Guns & Freedom

...for most gun advocates, this is fundamentally about freedom...

I've had a couple of margaritas, so be prepared for what I'm about to write to make not a lick of sense (for instance, writing "write" there was a bit of a mental block - was it really "right" or "write"? This is the sort of thing I'm warning against).

With that caveat in mind, my oft-quoted friend (who blogs at Triangulations) is someone I like having around, because he makes me think. There are other reasons I like him as well. But. He makes me ponder and reassess. He makes me reevaluate. He makes me think about political things when I'm in the middle of enjoying a delicious Mexican dinner and drinks. And at the end of it, I generally think I'm still in the right. But I - generally - have a stronger argument for it.

Here's my problem with the "for most gun advocates, this is fundamentally about freedom" line of reasoning: it ignores the gun's very function. It's very raison d'etre. Guns are, at their most basic, a thing of violence. They are an object of death and destruction. They aren't built for freedom's purpose. They can be utilized in defense of freedom, to obtain freedom, but they aren't pure symbols of freedom. Their use is - at times - instrumental in preserving freedom. But at their very core, they are produced not to be a symbol of freedom but a means of decimation. They used to be almost fundamental in obtaining food; Lewis and Clark would have been lost without guns by their side. Guns are still heralded as necessary for protection. Guns are still protected under the 2nd Amendment.

But. But a gun is no more a symbol of freedom than a bomb is. The gun can be a weapon of oppression. The gun can be used as a weapon of a totalitarian government. The gun can be the tool of a crazed person who seeks to kill a democratically elected leader. The gun is a thing we imbue with the principles of freedom because it was essential to our own revolution more than 2 centuries ago. That doesn't mean it is a thing of inherent freedom.

For those who can't tell the difference, who are offended that their own entirely legal gun carrying ways distribute the wrong message when they carry those guns near a president, especially a president who's election has meant more gun owners and more death threats, it is their privilege which blinds them to the fact that for too long a time, even in America, the gun was not a weapon of freedom but the tool of oppression. Guns are the weapon of the killers of Emmett Till as surely as they were the weapons of Alexander Hamilton. And unlike words, guns can kill with an immediacy. Which is, ironically, also represented by Alexander Hamilton.

This is the difference between the right and the responsibility of a thing. Guns, as a destructive a force as they've been built to be, have been a right of the American public for as long as there has been an America and are seen (possibly rightly) as a tool for maintaining American citizens' freedom from oppression. The responsibility of gun ownership is in recognizing where the gun's user's cries of freedom are drowned out by its oppressive past where it has been used to kill or intimidate American citizens, some of whom where president.

Because the gun is merely a conduit of freedom, not truly representative of freedom itself.

Who *Wouldn't* Bring An Assault Weapon To A Political Rally?

So.

At the town hall meetings President Obama held, protesters arrived armed with weaponry like assault weapons. Which is totally cool, right? So not threatening. After all, carrying weapons to a political event in full view of other citizenry is totes fine. It's not like African-American men - or presidents - have historically been victims of gun violence. It's not like we live in a country where this specific man, this specific president, has had "kill him" shouted out during political rallies.

Oh, wait.

That is exactly the country we live in.

We live in a nation where "one out of every eleven presidents has been shot and killed, and more than twenty percent of presidents have had shots fired at them". We live in a nation where prominent African-Americans have been murdered because they dared become prominent, because they dared to rise above what White America had delineated as their station, because they dared fight for the right to be treated as a full and equal citizen under the law. Because of that, I have to agree with Jeff Fecke when he says, "it’s impossible to view this as anything other than a direct threat on the president’s life".

If we were a nation where the implicit violence of the gun was mostly theoretical, where people have not been cut down because of their viewpoints or their skin color, then perhaps carrying guns to political rallies would not be as bone-chilling and as stifling as it is. It would still be stifling. It would still be silencing. It would still hold that threat of death and destruction (what else is a gun truly for when shown to others, other than to scare those around you into *not* taking a specific action?), because it is still a mechanism used first and foremost to destroy - whether it be bullseyes, deer, human beings, a gun alone is a neutral destructive force, but a destructive force all the same - but it wouldn't be as bad.

However.

We don't live in that kind of nation. We live in a nation where gun violence isn't a small thing, where "in 2006, there were 30,896 gun deaths in the U.S: 12,791 homicides (41% of total deaths), 16,883 suicides (55% of total deaths), 642 unintentional shootings (2% of total deaths), 360 from legal intervention (1.2% of total deaths) and 220 from undetermined intent (.8% of total deaths)."

We live in a nation where threats of violence have been used to stifle political debate. We live in a nation where we have the freedom of speech, but the words "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants" carries a particularly harrowing message, with a relatively recent and violent allusion I can't imagine we're supposed to miss.

Even if we were to give these particular gun-toting protesters the benefit of the doubt, even if the argument can be made that these particular protesters are obtuse and bereft of historical knowledge (and that argument, at least for one of these men, cannot be made, because as Bill Moyers pointed out on last Friday's Journal, his Myspace page makes it clear "he admires white supremacists"), it doesn't change one fact.

The freedom to bear arms is a right, but it also carries with it a responsibility. Even if none of these men would ever point a gun at President Obama, even if none of them would pull the trigger, they are still playing a deadly game. Because there are those out there who would, who wish to. And to add more guns - even legally displayed - to a crowd when the President is present, is at the least highly irresponsible and at the most incredibly dangerous. In their willful arrogance, they may not recognize that fact. They may actually believe that they are merely expressing, as the man carrying the assault weapon stated, that they "still have some freedoms". But they are responsible for being yet more people who could qualify as legitimate threats. They are responsible for the effect they have on the debate as a whole, a debate not even about guns or their control. They are responsible for racheting up the intensity and the fear and the uneasiness surrounding this particular issue. And they are responsible for their gross negligence of historical precedent.