sometimes that resolution is a change in society, and sometimes it is in the oppressed. But oppression against some for the perception of the greater good is commonly accepted as part of a functioning democratic republic, or more simply, in a country of 300 million people, someone is going to feel oppressed.
Beyond the complication of the fact that some people will feel oppressed, when others feel empowered or protected, the idea of tyranny becomes befuddled in moral obscurity. The people of Bhutan loved their monarch, who stepped aside for democracy, against the wishes of many, if not most, of his subjects. The Bhutanese are further upset by the abdicating king because as it turns out, a king who measures his success in the Gross Domestic Happiness, rather than Product, is a fair bit more honest than politicians who have to make campaign promises to get elected. Bhutan represents a grey area characterized by a warm yellowish glow. At the risk of offending every American, were not Osama bin Laden and the September 11th hijackers fighting tyranny? A tyranny that ended slavery, desegregated schools, and had the audacity to build schools for girls! When malevolent acts are carried out to end benevolent tyranny, it is safe to say that the morality of tyranny is more difficult to assess than to define tyranny in the first place.
In light of the complexity of defining what tyranny is, and when it becomes a problem, maybe the literal followers of the Second Amendment are not giving the Founding Fathers enough credit in their cleverness. Maybe James Madison actually knew what he was doing when he included the seemingly vague "well regulated militia" part. Madison, perhaps, could have been acknowledging that people should not own cannons, warships, fortresses, and personal armies. Maybe Madison knew that individuals could never oppose the government, so he, (reportedly reluctantly) wrote the Second Amendment so that the federal government could not prevent the states from having militias capable of defending the rights of states. Madison may have known that unregulated citizenry with arms would result in violence and death, but gave the state's the right to maintain militias, composed of well-regulated, armed individuals. This would then make it so the majority of the people in a state would have to gain the support of the governor and the legislature before deciding to act violently against the supposed tyranny, a form of checks and balances on the potentially dangerous consequences of a few people perceiving tyranny.
We can only conjecture what Madison, the Founding Fathers, and the First Congress were thinking when they amended the Constitution (I think it can never be stated enough that the Second Amendment is an amendment to the Constitution, not the Constitution). However, we can, with great certainty, look at what happens when people suffering under real and true tyranny under the United States Government decide to act violently against that government without the backing of a state-run, well-regulated militia. To do this, we need only to learn about Puerto Rican history.
On 30 October 1950, the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party rebelled against the tyranny of the US colonial government. In the days leading up to the 30th, the police began arresting and killing Nationalists. While the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party was no stranger to government orchestrated massacres, the renewed police violence galvanized the people, and rebellion began to take hold throughout the island. In San Juan, the United States Courthouse and the governor's mansion were attacked with machine gun fire. The police, made aware of the impending attacks through informants, were prepared, killing or wounding most of the perpetrators to neutralize the attacks, and to arrest those responsible. In seven towns, including Jayuya and Utuado, the Nationalists successfully revolted.
In Jayuya, the Nationalists raised the Puerto Rican flag (a crime under the Gag Law), seized the police station, cut the telephone lines, and burned the post office. President Harry Truman declared martial law, and ordered the US Air Force to bomb the town. The Puerto Rican National Guard, and US Infantry joined the fray. Jayuya was bombed, strafed, and shelled for the three days the Nationalists controlled the town. After the town fell, police and the national guard swept into the town making mass arrests.
In nearby Utuado, Air Force P-47s bombed and strafed the building where twelve Nationalists retreated when the fight was lost. Of the twelve who retreated, three men died in the aerial assault. When the national guard ordered the remaining nine to surrender, they were marched to town square, and stripped of belts, shoes, and personal belongings. They were then marched behind the police station and executed. No judge, jury, or trial, only a swift and gruesome execution. Wikipedia includes among the dead a 17 year old who pleaded for water while the police bayoneted the life from his body.
These events were the first time in the Twentieth Century that the US Government used the military against its own citizens, yet no mainland American seems aware of the violence. Certainly this seems strange since two Nationalists actually made an assassination attempt on Truman at Blair House, killing a White House Police officer. The event, which according to Wikipedia is regarded as the biggest shootout in Secret Service history, failed to gain attention for the Puerto Rican Nationalist movement, but why? Truman distanced himself from the incident, and the fact he ordered military force to be used against civilians. The news from the island was suppressed by the government, and any news of the revolution was reported as an incident between Puerto Ricans.
