“When you have two people who love each other, are happy and gay and really good work is being done by one or both of them, people are drawn to them as surely as migrating birds are drawn at night to a powerful beacon. If the two people were as solidly constructed as the beacon there would be little damage except to the birds. Those who attract people by their happiness and their performance are usually inexperienced. They do not know how not to be overrun and how to go away. They do not always learn about the good, the attractive, the charming, the soon-beloved, the generous, the understanding rich who have no bad qualities and who give each day the quality of a festival and who, when they have passed and taken the nourishment they needed, leave everything deader than the roots of any grass Attila’s horses’ hooves have ever scoured.” – Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast
“I learned to understand Cézanne much better and to see truly how he made landscapes when I was hungry. I used to wonder if he were hungry too when he painted; but I thought possibly it was only that he had forgotten to eat.” – Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast
There is these days much discussion in the United States regarding the Second Amendment to the Constitution. The text of this amendment is short: “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”
There has been much debate over the years as to how this sentence is to be interpreted. The debate is now very prominent. It is now, as it generally has been, characterized by passion, anger, accusation, fear, and often no small amount of confusion.
I don’t know what we, as a nation, are to do. In the wake of the Newtown, Clackamas, and Aurora and other shootings, and against the background of constant gun violence–I read the front page of the Chicago Tribune nearly every day and it seems that city is under siege from gun violence–it is clear that we must do something.
It is important that what we do is as right as we can make it. Some people would ban private ownership of firearms altogether. Others would find some way to “amend the Amendment.” Still others will tell you that they will accept no change and that you “can pry their firearms from their cold, dead hands.” Somehow all, or the significant majority of, these people must be brought together in agreement for any change in current law to succeed.
It may be significant that the Second Amendment does not specify what type of arms the people have the right to keep and bear; nor does it specify what keeping and bearing may mean. I’m not trying to split hairs here. The flexibility available in defining these terms may be the key that unlocks the troubling question of what are we to do now?
I am of a military background, was raised in Texas, and have been a gun-owner since my father bought me my first rifle when I was fourteen. I was an officer cadet through all four years of high school, qualified on what was then the U.S. Army’s regulation bolt-action, single-shot .22-caliber target rifle, and fired the M1911 pistol, M16 assault rifle, and M60 machine gun during advanced training. I note this to demonstrate that I have a certain acquaintance with and knowledge of firearms.
It is forbidden in the United States for private citizens to own most types of military weaponry, including the M16 and the M60. The firearm I currently own is a .22-caliber bolt-action, magazine-fed rifle. What this means is that it does not fire a bullet every time I pull its trigger. It has to be operated with two hands in a simple but specific manner in order to fire a bullet. It could conceivably be operated with one hand, but this would be slow and unwieldy.
My point is that there are types of firearms that the citizenry is currently allowed to keep, and types that we are not allowed to keep. Semi-automatic firearms, which fire a bullet every time their trigger is pulled until they run out of bullets, and which can be and often are fired single-handedly, have been used in all the mass slaughters and are used in most urban gun violence. They are a type of firearm that, within certain restrictions, private citizens are currently allowed to own and use. It may well be time for us as a nation to consider semi-automatic weapons to be weapons which possess a power which should be reserved to the state and not placed in the hands of private citizens.
Yesterday’s tragedy at Newtown is not the first time our nation has faced the horror of a mass shooting. It may not be the last. It can’t help but make any thoughtful person consider the role of firearms in society.
When considering what the Second Amendment meant or was intended to mean when it was written two-and-a-quarter centuries ago, and what it may still mean to us today and what its function in society could continue to be, it may be helpful to consider the ways in which firearms and society have changed over time.
A fundamental fact about firearms is that their origin is as weapons of war. They were not developed for hunting. They were not developed for sport. Their original role was not for use by homeowners in protecting their families and property against criminals. They were not invented, refined, improved, and made more and more deadly and easy to use so that citizens could employ them in militias from the well-ordered to the little more than rabble. They were not for the people to protect themselves against the state. They were for people under orders to kill other people at the behest of governmental authority–one king’s soldiers shot at another king’s soldiers in order to kill them.
By the time of the adoption of the Second Amendment, firearms had reached a certain level of development. They were single-shot weapons. What they fired were not bullets as we now know them. The vast majority of firearms at that time were what is known as smooth-bore muskets. They fired balls of lead of about a half-inch in diameter. They were wildly inaccurate at ranges greater than fifty yards. And they did not fire quickly. The most skilled, experienced, well-trained musketeers–who were almost invariably soldiers or men who had received military training–would be hard-pressed to fire even four shots per minute. Rifled muskets–the ancestors of today’s rifles–existed, were highly accurate at ranges of 400 yards or more, but were difficult to load. A rifleman might be able to fire two shots every three minutes if he were competent in using his weapon.
