Libya and the Second Amendment

Back in 2007, I wrote a piece on this blog entitled The Liberal Case for Gun Ownership,.

I was thinking about that piece this evening as I watched folks in Libya try to win their freedom against a madman with unlimited wealth who has paid foreign mercenaries to machine-gun down his own citizens.

Did our founding father's have Muammar Gadaffi in mind when they wrote the Second Amendment?

Count on it.

Gadaffi is doing nothing less than what George III did when he hired Hessian troops to shoot down Americans trying to overthrow the oppressive yoke of England.

What made America free then was guns and people willing to stand and fight, and die if need be, to win that freedom.

The Libyan people do not need us to fight their war.

But could the civilian freedom fighters over there use a hell of a lot more .50 caliber guns and ammunition too?

You bet!

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You do not need to be Mormon to respect the concept of separation of Church and State, nor do you have to be a hate-spewing Klansman to value free speech.

By the same token, you do not have to own guns or even like guns to respect the Second Amendment.

What were our Founding Fathers thinking when they wrote the Second Amendment?

Well, they were not engaged in narrow partisan politics. They were not posturing for Fox News or trying to “make nice to soccer moms.”

These were serious men who came fresh from the white-hot forge of revolution. A war had just been fought to overthrow the yoke of an oppressive and unresponsive Government that invaded homes without warrant and which exposed the populace to "dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within."

In short, while it was a bit hotter back then, the issues we face today are not so completely different.

As left-wing, NPR-loving Virginia author Joe Bageant notes in his book Deer Hunting With Jesus:

”With Michael Savage and Ann Coulter openly calling for putting liberals in concentration camps, with the CIA now licensed to secretly detain American citizens indefinitely, and with the current administration effectively legalizing torture, the proper question to ask an NRA members these days may be 'What kind of assault rifle do you think I can get for three hundred bucks, and how many rounds of ammo does it take to stop a born-again Homeland Security zombie from putting me in a camp?'

"Which would you prefer, 40 million gun-owning Americans on your side or theirs?"

Bageant is not a new liberal, but an old liberal – the kind that once protested things and took to the streets in opposition to stupid wars, and which stood up to be counted when civil rights were being violated.

The old liberals know the value of guns.

They know that after the Civil War, southern whites denied blacks the right to own guns, because it was easier to lynch an unarmed black man than it was one who owned a deer rifle and 200 rounds of ammunition.

Some gay Americans have discovered this secret knowledge as well. As Jonathan Rauch wrote in Salon magazine back in March of 2000:

"Thirty-one states allow all qualified citizens to carry concealed weapons. In those states, homosexuals should embark on organized efforts to become comfortable with guns, learn to use them safely and carry them. They should set up Pink Pistols task forces, sponsor shooting courses and help homosexuals get licensed to carry. And they should do it in a way that gets as much publicity as possible."

If this sounds like Revolutionary talk, it is. It is the kind of language our revolutionary Founding Fathers might have used if they were gay and living in America today.

”Don’t Tread On Me,” was not a bumper sticker back then – it was a warning every bit as ominous as the shake of a rattlesnake’s tail.

The notion that our Founding Fathers contemplated armed insurrection inside the United States seems to surprise some people.

But it shouldn’t.

The Good Old Boys of Virginia -- Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and George Washington -- knew that power belonged to the people only so long as the power of the state could be met with an equal power organized by the populace at large working in tandem.

Guns were not to be used capriciously, but they were part of the long term plan crafted by our Founding Fathers to protect this great nation from powerful, cunning and patient forces of oppression -- whether those forces came from within or without.

But of course the Second Amendment was not just about securing freedom at the national level. It was also about securing some modicum of personal protection at home as well.

Our Founding Fathers were not living "on the grid."

In 1776, you could not dial up a patrol car and expect someone to show up at your door a few minutes later.

On the empty plains and in the dark woods, it was every man for himself, and a prudent person was both well-armed and quite cautious.

But, to tell the truth, is it really that different today? If you are a suburban housewife, or a well-heeled lawyer with cable television in the den and GPS in your Mercury Mountaineer, you may not know what it feels like to live 20 miles outside of town and up a dirt road. But if you spend some time out on a farm, and also happen to be a member of a religious or racial minority, you may come to a whole new world of understanding.

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