As the gun control hysteria has come to a boil, we continue to read the pleas of constitutional defenders. These people exclaim that guns are a sacred right because they are protected by the Constitution. In a statement today, Rick Perry echoed this sentiment, noting:
"The second amendment to the Constitution is a basic right of free people and cannot be nor will it be abridged by the executive power of this or any other president."
In typical Perry fashion, this directive is neither novel nor insightful, and it is one that has been echoed hundreds of times by right-wing radicals across the country. As you read these pleas, you start to see a basic argument. They recognize the weakness in some of the pro-gun rhetoric, and they retreat to the Constitution as a safe-haven. It is as if their pro-gun stance is really a patriotic attempt to protect the sanctity of the Constitution and to protect their protected rights as free people.
Let's be clear: this is a farce. These individuals do not care about the Constitution in itself. They only care about it insofar as it can protect their gun rights. They are selective Constitutional defenders because they do not truly believe the Constitution provides any overwhelming "truth" for how a nation should be run. If they did, they would be consistent defenders of all of its rights, rather than occasional defenders when a right that they want is threatened. And we shouldn't be surprised by this, at all. This is exactly how these individuals treat the Bible.
When you hear a person like Rick Perry talk about the second amendment, you are led to believe that guns are extraneous to the conversation. To hear him speak, you would think that guns are just a representation of the "right" being taken care. But this is not true in the least. Rick Perry is not concerned with the trampling of Constitutional principles. He has just found that the Constitution makes a nice shield to gun control policy initiatives.
They approach the Constitution much in the same way they approach the Bible. They use the Constitution as a weapon to defend the things that they believe are important. They give the Constitution and its amendments wide breadth when the issue is their guns, which they feel that they need to either fight off the American government or fight off those scary dark people who are coming to rape their children and steal their televisions. The Constitution itself does not carry any power, and it does not carry any weight. To these people, a right is not important because it is in the Constitution; rather, the Constitution is important because it contains that right.
How else would you explain the way states like Texas treat their indigent criminal defendants, depriving them of the right to adequate counsel that is guaranteed in the sixth amendment? And how do you explain Rick Perry's death penalty machine running full speed despite eight amendment questions? Rick Perry gives the widest interpretation possible for his valued second amendment rights, yet he he fails to use his clemency power when the state of Texas decides to kill a mentally retarded person. His state sits by idly as poor people are earmarked for life in prison or death on the gurney because of horribly inadequate court-appointed counsel. He makes no noise when his police officers illegally cavity search women on the side of the road, not even changing their gloves. If the Constitution is the pure truth on how to run a nation, then shouldn't Rick Perry be as big a defender of the fourth amendment as he is the second amendment? The answer is obvious, but you have to understand the right-wing mind to truly comprehend the problem. These people have been trained to approach documents like the Constitution in a certain way, and it comes from their fundamentalist religious training.
Just as people like Rick Perry do not believe that the Constitution is the truth, they also do not believe in God. Does that sound radical? It should. As Meteor Blades is fond of saying: don't tell me what you believe; show me what you do and I'll tell you what you believe. If these people truly believed that Jesus was the living son of a very powerful God, they would be doing everything in their power to digest the words of Jesus. They would spend their time analyzing his life and charting his movements. They would take to his directives, spending time with the poor and visiting prisoners. They would heal the sick and try their best to feed the hungry. Imagine the actual human manifestation of God coming to earth to provide a near-40 year example of how to live. Now imagine people who name themselves after him completely ignoring his example. These fundamentalists no more believe in God than the atheist on your block.
If they believed in God as the undeniable truth, then they would not make up pithy excuses for why they don't live like Jesus. They wouldn't spend hours torturing the text to come up with justifications for their hatred. Instead, they would approach the life and words of Jesus with open arms, seeking to embrace his message of inclusion in hopes of pleasing their all-powerful creator.
The truth is that their narrative is hollow. They approach the Bible like a defense attorney approaches a statute. They come with a set agenda and they look for any way that the words of the Bible can offer a justification of that agenda. If they hate gays, they look for a way to use the Bible to justify their hatred. To these people, the Bible is just a tool, and their goal is to bend its messages in a way that benefits them. All of the other stuff - the hymns, the study groups, the bumper stickers, and the empty "bring back prayer" narrative - is fluff.
People like Rick Perry have been trained to use authoritative documents to support whatever notions they held before. They do it every single day in their religious pseudo-speak. And now, they're doing it with the Constitution. No, they do not care about "rights." At least not in the abstract. They care about their ability to own a gun, and the defense of the Constitution is just a means to that end. If they truly cared about the Constitution, they would be just as outraged by a poor person's lawyer sleeping during his death penalty trial as they would about a presidential recommendation on gun restrictions.