Nowadays, due to the pressures of weapons development among nations, firearms are significantly more powerful and accurate than they were two-and-a-quarter centuries ago. Only hobbyists any longer fire smooth-bore single-shot firearms. Pistols and rifles–including assault rifles and machine guns–are all capable of firing bullets at high velocity accurately at long distances. Furthermore, firearms nowadays routinely are capable of firing ten or twenty or more bullets rapidly before needing to be reloaded.
As for the militia, the nature of that has also changed significantly since the adoption of the Second Amendment. The Founding Fathers would probably not recognize our National Guard as being what they meant by a militia, though our National Guard is descended and derived from the militias referred to in the amendment. The militias essentially ceased to exist in the wake of the Civil War of a century-and-a-half ago.
A large part of what the Founding Fathers intended in the Second Amendment was for the people to be able to protect themselves against a tyrannical government. I myself own a rifle because I believe in the wisdom of this interpretation of the amendment, and I believe it my duty as a citizen to own a rifle and know how to use it. But I know that the instances of an armed populace successfully revolting against a central government absent that government’s own regular military forces fracturing and assisting the rebels, as we are seeing happen in Syria now, are extremely rare. And I know that the American military possesses weapons of fearful devastation that make my rifle look like little more than a foolish gesture.
The Second Amendment as it is currently interpreted is a dangerous anachronism. Whatever the solution to the problem it presents our society is to be, it should be clear at this point that a solution needs to be found.
“I learned not to think about anything that I was writing from the time I stopped writing until I started again the next day. That way my subconscious would be working on it and at the same time I would be listening to other people and noticing everything, I hoped; learning, I hoped; and I would read so that I would not think about my work and make myself impotent to do it.” – Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast
“I always worked until I had something done and I always stopped when I knew what was going to happen next. That way I could be sure of going on the next day. But sometimes when I was starting a new story and I could not get it going, I would sit in front of the fire and squeeze the peel of the little oranges into the edge of the flame and watch the sputter of blue that they made. I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, ‘Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.’ So finally I would write one true sentence, and then go on from there. It was easy then because there was always one true sentence that I knew or had seen or had heard someone say. If I started to write elaborately, or like someone introducing or presenting something, I found I could cut that scrollwork or ornament out and throw it away and start with the first true simple declarative sentence I had written.” – Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast
“Democracy is something America has never really practiced. Because the Founding Fathers hated two things: monarchy and democracy. They wanted a republic, a replica of the Roman or Venetian republics. They didn’t even like the etymology of the word ‘democracy.’” – Gore Vidal (quoted by Lila Azam Zanganeh in “The End of Gore Vidal”)
“Maybe there is no good God. But there is definitely a devil, and his predominant passion is the religion of those Protestant fundamentalists. I believe my country is beginning to resemble a theocracy. Using television, the evangelists raise appalling amounts of money which they then invest in the election of mentally disabled obscurantists.” – Gore Vidal (quoted by Lila Azam Zanganeh in “The End of Gore Vidal”)
The three were at the table now and the others sat close by except Pablo, who sat by himself in front of a bowl of the wine. It was the same stew as the night before and Robert Jordan ate it hungrily.
“In your country there are mountains? With that name [Montana] surely there are mountains,” Primitivo asked politely to make conversation. He was embarrassed at the drunkenness of Pablo.
“Many mountains and very high.”
“And are there good pastures?”
“Excellent; high pasture in the summer in forests controlled by the government. Then in the fall the cattle are brought down to the lower ranges.”
“Is the land there owned by the peasants?”
“Most land is owned by those who farm it. Originally the land was owned by the state and by living on it and declaring the intention of improving it, a man could obtain title to a hundred and fifty hectares.”
“Tell me how this is done,” Agustín asked. “That is an agrarian reform which means something.”
Robert Jordan explained the process of homesteading. He had never thought of it before as an agrarian reform.
“That is magnificent,” Primitivo said. “Then you have a communism in your country?”
“No. That is done under the Republic.”
“For me,” Agustín said, “everything can be done under the Republic. I see no need for other form of government.”
“Do you have no big proprietors?” Andrés asked.
“Many.”
“Then there must be abuses.”
“Certainly. There are many abuses.”
“But you will do away with them?”
“We try to more and more. But there are many abuses still.”
“But there are not great estates that must be broken up?”
“Yes. But there are those who believe that taxes will break them up.”
“How?”
Robert Jordan, wiping out the stew bowl with bread, explained how the income tax and inheritance tax worked. “But the big estates remain. Also there are taxes on the land,” he said.
“But surely the big proprietors and the rich will make a revolution against such taxes. Such taxes appear to me to be revolutionary. They will revolt against the government when they see that they are threatened, exactly as the fascists have done here,” Primitivo said.
“It is possible.”
“Then you will have to fight in your country as we fight here.”
“Yes, we will have to fight.”
“But are there not many fascists in your country?”
“There are many who do not know they are fascists but will find it out when the time comes.”
“But you cannot destroy them until they rebel?”
“No,” Robert Jordan said. “We cannot destroy them. But we can educate the people so that they will fear fascism and recognize it as it appears and combat it.”
