Someone I know on Facebook set me off this morning with an idiotic statement about the Second Amendment. It's a common one, but it really got me this morning: "Without the second amendment, the others would be GONE!!!!" It struck me that that's one of the most pernicious bits of gun fetish mythology out there. This is what I replied. Yeah, I was angry. Yeah, I used some salty language. But there are times when anger is appropriate, and I firmly believe I was right.
You know the problem? You're not part of the organized militia. You're not part of the army. You're a stupid peckerwood who thinks your fucking gun makes your dick bigger. News flash: it doesn't. The militias defended our rights. The army has defended our rights.
Stupid peckerwoods with guns started the Whiskey Rebellion. George Washington called out the militia to put it down.
Stupid peckerwoods with guns formed posses to chase down escaped slaves and raid slave quarters to make sure they didn't have any guns. The army
freed the slaves.
Stupid peckerwoods with guns went into Ford's Theater and shot Abraham Lincoln.
Stupid peckerwoods with guns fucked up Reconstruction and kept segregation and Jim Crow laws in place in the South for another hundred years.
The National Guard came out so black kids could go to school in Little Rock.
Stupid peckerwoods with guns shot Medgar Evers.
Stupid peckerwoods with guns shot James Garfield, William McKinley, John Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy and Ronald Reagan.
Stupid peckerwoods with guns shot Martin Luther King, whose entire movement was predicated on non-violence.
Stupid peckerwoods with guns shot Gabby Giffords.
The ORGANIZED STATE MILITIAS and the US MILITARY fought our wars and kept us free.
ALL the advances in our recognition of people's rights - abolition, women's suffrage, the labor movement, civil rights for blacks, civil rights for homosexuals, civil rights for women, even Prohibition, misguided as that was, were achieved primarily through non-violent means, not with guns.
And before you start whining about how I don't like guns, none of this is an argument that we should take away everybody's guns. It's an argument that the USSC was wrong when it decided US v. Heller in 1980 and ignored 200 years of precedent, and that we should go back to the Supreme Court with reasonable gun laws and try and get it overturned.
Also, the Heller decision explicitly left room for regulation of guns even as it said that the Second Amendment applies to individuals. By the way, you know what most of the people who love the Heller decision generally say when the Court ignores precedent and overturns laws? They want to impeach the damn activist judges. So be happy about Heller if you want, but don't try to pretend that it has anything to do with Original Intent.
I have absolutely no problem with people who want a gun or three for hunting. Target shooting. Protecting their home. But you want to be what the Second Amendment is really about? Join the National Guard. Join the Army. Stop being a stupid peckerwood with a gun.