By most standards, I’m liberal: I’m gay (and support GLBT
equality), and support progressive taxation, breaking up the Mega-banks, alternative
energy, a social safety net, legalized cannabis and compassionate immigration
laws. I’m the president of my local teacher’s union, believe in mandatory
profit-sharing, and a national health insurance plan. Most of my friends – both
“Facebook” friends and flesh-and-blood friends generally agree with my
positions.
But when it comes to the Second Amendment – well, I am going
to stand apart from the crowd. I do not
support the current efforts to curtail firearm ownership. And I hope my otherwise liberal friends will
at least give me the benefit of reading why I am not on the bandwagon.
1) This nation should NEVER adopt legislation as a response
to a crisis. Our track record in every
area is awful, because we let emotion and politics and a blind desire to “do
something!” drive the program…and we often make big, big mistakes.
After Pearl Harbor was bombed, the nation demanded that
government do ‘something’ in the name of security.
That ‘something’ was one of the most shameful
chapters in American history, as our government rounded up 110,000
Japanese-Americans, sent them to concentration camps, and confiscated their
property. President Franklin D Roosevelt did this through an Executive Order, which
allowed local military commanders to designate "military areas" as
"exclusion zones," from which "any or all persons may be
excluded." This power was used to declare that all people of Japanese
ancestry were excluded from the entire Pacific coast, including all of
California and much of Oregon, Washington and Arizona. It took until 1988 for a
formal Presidential Proclamation apologizing, blaming the actions on “race
prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership.”
And yet, we did it.
And it was clearly unconstitutional.
But we did it in response to a perceived crisis.
Fast Forward to 9/11…and we did the same thing. The Patriot Act, NDAA, the right of
Government to spy on library and bank accounts without search warrants,
actual public hearings seeking to deny Muslims the right to open up mosques, the
suspension of habeus corpus, the indefinite detention of Americans without
charge or trial, and the ongoing tragedy of Guantanamo Bay show that we are
still all too willing to engage in overtly unconstitutional acts when we respond
to a perceived crisis. Every time you
remove your shoes to get on a plane, and every time a TSA agent strip searches
someone’s grandmother, you continue to see these effects.
We even do it in legal areas unrelated to security: In 1993, the Supreme Court of Hawaii ruled
that a government must show a compelling state interest to prohibit gay
marriage; the emotional howling of conservatives – who feared that conservative
states would have to accept same-sex marriage – led to an emotional passage of
DOMA, the so-called “Defense of Marriage Act,” which has been ruled
unconstitutional in no fewer than nine federal courts, including both the first and second
Circuit Courts of Appeal, and the U S Supreme Court.
Whenever we say, “We must act now!,” and act based on
emotion, we do a historically terrible job of complying with our own Constitution.
I have read a number of very strong opinions lately, and am
struck by how little people actually know about firearms. Raised on a
generation of Matrix and shoot-em-up movies, much of the public believes that
semi-automatic rifles simply let loose with a burst of bullets. Very few seems
to understand that a semi-automatic does no such thing – it’s one trigger pull,
one bullet – but in the heat of emotion, facts don’t seem to matter.
2) Making something illegal – or harder to obtain – does not
make it go away. Rather, it drives the good or service underground where it is
controlled by criminal elements – the very thing we do not want to do.
Once again, we can look at actual, objective history:
We outlawed alcohol, and it didn’t go away. Instead, it went underground, and its
distribution was controlled by crime families.
Violence increased significantly as these families battled for
territory. The same is true of today’s
Drug cartels. We outlawed gambling, only
to see it driven underground. As expected, the openness of offshore internet
gambling accounts has actually increased the visibility of the ‘service,’ and
reduced criminal violence. Until 1965, birth control was illegal in
Connecticut, and until 1972, abortion was illegal in the majority of US
states. Do you think that no one in
Connecticut used birth control, and no one obtained abortions? Rather, both were relegated to unsafe, shady
operations that resulted in tracking difficulty and more crime. And finally, thirteen states enforced laws outlawing
sodomy…do we really believe that gay men lived celibate lives until The Supreme
Court overturned these laws in 2003 (Lawrence vs. Texas)?
Outlawing human activity, goods, or services has *never*
eliminated the market for those goods and services. It has only served to drive them underground,
off the radar, and into the hands of criminal and shadowy elements.
Is that what you want for firearms?
