Gun Control Now - Fact Driven Rant [View all]

[yellerpup]

Posted by permission of the author.

GUN CONTROL NOW.

By Rick Prose

The current interpretation of the 2nd amendment is so far from the Founding Fathers' intention that "originalists" like Antonin Scalia, among others, should be impeached and disbarred for supporting it. A little history -

At the time of the writing of the Constitution, the nascent United States did not have a standing army, nor had it any plans to have one. It was believed that a standing army, such as the one of the mother country, England, was a tool of oppression. Therefore, the framers of the constitution believed that "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state..." would suffice to keep our enemies at bay.

Now, a militia is a military group made up of citizen-soldiers, organized and activated on a local level at the behest of the federal government, a military corps made up, in other words, of private citizens who were expected to provide their own weapons. In the late 18th century, only one in three adult males in the colonies owned a musket - they were made in England or other parts of Europe, expensive to buy and import and, therefore, not an item considered necessary to the survival of every household. Forget about pistols. There is nothing in the 2nd amendment that has anything to do with handguns because handguns of the period were a) almost non-existent in the colonies; and, b) were so inaccurate as to be effectively useless as a means of military defense (one of the reasons most participants in pistol duels survived).

So, in order ensure that local militias had enough muskets to make them anywhere near effective, the framers decided that there should be no legal impediment to owning a musket, period, but this was all in the interest of providing for a regulated, state-controlled militia - it had absolutely nothing to do with every citizen's right to own an unlimited, unregulated number of firearms, especially handguns. It is worth noting that the musket was a weapon that fired one projectile at a time and took nearly a minute to load, discharge and re-load. When Samuel Colt invented the revolving cylinder pistol (which in turn led to other advances in personal weapons technology, most obviously the repeating, or semi-automatic, rifle) in the 1830s, the face of the American countryside changed dramatically over the ensuing half-century, leading to that glorious period in our history which we have enshrined as "the Old West." Personal grudges, drunken brawls and property disputes that prior to this period would have been resolved (or not) by the courts or men's fists, could now be resolved quickly and easily by whipping out a pistol and shooting one's opponent dead. It was at this time, the late 19th century, that gun manufacturers, seeing the handwriting on the wall as more and more towns and cities began to enact local gun bans, began to lobby for the most expansive interpretation of the 2nd amendment, the interpretation we live with today. It is worth noting, in the wake of the recent tragedy, that the factories of Samuel Colt and most of the major manufacturers of private weapons were located in the state of Connecticut.

It should come as no surprise that the major supporters of groups like the NRA are gun manufacturers, who want to continue to make huge profits selling dangerous weapons to anyone who can buy them. The constitution has been interpreted to allow for the regulation of everything from children's toys to drugs to automobiles - anyone who continues to believe that the barely regulated sale of weapons of mass-murder is constitutionally protected is a well-meaning dupe of powerful capitalist interests, at best, and possibly an imbecile, at worst.

End of rant.