Assault Weapons and the Second Amendment

I really didn’t want to write about this, but continued silence about last week’s violence in Connecticut could be interpreted as a kind of mute acceptance of the outrage and depravity of the world, and that mustn’t happen.  Some things are obvious.  Assault weapons in the hands of emotionally/mentally disturbed individuals are both a moral outrage and a growing danger to us and our children.  The right of “we the people” peacefully to assemble, whether in shopping malls or elementary schools or churches, and for whatever reason, is being jeopardized by “we, the people.”  A gun rights advocate in Virginia was quoted in the Washington Post this morning as saying about the assault rifle used in the shooting, “Who wouldn’t want a Ferrari?  Shooting it is a blast. It’s fast and accurate.”  Other gun rights advocates are forming long lines at gun stores to load up before they might be prevented from further purchases.  They forget that the mother of the Connecticut shooter was killed by a gun she herself had purchased.  Ralphie, in Christmas Story, was more responsible in his desire for a Red Ryder BB gun than that.

We are sacrificing our children for an absurd interpretation of an 18^th century document.  I dislike joining the blame game, but five old men on the Supreme Court bear as much responsibility for Connecticut as anyone.  The Second Amendment was written at a time, and in both a societal and military framework, vastly different from ours, and our understanding of both ourselves and our societal needs has expanded enormously, points the court majority steadfastly continues to ignore.  At that time, the largest places in America had populations of about 25,000, most people lived in a village or rural setting, and dangers were all around in the form of wild animals and Indian attacks.  The military threat was invasion, on foot and with muskets, by British or French infantry.   Implicit in the Second Amendment rationale is a vision of community we no longer possess.  Madison, the author, recognized the dangers inherent in unrestrained freedom; he even included in its language reference to the needs of “an orderly militia.”  He expressed, in his other writings, the knowledge that left unrestrained, the freedoms expressed in the Constitution could easily lead to corruption and excess.  But he believed that the peer pressure of the small communities in which Americans lived would provide the necessary corrective to such excess.  Even as late as the early 20^th century, that was still a valid belief.  Anyone who has read To Kill A Mockingbird, and sees in it, as I do, a community very like the one in which I grew up, has seen the enormous role for good or ill played by peer pressure in the America That Was.  But we now live in socially fragmented times where high migration, large population centers in which we are all strangers to each other, and moral ambiguity is the norm.  The societal discipline of peer pressure is no more.

The rationale given in the Second Amendment was a military one.  Militias armed with rifles provided by the militiamen themselves were important to protect against the still serious threat of a land invasion from England.  They would look rather silly these days guarding against atom bombs and missile attacks.  One strong virtue the military provides, though, is rules of engagement.  We have learned as our understanding of human psychology expands that the social judgment of young people is not fully formed until their mid-twenties.  And for some, it seems never to form.  Mechanisms for emotional discipline are important.  In hostile situations where emotions run high and weapons are at hand, tightly enforced rules of engagement are a necessary discipline, one obviously lacking in civilian settings where emotions can run equally high.  Easy availability of firearms without either the emotional discipline of peer pressure or of rules of engagement is a recipe for catastrophe, which we are experiencing more and more.

So, what can be done?  A preferred option would be repeal of the Second Amendment.  Its proper time is long past, and democracies around the world do very well without such a safeguard.  That is probably a political impossibility, in which case, the outlawing of civilian purchase, ownership or use of assault weapons should be the minimum acceptable reform.  Simply outlawing ownership, though important, will not by itself be enough.  That outlawing of assault weapons should include criminal liability for gun manufacturers who sell assault weapons to other than military purchasers.  The gun manufacturers are the other culprits, along with the five old men, for the criminally chaotic state into which our society is drifting, and it is they who fund the NRA and other lobbying groups who fight reform.  Reform is no longer a matter of idle discussion.  The tears of our children, and of bereaved parents, demand we find a better way.