Gun rights, My Thoughts

I have been increasingly conscious and conflicted about gun rights in light of several, recent events, stretching back for over the past year and a half. I have been cogitating over this post for several weeks. Now, confronted with the horrific events in Aurora, Co. I can no longer wait to say my piece.

First and foremost, I want to make some very succinct points:

· What happened in Aurora was the manifestation of evil or psychosis.

· I am not a member of the NRA, and, further, I believe Wayne LaPierre is nothing more than yet another sound byte angling for industry lobbying leverage.

· The United Nations is currently, as in right now, considering actions which could be interpreted as undermining the United States Constitution, as set forth in our 2nd amendment rights. The body is working on a treaty which, among other things, some of which have merit, disarm citizens of sovereign nations.

· The Second Amendment states “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.”

Now, I will go unhinged into the miasma that is the gun rights debate.

I think as a premise to my entire argument is that the Second Amendment, as a portion of the Bill of Rights, is the iteration of what has been bestowed upon man by the creator – inalienable rights, as seen by the founders of our country. These are not privileges which can be offered or negated by the state. One has the right to protect himself from threats, be it home invaders or government gone off the rails.

Since the beginning of man, individuals or groups sought to defend their lifestyle by whatever means necessary. I would like to think that, per capita, that death by violence has decreased in the past 10,000 years, but I won’t hold my breath.

Shooting tragedies are not in short supply. Going back to Columbine, America has witnessed Virginia Tech, Gabrielle Gifford, Ft. Hood, multiple other mass shootings, and most recently, The Dark Knight Rising shooting.

So here is the knife’s edge upon which we teeter – should civilians merit gun ownership? The argument is framed in the lexicon of “gun control” – tightening the parameters of the laws currently on the books as in limiting magazine sizes, banning “assault rifles”. The subtext is a ban on semi-automatic weapons. I concede that I can’t think of a single reason to own a 100 round drum magazine.

Looking beyond our own borders, improvised explosive devices / car bombs / suicide bombers continue to wreak havoc on Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan which would not be the case if the US hadn’t stepped in the cow patty which is the region.

Speaking of the region, what are some of the victories of the last 2 years? The first that comes to mind is Libya, where the private ownership of weapons allowed an oppressed people to rise up against a dictator of 30+ years. Where would those guys have been were the UN notions been in force prior to their uprising?

The same is happening in Syria. These bold, fearless people protested for over a year, peacefully, taking casualties from the government all the while, before breaching the commitment to armed revolt. Now, it is clear the Assad regime will only fall to overwhelming military force.

Granted, in both of these cases, outside arms were funneled into the revolutionaries by empathetic nations. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn, 30 years from now, that the US and others did so covertly.

Why do I mention these 3rd world “failed” states? Because, simply, we are not above pandemonium in our own streets. The riots in the aftermath of Rodney King’s assailants skipping charges should be proof enough. These things can happen here. We are not some “special” or “sacred” nation, far from it. We are a nation, like any other nation, who has internal security issues. Why should we believe we are “above” such violence? Even our Western peer state, England, recently witnessed massive, violent riots.

For a very long time, we were secure in the notion that the state would cover all needs re: civil order. Unlike other countries (Israel, Mexico, ad infinitum), we feel we are somehow secure, safe, beyond violent retribution. This is not reality. This is also the clash between our Constitutional Rights and the present situation.

Unfortunately, and that is not said to be snide or understate the violence, there was a guy in Colorado the other night who took matters into his own hands. Little has been released through the press about the person or personality of the shooter. What is known is he had 2 x .40 caliber Glock pistols, an AR-15 .223 caliber, and a 12 gauge shotgun. He had a 100 round magazine on the .223. He used tear gas and had his apartment wired to explode or burn. He had thousands of rounds in his possession. Looking back for an analogous situation, I am drawn to Anders Behring Breivik, the murderer of 77 people in Norway, someone who knew of no other way to address his grievances.

Please don’t think I’m taking this lightly. Although Breivik may be of a different stripe, enough details have emerged about Holmes to get the picture of someone who simply checked out, leaving the reality of day to day life for that of his own machinations.

When one is in the full throws of a manic / psychotic episode, “reality” holds no water. The thoughts are completely divergent from the necessary – food, water, sleep and hygiene – all gone out the window. The focus is the interior, self-created narrative, the “real world” does not exist. Holmes, undoubtedly, believed in his actions to the degree that it consumed his life for at least 4 months prior.

Think about that - Holmes set out to do nothing short of fuck shit up. I could imagine his singular focus on this task, manic obsession on the ingredients in his fatal stew. Throw in the whole Batman fantasy (I admit I have not seen any of the recent Batman / Dark Knight movies) and I envision someone who actually believes, whole heartedly, he is an evil genius, an enemy of the Dark Knight himself.