When this incident is viewed through the lens of an armed citizenry defending itself from a tyrannical government something becomes absolutely obvious. Even with illegal weapons (the Nationalists were armed with machine guns), the revolution could not match the might of the United States military. The revolt would not have been able to stand against the Puerto Rican police, nor the Puerto Rican national guard. Americans cannot revolt against the might of the military without full support of the governor of the state, and the state's militia (from the Civil War we know that even this is unlikely to succeed). The constitutionality of weapons control under the argument of defending against oppression and tyranny is a moot point, and I suspect Madison knew this when he crafted the Second Amendment.
Yet, people are dedicated to finding an argument to defend the amendment at all costs. They are willing to abandon every other aspect of the Constitution and its amendments to preserve their perceived right to possess weapons designed for the mass killing of innocent people. I have not been presented with a single logical argument to preserve the laissez-faire attitude towards weapons, not one. For me, the only thing I can think is that those who choose to not see the value of logical weapons control, but only a trampling of rights they do not actually have are motivated not by constitutionalism, but rather cowardice. They know they can never live up to the requirements of a hero, but a childhood dream requires them to find a way. The route they choose is a firearm, then they create a hypothetical situation where they could be the hero, and defend their dream with any pretext they can find. For these people, talking about weapons control becomes not a discussion about making a better world, but is interpreted as an attack on their dream.
To these people, I have a piece of advice, find a new dream. If a gun does not kill people, it does not make heroes either. Heroic people are altruistic, not armed. As for defending against tyranny, no weapons, I doubt even fighter jets and nuclear bombs, can defend against tyranny without a well regulated state militia.
---
A Note on Citations: This post draws heavily from sources including The Lonely Planet and Wikipedia, but direct citations are rarely used, as much of the material seems to be "common knowledge," even if no one seems to have heard about it.
I like the history of the documents that have created a new vision of democratic republics and democracy. The Magna Carta and English Common Law are as important as the Declaration of Independence when it comes to shaping the American government and legal system. Looking further back into history Ur-Nammu's and Hammurabi's codification of laws have shaped our modern interpretation of the importance of codified laws. Yet, when I read the Constitution, I am overcome with the sense that the Founding Fathers did not want to codify laws, but rather create a system of how to codify laws. I do not think the Founding Fathers would passionately commit to every word in the constitution, which is probably good, because we have changed much of it.
While in Puerto Rico recently, I learned about the Nationalist movement of the first half of the 20th Century on the island. One of the things I found profoundly interesting about it was that no one outside of the island seems to have heard of it. With any political movement, it is difficult to know when to start, but I think the best place to start is with Law 53 of 1948, better known as the Gag Law. The law, which would eventually be overturned as unconstitutional, banned the flying or ownership of a Puerto Rican flag, discussion or writing about the nationalist movement, or speaking against the US Government. This clearly violated the First Amendment rights of Puerto Ricans.
Puerto Ricans were suffering under other affronts to their liberties as well. They were, and are, being taxed without representation (as are the residents of all US protectorates, it is actually on the DC license plate). A standing army (unconstitutional by the original text) was being garrisoned on their island (arguably their "home"). Essentially, the Puerto Ricans were/are a colony suffering the same oppression that the original 13 Colonies were.
While an elementary school in Connecticut in 2012 seems far removed from Puerto Rican independence, the ties are remarkably strong when you consider the arguments of many of those who oppose weapons control. In the wake of the tragedy, and really any time weapons control comes up, Charlton Heston may have chosen the crazy path, shouting, "from my cold, dead hands," after Columbine, others have sought to tout the benefits of having one firearm per person. Some of these people claim that the Second Amendment is to keep the American Government "afraid" of the American people - afraid of violent uprising at the first sign of tyranny.
The preferred example of this is the Battle of Athens, where the, admittedly oppressed, residents of a county in Tennessee rose in violent revolt against the local government. The whole thing boiled over regarding concerns of election fraud, a shoot-out with police ensued, and the people overcame the oppressive local government. The use of firearms to preserve freedom in this incident is celebrated by those who read the Constitution as having only one 27 word sentence. I do not support killing police officers under any circumstance, but the NRA does, so I will, for the sake of argument, concede that firearms, have, once in the history of the country, been used by civilians to fight for lawfulness. Once.
At this point, it becomes tricky to me. I think those concerned citizens could have found a peaceful resolution, but they chose violence. So when, is it okay to choose violence, and when does a government become tyrannical? Two questions that we must ask ourselves before the argument that the Second Amendment protects anyone from the possible tyranny of the American Government.
