As Reuters reports, “U.S. students spilled out of classrooms
by the thousands on Wednesday morning, waving signs and chanting slogans like ‘We
want change’ in a coast-to-coast protest against gun violence prompted by a
deadly rampage at a Florida high school last month.” [1]
Of course they do. We should be heartened to see that our
educational system hasn’t deprived them of all rationality. What person in his
right mind would want to be a sitting duck for disturbed people with thirty
round magazines in their rifles? Apparently, for some, this is a great mystery,
but people like that tend to be past the age where they are subject to
compulsory education.
Unfortunately, human nature is such that, regardless of the
window dressing of rhetoric, self-interest is the order of the day when it
comes to politics. At the end of the day, politics is about allocation of
resources, and there is no dearth of people who will come as close as they can
to arguing that their personal enrichment is God’s will before they feel
foolish.
Now in the cacophony that is the alignment of factions
within the major political parties, the National Rifle Association has come to
share lodgings with the devotees of “small government” and low taxes, big oil,
and (paradoxically) the beneficiaries of military expenditures. So it is
understandable that members of the non-NRA factions within the Republican Party
would line up against gun regulations. United we stand, after all.
But a problem arises when it comes time to articulate a
reason for opposing a ban on so-called “assault weapons.” Opponents of a ban on
large-capacity, semi-automatic rifles can’t quite come up with a rationale for
their position that withstands even moderate scrutiny.
The silliest of all, of course, is the saw that we need our
semi-autos to resist the United States military should the federal government
become tyrannical. The idea, apparently, is that, in the event of such a
crisis, we should take our AR-15s (not even the fully automatic M-16s that the
military uses) and commence firing at federal troops. It is not explained how
we are to counteract B-1s and A-10s. (Maybe if we can get the United States
army to engage in an orderly march toward Boston in bright red uniforms….)
That argument is derived from the “militia” language in the
Second Amendment. For a long time it was thought that the right to keep and
bear arms was somehow answerable to a militia requirement. But we now have it
on the authority of the Supreme Court case, District
of Columbia v. Heller [2], “that
the Amendment’s prefatory clause, i.e., ‘[a] well regulated Militia,
being necessary to the security of a free State,’ announced the Amendment’s purpose,
but did not limit or expand the scope of the operative clause, i.e., ‘the
right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.’” [3]
And what is “the” right? It is the right we inherited from
English law, which is the right of the people of “having arms for their
defense, suitable to their condition and degree, and such as are allowed by
law. Which is…a public allowance, under due restrictions, of the natural right
of resistance and self-preservation, when the sanctions of society and laws are
found insufficient to restrain the violence of oppression.” [4]
But no one (with the exception of some extreme voices) is talking about taking
away arms for self-defense, or defense of the home. They are talking about
taking away the legal ownership and possession of high-capacity, semi-automatic
rifles, which are not needed for those legitimate purposes.
So what the students are demanding is a ban on firearms that
are not constitutionally protected, which find utility only in the ravings of
those who imagine they could successfully defy the United States armed forces
with them, and which have been the weapons of choice for those choosing to
bring a violent end to young lives in schoolhouses. It is a reasonable demand,
and it should be acted on swiftly.
One further note.
It seems that there are some school districts where the
authorities are promising disciplinary retaliation for participating in the
walkout. Such authorities are giving new meaning to the word “cluelessness.” Young
people are afraid for their lives, and here are adults who have risen to the
level of their incompetence telling them that they’re out of line. The phrase “sad
commentary” doesn’t quite get it.
In New York City, students were chanting, “Enough is
enough!” [5] Enough is enough indeed.
