I am a victim of my own narrow ideology. For this insight, I have the Oregon Commentator and the Second Amendment to thank.
“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.” Those three clauses were written more than 200 years ago, and today, for perhaps the first time, I respect them. But it’s not because of the Commentator. It’s in spite of the Commentator.
Like I said before, my narrow-mindedness has prevented me from rationally approaching the issue of gun-ownership. Even now, liberal guilt pangs within me for having written a hundred words without demonizing gun owners as backasswards white trash that threaten our children’s safety.
No surprise, then, that my first reaction upon picking up the latest issue of the Commentator was to laugh. If you haven’t seen it yet, the issue features a man opening his jacket to reveal multiple concealed weapons strapped on his torso. Beneath it, the headline, “The Right to Carry on Campus.”
Inside are two stories about guns. The first discusses arguments for and against the right of individuals to bring concealed weapons onto campus – granted, of course, that they have a permit. It’s a good article, and while I may not agree completely with the argument, I understand better than I did once the reasoning behind it.
The second article I won’t apologize for not understanding. “The nuts and bolts of the AR-15” is a self-satisfying 1,200-word expository, written with the grammatical flair of an eighth grade book report. Its author touts the merits of such user-friendly civilian weaponry, proclaiming that, “The possession of this wonderful weapon is a badge signifying an individual’s lifelong commitment to individualism, equality and freedom.”
I’ll buy the freedom argument, if only because I believe freedom is a two-way street. Just because my idea of freedom is the right to a free education for everyone, after all, doesn’t mean it’s not better defined by the right to fire semi-automatic weapons in the forest outside of town. Who am I to say for sure? But weapons have nothing to do with individualism or equality in my mind – unless you consider being peppered with lead an act of expression, or our right to die liberty and justice for all.
The way I see it, there are two types of gun-owners: Rednecks, and idiots. I was brought up to believe the term “redneck” has nothing to with intellect. Rather, it means that one works laboriously in hot weather day in and day out, has faith in God and considers hunting an inalienable right, even if there’s a grocery store in town that has already bothered to kill and skin the animal for them. While I don’t like the idea of killing animals if I don’t need to, I have no business trying to take guns away from people who have passed them down to sons and daughters for generations, without ever having a single “incident.”
That leaves the idiots, people who blog about their M16s and post videos of themselves blowing things up on YouTube with weapons that have no practical application outside of military use. (On that note, a YouTube search for “AK47” yields 16,000 returns.) Who are these people trying to impress? The Internet has not been a good thing for the gun-rights bloc.
But I digress. The problem with gun control is its obvious inability to account for millions of weapons already circulating on our streets. While signing a handgun ban into law may spawn liberal champions in congress, it will do nothing to stop purse-snatching crackheads from targeting defenseless women on the street. So if said defenseless woman decides to carry a handgun in her purse, I certainly can’t blame her.
Democrats and Republicans have argued each other into a stalemate on this issue – largely because of each side’s inability to consider anything other than absolute righteousness on their part. But now the left is too busy courting disaffected moderates to get caught up in an issue that arguably handed George Bush the presidency in 2000.
With thousands of gun laws already written, and one Constitutional Amendment loudly and clearly proclaiming our right to bear arms, the debate over guns and their accessibility is left to us. Are there too many? Should background checks be stricter? Should companies like Lockheed Martin and Smith & Wesson be allowed to manufacture thousands of weapons every day? Until gun-rights advocates and gun-control advocates actually sit down together and talk about their differences, we’ll continue to ignore each other, coming back to the table only to yell “if only,” after another disgruntled teen shoots up his school.
So hunters will continue to hunt, liberals will continue to whine, and whackjobs will continue to write about their automatic weapons and fantasize about a world without common sense. And we’ll all continue to drift further and further away from the notion that the opinions of others matter, and that maybe, just maybe, someone living in a trailer in the woods knows better than I do.
[email protected]