Good Words

From a question on Quora...

Some advocate for it because they believe it's essential to self-defense. Let's leave that aside, and the people who want to own guns for hunting. Do some conservatives believe it's important on the grounds that it enables an armed revolt against the US government? Yes. Look at the responses here. Now read the text of the 2nd amendment. It connects the right to the security of the State. Not rebellion against it, which is rather its opposite. People here will howl that, well, it doesn't say it's not about fighting the State! 

These are usually the same people that pride themselves on being strict "constructionists" and hewing to the plain meaning of the text. This interpretation is a fantastical stretch not supported by commentary from the founding fathers. It's important to think about why this odd idea persists. It is not just people sort of disagreeing about something reasonable people can disagree about. It's because it plays into a certain fantasy fulfillment for a certain demographic in our country. You're a patriot. You'll fight your government just like we fought the Redcoats. 

Tired of these liberals making all these rules you have heard from someone who heard from someone are illegal? Relax, you're the salt of the earth, what made this country great, and you can always start shooting. I have literally heard these words come out of the mouths of advocates. These people aren't homicidal. They actually think their backs are against a wall, since they've experienced nothing of the sort. That the relatively awfully peaceful and prosperous America of the past 20 years is somehow just about as bad as the Khmer Rouge's Cambodia. 

It's childish and deluded. Lots of people are childish and deluded on all points of the political spectrum. These people differ in that they have talked themselves into the idea that lethal weapons are just fine to use to settle disagreements. It's not that these 'patriots' are afraid they'll have to use their guns one day. It's that they're afraid they'll never get the chance. The tragedy is it stems from some good, self-sacrificing principle -- I'd go to war to fight and die for something right if necessary. For someone in the rural US, sliding further behind as the 21st century powers forward, this patriot narrative must be so powerfully seductive. For me, building the US forward into the future, it is not at all seductive. 

This doesn't make this view of the 2nd amendment understandable or permissible. It makes it scary. These people have literally staked the meaning of their lives on killing people they disagree with.

Amen.