Asking when it is okay to choose violence is difficult to answer, and I think the pacifists have it right. One may choose violence only when someone else has made that the only available choice (arguably, when it is no longer a choice). A pacifist can hit back when they get hit. They may choose not to, but doing so does not violate any sacred text. A Buddhist Monk, if in fear of his own life, or the life of another, would not be denied enlightenment if he sought to defend life. I would like to think they could be more clever, saving lives like a non-violent superhero, but they are only human, and at some point, for all humans, violence may well be the solution. So, when someone else chooses to leave you no other option, violence is okay. If you look at all the wars in American history, I think World War II meets this requirement, and had people been enlightened enough to not fight World War I, it probably never would have happened. Again though, for the sake of argument, I will grant that in some hypothetical situation, violence may be the answer.
So the next quandary is the definition of tyranny. Every government, at all times, is considered tyrannical by someone. I do not think Ted Kaczynski bothered to write a manifesto, and conduct a campaign of terror for sport, rather, he thought he was protecting people from the tyranny of society. Timothy McVeigh, sympathizing with the Militia movement, thought he was combating tyranny. At Ruby Ridge the US Government's handling of the situation was decidedly a debacle, but Randy Weaver's paranoid views probably saw it as tyrannical. David Koresh was probably not alone among those accused of pedophilia at perceiving tyranny in a government that does not tolerate their behavior, and I think anyone under siege for 50 days probably sees the government as being tyrannical. While no violence (that I am aware of) has come out of the polygamists communities, certainly they are subjected to a bit of social tyranny. Every civil rights activist, regardless of cause, has probably felt like they were up against some form of tyranny as well. While some of this tyranny is more real than others, and some more justified, society demands that the victims seek a peaceful resolution. Sometimes that resolution is a change in society, and sometimes it is in the oppressed. But oppression against some for the perception of the greater good is commonly accepted as part of a functioning democratic republic, or more simply, in a country of 300 million people, someone is going to feel oppressed.
Beyond the complication of the fact that some people will feel oppressed, when others feel empowered or protected, the idea of tyranny becomes befuddled in moral obscurity. The people of Bhutan loved their monarch, who stepped aside for democracy, against the wishes of many, if not most, of his subjects. The Bhutanese are further upset by the abdicating king because as it turns out, a king who measures his success in the Gross Domestic Happiness, rather than Product, is a fair bit more honest than politicians who have to make campaign promises to get elected. Bhutan represents a grey area characterized by a warm yellowish glow. At the risk of offending every American, were not Osama bin Laden and the September 11th hijackers fighting tyranny? A tyranny that ended slavery, desegregated schools, and had the audacity to build schools for girls! When malevolent acts are carried out to end benevolent tyranny, it is safe to say that the morality of tyranny is more difficult to assess than to define tyranny in the first place.
In light of the complexity of defining what tyranny is, and when it becomes a problem, maybe the literal followers of the Second Amendment are not giving the Founding Fathers enough credit in their cleverness. Maybe James Madison actually knew what he was doing when he included the seemingly vague "well regulated militia" part. Madison, perhaps, could have been acknowledging that people should not own cannons, warships, fortresses, and personal armies. Maybe Madison knew that individuals could never oppose the government, so he, (reportedly reluctantly) wrote the Second Amendment so that the federal government could not prevent the states from having militias capable of defending the rights of states. Madison may have known that unregulated citizenry with arms would result in violence and death, but gave the state's the right to maintain militias, composed of well-regulated, armed individuals. This would then make it so the majority of the people in a state would have to gain the support of the governor and the legislature before deciding to act violently against the supposed tyranny, a form of checks and balances on the potentially dangerous consequences of a few people perceiving tyranny.
We can only conjecture what Madison, the Founding Fathers, and the First Congress were thinking when they amended the Constitution (I think it can never be stated enough that the Second Amendment is an amendment to the Constitution, not the Constitution). However, we can, with great certainty, look at what happens when people suffering under real and true tyranny under the United States Government decide to act violently against that government without the backing of a state-run, well-regulated militia. To do this, we need only to learn about Puerto Rican history.
On 30 October 1950, the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party rebelled against the tyranny of the US colonial government. In the days leading up to the 30th, the police began arresting and killing Nationalists. While the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party was no stranger to government orchestrated massacres, the renewed police violence galvanized the people, and rebellion began to take hold throughout the island. In San Juan, the United States Courthouse and the governor's mansion were attacked with machine gun fire. The police, made aware of the impending attacks through informants, were prepared, killing or wounding most of the perpetrators to neutralize the attacks, and to arrest those responsible. In seven towns, including Jayuya and Utuado, the Nationalists successfully revolted.
In Jayuya, the Nationalists raised the Puerto Rican flag (a crime under the Gag Law), seized the police station, cut the telephone lines, and burned the post office. President Harry Truman declared martial law, and ordered the US Air Force to bomb the town. The Puerto Rican National Guard, and US Infantry joined the fray. Jayuya was bombed, strafed, and shelled for the three days the Nationalists controlled the town. After the town fell, police and the national guard swept into the town making mass arrests.
