Hullabaloo

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

 
Puckered Gun Nutz

by digby

I surrendered in the gun wars a long time ago because, well, they won.It's pointless to keep banging your head against a wall. And frankly, I've come to appreciate the wisdom of giving the Bill of Rights an expansive reasding because it's more fragile than I thought.

But I'm still a little bit freaked out by the gun zealots, if only because of the fact that they don't actually make sense, and armed nuts make me nervous. Take for example NRA president Wayne LaPierre at CPAC insisting that the 2nd Amendment is the foundation of all of our freedoms and that all rights and freedoms are nothing but "stains on a rotten piece of parchment paper in a museum somewhere" until they are "guarded by the blued steel and dry powder of a free and armed people."

Ok. I guess I get his point is that armed citizens might have to defend the constitution against a rogue government or a military coup or something. I wonder why these very same people supported the Unitary Executive theory of George W. Bush, but whatever. Apparently, they didn't find that threatening to the constitution because he wasn't threatening the foundation of all our freedoms (unless you were someone with an Arab name.) It's a romantic, revolutionary notion, which you can see played out to its logical conclusion with the brave citizen soldiers who blew up federal buildings.

But in the same speech LaPierre made this comment:

"I don 't care if their butts pucker from here to the Potomac, the Founding Fathers understood that the guys with the guns make the rules"

Now aside from the repellent thuggishness of that comment (which would have been cheered by crips and blood from coast to coast if they'd heard it) LaPierre seems to be missing one major point: the whole notion of libertarian rebellion against gun control is based on the idea that the government is made up of "men with guns" who make all the rules. If these gun owners want to start measuring their ... guns to determine who makes the rules, I have to put my money on the state over some fly-by-night militia or gun club.

The whole idea that "the guys with the guns make the rules" is something right out of a police state -- or Mad Max. In both cases the Second Amendment isn't really necessary at all once you start thinking along those lines.

The constitution -- and the second amendment itself --- is not protected by Wayne and his little toy soldiers. It's protected by the revolutionary idea that the country is to be governed by the people. Not just the ones with guns either. Even the ones without guns have a say in it. If you don't respect that, then you are not a believer in the constitution and the rest of us have little reason to defend your second amendment, which nobody cares about but you, since its alleged function as the "foundation of our freedoms" is laughable, anachronistic bullshit. When these second amendment fanatics march on Washington prepared to open fire on the US Army to defend my right to free speech, maybe I'll be more impressed. (And let's just say that if that becomes necessary, we will be long past the point where the 2nd Amendment is actually relevant.)

I'll stand behind the Second Amendment because I don't want to start mucking around with the bill of rights. This country just isn't mature enough to function unless they are considered sacred pronouncements from oracles of the past (which I'm sure would be a sad disappointment to the founders themselves, who had much higher hopes for their revolutionary heirs.) But somebody needs to tell Lil' Wayne to put a sock in the "guys with guns make the rules" commentary. After all, we do still have a constitution, which has a whole lot to say about who makes the rules and it says absolutely nothing about the men with guns having more rights than the rest of us.

If they get too cute with that kind of talk they may find themselves on the receiving end of the guys who think the rules are actually the "rule of law."

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digby 3/11/2009 07:00:00 PM |