In the wake of
Newtown, I wish people would be honest and
admit that the guns used at the Newtown massacre WERE STOLEN. They were
ILLEGALLY OBTAINED. No amount of registration, background check,
or prohibition stops this activity.
There is an irrational disconnect between most of the proposals being
floated and what actually happened at Newtown.
3) Please, in the name of all that is Honest, I am asking
all of our politicians to cease parroting the mantra that goes, “Oh, I fully
support the 2nd Amendment, but we need
restrictions/controls/limitations…blah blah blah”
Let me lay some Constitutional Law on you folks: the Second
Amendment is NOT about hunting or sports.
It’s about personal protection – and that includes protection against
the police power of the State. You don’t have to like it
or agree with it, but that is our legal history.
Some have recently developed some twisted interpretations,
suggesting that the Second Amendment is too obsolete, or only applies to rural
hunting situations, or is only meant for state militias (not average citizens).
Enter District of Columbia vs. Heller, the landmark 2008
Supreme Court case, which held,
“The Second Amendment protects an individual right to
possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm
for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.”
Not militia use – any individual.
Not hunting and sport - Personal Defense.
In so doing, the Court invalidated a hand-gun ban and a
trigger-lock requirement.
The Second Amendment was drafted and adopted in order to
allow every-day citizens to protect themselves against government tyranny. It is a defense against both criminal
elements and the police state - a defense denied to Jews in the Warsaw ghetto
and, tragically, to Matthew Shepherd, the iconic gay youth who was beaten and tied to a
Wyoming fence a decade ago.
On an
all-too-frequent basis, we read of gay men beaten with tire irons and baseball
bats and left as bleeding pulps in the streets of our urban centers. In 2004, the FBI reported that 1,482 gays
were violently assaulted – some killed, some permanently disfigured and
crippled.
This gay man will not be at the mercy of criminals, nor will
he wait for the police to arrive.
Do I wish each of these guys carried a pistol? Damn Straight. But cities – notably New York
City and Chicago – make it near impossible for law-abiding citizens to protect
themselves or carry, even if they are walking through high-crime areas late at
night.
When seconds count, knowing that the police can be 5 minutes
away offers no solace.
4) Constitutional Rights are not ‘contingent’ upon
licensing, approval, background checks, or government permission. You have a Right to speak, without the
government deciding you are stable. You
have a right to form and engage in a religion, even if the government doesn't like
it. You have a right against
self-incrimination, even if you are the most vile criminal. You have a right to be compensated if your
property is taken by eminent domain, without a public vote on whether we like
you or not. And you have a
Constitutional Right to defend yourself with firearms, without government ‘permission.’
People are clamoring for ‘background checks.’
Can someone tell me what you are looking for in this
background check? Mental stability? Criminal records? How about a credit check?
Do I think that convicted felons should be able to carry
firearms?
Yes, I do.
[WHAT?! OK, Thom, you
went too far here….!]
Hear me out: 1 in 6
black men in this country has been jailed. It is a societal embarrassment that
our so-called “War on Drugs” has decimated the minority community and made ‘criminals’
out of people who never hurt anyone. In
some states, young men are branded ‘sexual offenders’ for ‘crimes’ as innocuous
as peeing in public when drunk. People involved in one-time violent crimes, who
have paid their debt to society and have reestablished themselves in their
community wear a Scarlet A on their chest for the rest of their lives.
Should we disqualify anyone with a criminal record?
Better be careful: it may not be long before
we all have some ‘stain’ on our background, either because of an innocuous
crime, or a credit rating that says we are a ‘danger,’ or songs downloaded from the internet, or because we had the
audacity to support a group on a Facebook post that the government has branded
a “terrorist” organization.
The
clamoring for "background checks' is not being accompanied by an
explanation of what we are actually looking for - and what is fair.
After all, it is the government against which the Second Amendment is meant to protect me that would be performing the background checks.
I will not give up any of my Constitutional Rights without a
fight to the end. That includes:
Speech (whether you agree or not, and whether you find it ‘hateful’
or not.)
Assembly and Protest (whether I have a ‘permit’ or not, even when the cops come armed with tazers and pepper spray.)
Religion (whether its ‘mainstream’ or not.)
Press (Whether I have a ‘press pass’ or not. I will use my phone as a camera to film police activity. It is my RIGHT.)
Right to Remain Silent (even when a cop pulls me over and
asks me where I’ve been. I do NOT have to answer.)
And yes, the Right to Bear Arms….even when the State or the
public prefer to render me defenseless.
.RePOs
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