In nearby Utuado, Air Force P-47s bombed and strafed the building where twelve Nationalists retreated when the fight was lost. Of the twelve who retreated, three men died in the aerial assault. When the national guard ordered the remaining nine to surrender, they were marched to town square, and stripped of belts, shoes, and personal belongings. They were then marched behind the police station and executed. No judge, jury, or trial, only a swift and gruesome execution. Wikipedia includes among the dead a 17 year old who pleaded for water while the police bayoneted the life from his body.
These events were the first time in the Twentieth Century that the US Government used the military against its own citizens, yet no mainland American seems aware of the violence. Certainly this seems strange since two Nationalists actually made an assassination attempt on Truman at Blair House, killing a White House Police officer. The event, which according to Wikipedia is regarded as the biggest shootout in Secret Service history, failed to gain attention for the Puerto Rican Nationalist movement, but why? Truman distanced himself from the incident, and the fact he ordered military force to be used against civilians. The news from the island was suppressed by the government, and any news of the revolution was reported as an incident between Puerto Ricans.
When this incident is viewed through the lens of an armed citizenry defending itself from a tyrannical government something becomes absolutely obvious. Even with illegal weapons (the Nationalists were armed with machine guns), the revolution could not match the might of the United States military. The revolt would not have been able to stand against the Puerto Rican police, nor the Puerto Rican national guard. Americans cannot revolt against the might of the military without full support of the governor of the state, and the state's militia (from the Civil War we know that even this is unlikely to succeed). The constitutionality of weapons control under the argument of defending against oppression and tyranny is a moot point, and I suspect Madison knew this when he crafted the Second Amendment.
Yet, people are dedicated to finding an argument to defend the amendment at all costs. They are willing to abandon every other aspect of the Constitution and its amendments to preserve their perceived right to possess weapons designed for the mass killing of innocent people. I have not been presented with a single logical argument to preserve the laissez-faire attitude towards weapons, not one. For me, the only thing I can think is that those who choose to not see the value of logical weapons control, but only a trampling of rights they do not actually have are motivated not by constitutionalism, but rather cowardice. They know they can never live up to the requirements of a hero, but a childhood dream requires them to find a way. The route they choose is a firearm, then they create a hypothetical situation where they could be the hero, and defend their dream with any pretext they can find. For these people, talking about weapons control becomes not a discussion about making a better world, but is interpreted as an attack on their dream.
To these people, I have a piece of advice, find a new dream. If a gun does not kill people, it does not make heroes either. Heroic people are altruistic, not armed. As for defending against tyranny, no weapons, I doubt even fighter jets and nuclear bombs, can defend against tyranny without a well regulated state militia.
---
A Note on Citations: This post draws heavily from sources including The Lonely Planet and Wikipedia, but direct citations are rarely used, as much of the material seems to be "common knowledge," even if no one seems to have heard about it.
I had not heard of the incidents of violence in Puerto Rico prior to your postings, but I think the point you make with it is excellent. On the "Daily Show", Jon Stewart said something the effect of people who oppose arms control do so because they are afraid of "imaginary Hitler". This came up because it has been stated by some that if Jews were armed during Hitler's rise, the Holocaust may never have occurred. Stewart then went on to make the point that the combined armies of Europe could not stop real Hitler, so it seems unlikely that hypothetical armed pockets of Jewish rebels could have done so.
ReplyDeleteI am in complete agreement that those who fight any and all forms of logical weapons control are motivated by nothing more that cowardice. After all, they would certainly not promote arming ALL Americans, really only white males with a conservative agenda. For example, and I don't have all the details of this incident, but on Election Day 2012, a black man who claimed to be a member of the Black Panthers stood outside an election site in (I think) Philadelphia. If I recall, he was armed. The pundits at Fox News went nuts about this ONE armed (and black) individual claiming intimidation at the polling place. I doubt these claims would have been made if the Tea Party posted themselves outside polling places in majority white districts in the South. It seems very clear to me that those fighting arms control are also very afraid of black people with guns-not just government tyranny.
Finally, I don't think anyone becomes a hero with a gun. True heroes are the exceptionally rare individuals who change the world without violence. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a hero. Ghandi was a hero. And while his message seems to have been lost by many, if not most, after a couple of millenia, during his time Jesus Christ was a hero. These are people who were willing to give their lives to a cause they believed in without the use of violence. The path to radical change without the use of violence is a much slower and more difficult one, but to me it defines a hero and separates them from someone who just happens to have a more powerful weapon than his adversary.