Right to Bear Harms
Tuesday, May 27th, 2008
By Will Cade
You know, as a country, the U.S. gets a lot of flack. When I first came to Europe, I got so annoyed when this french guy kept asking me how big the drinks were at McDonalds and telling me how unhealthy Americans were. Honestly, I’ve eaten at McDonalds more often in Spain than I ever have in the U.S., mainly because my Spanish friend in Murcia always wanted to eat there (and he ate far more than me).
Clichés like this usually piss me off, but sometimes the clichés come true, in the worst kind of way. I regretfully read last week that a car dealership in the U.S. is giving away a free handgun for every car sold, provided the customer passes a background check. After purchasing, buyers can choose between a $250 gas card or a pistol. Guns or gas – how heinously symbolic (not to mention that the dealer’s logo is a cowboy brandishing a gun). When I first saw this, I was a bit disgusted, and then I started to ask myself why this firearm fetish is only prevalent in the U.S.
When the Right to Bear Arms was written into the U.S. Constitution, oh, a little over 200 years ago, what exactly were these pilgrims, farmers, and explorers trying to accomplish? Was the main concern hunting and protection from hoodlums in the street, or was it the tyrannical British government lording itself over the colony? It could have even been the Native Americans, but in any case, the threat was coming from without, not within. Once the founding fathers established their own government, though, they wanted to protect it from the internal threat of becoming tyrannical. The idea was to allow the citizens to bear arms so they could rise up against and literally overthrow the new government if it no longer represented the people as originally intended.
So, let’s fast forward a few hundred years. Let’s just say that I’m big into guns; I mean, real big into guns. I’ve got a regular stock pile of M-16’s, sniper rifles, hand cannons, and even a grenade launcher I bought from an estate sale in Vietnam. So there I am, all ramboed out with enough fire power to wipe out a small force of guerrilla fighters. Even then, what would happen if I tried to rise up and overthrow the U.S. government (say, because it tried to take away my grenade launcher)? Yea, I might pop off a few grenades and feel like Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator 2, but unfortunately my endo-skeleton isn’t an indestructible metal alloy: it’s just bone, and I wouldn’t stand a chance.
Aside from the Waco shoot out between the Branch Dividians and the FBI in 1993 (with a death toll of nearly 80) I can’t remember many instances where Americans have used their right to bear arms against the government. Sadly, very sadly, I remember many more where Americans have turned their firearms on their own people, usually young Americans – in the streets, and in the schools.
So now I ask myself how well this “freedom-based” law is fulfilling its intended purpose. If the American people ask themselves the same question and decide that a revision is in order, a large part of our culture will have to change. We probably won’t be having any more handgun giveaways, and it may become more difficult for god loving people to go hunting, but it will also make it easier for gun fearing people to walk down the street – and into school.
