I'll preface this with a disclaimer about my own personal views. I think guns are bad. I grew up in west Texas, I know how to operate a wide range of fire arms. I own a rifle. It's in the closet, in a locked box, and unloaded. It was my grandfather's. I have never used it on a living thing.
So when I saw this story up on Slashdot, I thought, "Well, this is unusal for slashdot. Usually they're just going on about Natalie Portman and hot grits..."
The article in full is available at the link above. Here's the summary, for those of you too lazy to click:
Scope of 2nd Amendment's Questioned
By MATT APUZZO
The Associated Press
Thursday, December 7, 2006; 8:49 PM
WASHINGTON -- In a case that could shape firearms laws nationwide, attorneys for the District of Columbia argued Thursday that the Second Amendment right to bear arms applies only to militias, not individuals.
Interest is piqued! A couple paragraphs down, I read this gem:
At issue in the case before a federal appeals court is whether the Second Amendment right to "keep and bear arms" applies to all people or only to "a well regulated militia." The Bush administration has endorsed individual gun-ownership rights but the Supreme Court has never settled the issue.
"Ah, so that's what this is about!" I said, adjusting my tin foil hat, which, by the way, has gotten a lot of use lately.
The article goes on to ramble about the details of the case, but really, the meat of my concern lies here, in that first little bit. I'll re-quote the important sentence:
The Bush administration has endorsed individual gun-ownership rights but the Supreme Court has never settled the issue.
Now.
I've had, over the past year or so, an increasing dread about the state of our nation. I keep seeing us inching slowly toward martial law. We saw Bush gut habeus corpus. We know about the enemy combatant thing. We saw posse comitatus go the way of the dodo bird. And all the while, I'm sitting here, wondering just when the hammer is going to fall.
One of the things that's been keeping me from going off the deep end, as it were, is gun control. As much as I dislike them as weapons, they do serve that purpose well, and the American citizen is well-armed. Stomping into say, downtown Los Angelos and just taking over is a dangerous task for even a well-armed army when just about any civilian you meet can pop a cap in your ass.
I'm thankful that "gun control" is considered a hippie liberal thing, and that groups like the NRA love the Republicans. Bush and his cronies couldn't get elected if they said, "Oh, and by the way, we'd like no guns for everyone." -- even if they said it in their secret energy taskforce meetings.
I read this, though, and something clicked. I thought, "Somehow, they're behind this. This sets the precident. The Supreme Court is stacked -- but not too much -- and can decide in favor of banning citizens owning handguns." I thought, "The populace disarmed and afraid.."