Today’s mass shooters
are the bastard
grandchildren of the
“well regulated Militia”
amendment
How is it that all these mostly-young American mass shooters are able to get their hands on a weapon of war — something that is not possible anywhere else in the civilized world.
We all know the answer: it is because American constitutional law has a single sentence that courts have said gives every American the right to purchase these weapons. Although that sentence ends by declaring “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed,” It begins with the words “A well regulated Militia.”
A. Well. Regulated. Militia.
Today’s mass shooters are clearly the bastard children of this well regulated Militia. (Or great-great-great-great... grandchildren, but you get the point.)
If mass shooters in 2022 are authorized to equip themselves with lethal firepower because of their legal links to the “well regulated Militia” law, isn’t it time that the Well Regulated Militia started getting credit for the carnage — or at least sharing credit with the gunman actually pulling the trigger?
When an Islamist shooter attacks a Red Cross truck or a rival Mosque, the headline doesn’t name the shooter (whom nobody has ever heard of), it blames ISIS or al Qaeda:
alQaeda gunmen attack Paris newsroom, killing 12 wounding 11
Shouldn’t the American media re-write its style guides to treat American mass shooters — who are only in the field with an AR-15 in their hands under authority granted by the Well Regulated Militia amendment — the same way it treats islamists: put the unknown shooter in the background and give lead credit to the well-known name.
Shouldn’t American headline writers and TV journalists and online bloggers and people arguing at the dinner table start giving credit where credit is due.
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Well Regulated Militia attacks young children at Texas school, 19 students and two teachers shot dead
This is not a reference to the militia groups of well-armed man-boys who get together to play soldier on the weekends and gather outside polling stations (fully armed) when the vote count isn’t going their way. This is all about the loners who commit a mass shooting with a weapon that was only available to them courtesy of the “well armed Militia” amendment to the U.S. constitution.
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Lone Well Regulated Militia gunman attacks Buffalo supermarket: executes 10 in cold blood, wounds 3 more
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High school in Parkland Florida attacked by Well Regulated Militia gunman — 17 dead, 17 injured, shooter arrested
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TRAGEDY IN CONNECTICUT Well Regulated Militia gunman storms elementary school: 20 dead children, six dead teachers
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Well Regulated Militia unleashes carnage at Texas Walmart: 23 dead, 23 wounded — shooter targets Hispanics
Imagine Lawrence O’Donnell leading off with:
“In three separate attacks this weekend three separate members of America’s lone wolf Well Regulated Militia murdered 37 civilians. The shootings took place at a school graduation in Iowa, a farmer’s market in North Dakota and a maternity hospital in Florida. Half of those killed were children, and another 42 were injured. Democrats in congress again called for legislated gun regulations, while Republicans offered ‘thoughts and prayers.’ ”
This is not a silly word game or a gadfly suggestion. It is a serious suggestion to deliberately shift the focus to where it belongs: away from “mentally ill young man” or “middle-aged loner obsessed by grievance” or “unlocked door” to a focus on Standing American Law that — left unchecked by legislatures and Congress — allows the aggrieved and the disturbed to walk through that unlocked door at Walmart carrying a weapon that is only legal under the “Well regulated militia” amendment to the constitution.
Well-chosen language has an enormous power to frame issues. The American religious right is about to send tens of thousands of American women off to their death at the hands of back-alley abortionists, and yet even their critics still call them “Pro Life,” a name that appropriates the vernacular of the moral high ground.
The term pro-life was deliberately injected into the American vernacular by a political movement that supports the death sentence, opposes safe abortions, opposes any government assistance designed to reduce the mortality rates of mothers and babies… and yet cloaks itself in the virtue that comes from being the “pro life” side of political debate.
The left needs to reframe the debate from “gun control” to “How do we better regulate America’s poorly-regulated militia?” There are ways that new terminology enters the language. When I was a teenager I never heard anyone say “people of colour” or “pro-choice” or “Me Too” — and yet today these are phrases that now shape public discourse. How this happens requires a separate essay in linguistics — the point of this essay is to argue that it should happen.