Back to the subject of gun rights…Holmes weapons and ammunition were purchased legally. God only knows where the Libyan’s or the Syrian’s guns are coming from. The uprisings, call them Arab Spring or what you will, have shown the necessity of the right to keep and bear arms. The Libyans shifted rather swiftly from protest to armed conflict. However, the Syrians took the assaults for over a year. Finally, and not to my surprise, an armed insurrection has risen to oppose the Assad regime. There will be a time where we face tyranny in this country, and our last resort will be armed resistance. It is for this instance that the 2nd amendment was written and must stand unaltered.

We must realize, as a nation, as a culture, that evil lurks even in the best of men. And, that said, evil can materialize at any moment, for any reason. We in America have lived far too long in a cocoon, immune to the violent upheavals of so many other countries, to not experience such violence in our own country at some point.

Chris Hedges, in his truthdig article “This is What Revolution Looks Like”, gives an excellent, brief, discourse on the parallels of historic uprisings and where we as a society stand today. His opinion is bleak. In his article, he quotes the historian Crane Brinton in his book “Anatomy of a Revolution”, surmising we have entered the second step of revolution, the elite trying to suppress dissent.

Since the passage of NDAA, the label “terrorist” has been applied to the Occupy movement. Police-state situations have visited cities across the country. Across Europe, austerity and the infringement of the EU in sovereign states’ affairs, protests are far more heavily attended, often over 100,000 in the streets. Greece is seen on the edge of being ungovernable by the international press.

It would seem the US is trying to get ahead of the curve. In the extreme case of disarmament of civilians, such protests would pose less of a threat to general order.

The UN ATT treaty (look it up), from my perspective, challenges the US Constitution. Mind you, I don’t carry a pocket constitution or quote amendments, but I am very opposed to intra-national organizations threatening my nation’s sovereignty, in any way, shape or form.

This is where the far right wants to draw the line. Individual rights, individual sovereignty are the buzz words. “The Liberals want to take all our guns away.” “The UN decries the flood of small arms into conflicts domestic and international”. But what has this to do with the US?

First of all, upon but a few minutes of looking at the UN website, I realized this was something which could propagate tentacles stretching into every crevice of the 2nd Amendment. This shit called for disarmament of civilian populations who would otherwise have the legal right to own a firearm. Again, I don’t flaunt an NRA membership card, but I was pissed. Here is the United Nations, 193 voting members, deciding whether or not I could, as an American, possess a firearm.

What does this mean? It means that 192 nations can vote whether or not the United States should allow its citizens to own a gun. The primary reason the right to keep and bear arms was in the Bill of Rights was to define the rights of the individual, as granted by the Creator, which included the resistance to tyranny.

Of course, there are those who go even further, claiming that these tragic mass shooting events are “False Flag” psychological operations. In other words, “psy-ops”, events staged for the purpose of manipulating public opinion for the sake of policy making. Granted, these folks could talk you into JFK / moon landing / 9-11 stories that actually make sense on some level. In this case, the argument is the UN wants to 1) require registration of all guns in the US. 2) use registration to locate and confiscate weapons. Basically, relieve the people of their weapons thereby diminishing the security threats to the state. Sound familiar?

Well, here we are, in the good ole’ US of A, with almost as many people as guns. Obviously, many Americans own none, while others own several. How do people validate owning that many firearms?

Well, owning several, I can say it started with my heritage. My father had several of his father’s shotguns, Brownings, from the early part of the 20th century. The first time I fired a gun, it was one of my grandfather’s, a 12 gauge with no recoil relief. I was about 7. It laid me on my ass. The fact that they were Brownings, and all three of us were named Browning, instilled a special affection for these guns.

By the time I was 8, I was dove hunting. My father had given me a single shot .410 with which I took down about 1 of every 10 birds. By the time I had finished 8th grade, I had earned all of the marksmanship awards the NRA offered at the time. There were discussions of the Olympics at the gun club (the range of which was ironically located beneath a bar). When I was 13, I received a 20 gauge shotgun, a beautiful Remington 1100 I still shoot, in recognition of my graduation from Junior High School. I purchased my first gun at age 14, with money from a summer job digging ditches. It was a Remington Speedmaster .22 with a scope. The shop mounted and sighted the scope. I think I paid $135.

Enthusiasm for shooting was the singular commonality I shared with my father. When we would go shoot clays, or hunt, he was entirely focused on me and helped me learn the safety and marksmanship skills I now impart to my son.

