[30 years ago this week, Congress passed the groundbreaking gun control legislation known as the Brady Bill. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of key moments and layers to the debate over gun control and guns in American society, past and present!]
[NB. I
wrote this post in a pre-election series back in 2012, obviously, but I think
its histories and contexts are far more broadly relevant than that, and remain
very much so today.]
On the
stakes of 2012 for the newest phase in our longstanding, conflicted national
relationship to guns.
When you
remember how the American Revolution—or at least the military portion of it—got
started, the 2nd Amendment sure makes a lot of sense. After all, the
Minutemen who fought the Redcoats at Lexington and Concord, who fired that shot heard ‘round the
world, were a militia in the truest sense of the word: farmers and
other locals who brought nothing more than their own lives—and their own
guns—to those crucial first conflicts. And for many
decades after the Revolution, state and local militias continued to serve as
the nation’s primary armed forces, with a standing army being assembled
as necessary (during military conflicts such as the War of 1812 and the Mexican
American War, for example) but not consistently maintained. Given those
contexts, the syntax and logic of the 2nd Amendment—which
reads in full “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”—seem perfectly natural and uncontroversial.
But the
term “militia” has of course come to mean something completely different in
early 21st century America, and the shift to my mind signifies the
other side to our national relationship to guns. These contemporary
militias, comprising communities
of heavily armed resistance to perceived threats (from the
government, from the United Nations, from ethnic or racial “others”), see their
guns, and their right to bear them, not as a part of our shared national
community, but as a way
to defend their own lives and security within, and yet fundamentally outside
of, that nation. For these Americans, it seems to me, the key words in the 2nd
Amendment are “free” and “the people,” since in this reading of the Amendment
its guarantees have nothing to do with the government (which would presumably do
the regulating of militias) nor the nation (the State) and everything to do
with every individual gunowner. There is of course no necessary conflict
between individual gunowners and the national community—again, the Minutemen
were composed precisely of such individuals, coming together to fight for their
fledgling nation’s interests—but such conflicts have without question come to
form a complex, controversial, and crucial part of gun culture in America.
Which
brings me to today, and specifically to the “Stand Your Ground” laws that have,
in response to pressure
from the NRA and ALEC and other conservative organizations, been passed by
numerous state legislatures since the ascendance of Tea Party majorities in the
2010 elections. How we analyze these controversial pro-gun laws—which factored
directly into the
Travyon Martin shooting and other recent
tragedies—depends precisely on whether we see them as part of our nation’s
founding identity, a legacy of the Concord Minutemen; or part of the
contemporary militia movement, tied to the 21st
century Minutemen and their ilk. But in any case, there’s no doubt
that the 2012 election—which NRA vice
president Wayne LaPierre has called “a turning point for gun
rights”—will greatly influence these narratives moving forward; there’s less
than no evidence that a second-term President Obama would ban guns or dismantle
the 2nd Amendment (as LaPierre warns), but certainly an empowered
Republican majority (nationally and at that state level) could continue to pass
more laws like “Stand Your Ground,” and otherwise to push forward this
extremely pro-gun agenda. Which would be
a very American thing to do—but what version of America it would embody is an
entirely open and significant question.
Next gun
control history tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do
you think? Histories or contexts you’d highlight?
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