My father had headed up a crew to go goose hunting every year. He would manage the applications for the lottery for blinds, get all the hotel reservations made, and be rewarded with his costs covered. I was thrilled to be included in 3 of these hunts. They were the utmost in male bonding: wake up at 3 am for breakfast and head out to the preserve. After receiving blind assignments, we loaded in old army trucks for the pre-dawn, inevitably extremely cold, ride to the field.

We were 3 to a blind the first couple years. Then, it was Dad, a high school classmate who followed dad to Georgia Tech and ended up on the NCAA Basketball championship team, and myself. Watching Mr. Riley, all 6’ 10’ of him crawl into a blind was priceless. These guys had it figured out – a catalytic heater placed under the bench in the blind, our laps and legs covered with a tarp, we dined on sausage biscuits and V-8 warmed on the heater, and endured often below 10* temps.

By the third year, Dad was too sick to follow us into the field. Then, one other man and I took the blind. It was horrible weather for hunting geese – bright blue skies, unlimited visibility, birds flying too high to shoot. Ideal conditions would be grey skies and precipitation, preferably frozen. Somehow, we were the only blind that got our limit that year. Mind you, we were only allowed 8 shells apiece on the preserve. I took two Canadians and brought home 6 shells.

My father retired as a much decorated Lieutenant Colonel United States Air Force officer. From my birth in 1966 until his retirement in 1981 , we lived in constant awareness of the Cold War. The enemy was always at hand. “Red Dawn” had yet to come out, but such a scenario was played out many times by my friends and me. This manifested itself in various ways – toy armies and tanks, digging foxholes to surveille farms neighboring the base, and shooting everything from bb guns to a .357 (with parental accompaniment in the later).

When I married, my bride was vehemently against having guns in the home. This was a thorn in the relationship from the beginning. I wanted guns, primarily because I enjoyed just going out to shoot targets with friends. Latent memories of shooting with my father fueled my desire for bringing the guns I owned, stored at my family home in Kentucky, to my current home.

Secondarily, I still feel strongly that children should receive at least rudimentary gun safety lessons. As with a large body of water and the ability to swim, it really doesn't matter if you can swim, as long as you know the dangers of water and how to avoid them, an inevitability in anyone’s lifetime. This head in the sand approach of my wife, and my desire to expose our child to guns, was exemplified in a potentially horrific way.

Wife, child of 4 or 5 years old and I were at a neighbor’s, visiting a new litter of Boykin Spaniels and helping install a new VCR. My boy came into the bedroom, where I was wiring stuff together. The neighbor, being without regular child traffic, was far from policing her house for hazards. On the nightstand was a loaded revolver. When he saw it, he immediately picked it up, swinging it around two feet from the three adults, asking if it were real. Needless to say, all three adults were near apoplectic and diffused the situation quickly and, thankfully, without incident.

At that point, MB, my son was far too young to be responsible with a firearm, but certainly old enough to learn the dangers therein and how to deal with a found weapon (if you see one, don't touch it and find an adult). Here, the nanny state, which existed in my home and threatens our individual sovereignty, was totally out of the loop with reality.

As could have been predicted, at age 7 MB was presented with the opportunity to go shooting with a friend. My now ex-wife called after the fact and said she had given her permission. Honestly, my feelings were hurt that his first shooting outing was not with me, if for no other reason than I wanted to make damn sure he understood basic safety.

Since our divorce, I have retrieved my few weapons from Kentucky and purchased a couple. I also purchased a .22 for MB’s last birthday, his 9th. All of these, as well as ammunition, are kept in a secure situation under lock and key.

This is all to say I have strong ties, deep attachments and sentiments to private gun ownership. I do not buy into the rhetoric that any movement toward gun control is a bad, conspiratorial act. A 100 round .223 magazine? Come on, that is over the top. A 30 round magazine? Who knows. Banning all semi-automatics? No way. UN imposing itself on the 2nd Amendment. Hell no.

I wander, and now will attempt to synthesize the above thoughts:

1) Guns kill people, no doubt about it.

2) An individual’s right to protect himself, his property, loved ones, and even oppose tyranny is inalienable. This requires weapons.

3) The global situation is in decay, with this decay eating itself up the foodchain from the 3rd world to the 1st world.

4) Armed revolt is, at some level, inevitable. Tea Party folks are calling for it and they are not alone. The far left is calling for armed attacks against institutions, (ie the petroleum industry).

5) As the world becomes more tumultuous, we in the US will ultimately be dragged into it.

6) The government seeks to “get ahead” of the coming crisis vis a vis militarized crackdowns by authorities and suppression of individual’s ability to defend themselves with weapons.

So, there, I have said it to the best of my ability, as coherently as possible. I thank you for reading this far and encourage you to comment.