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Since it is late summer in an election year, no politician is about to come out in favor of crime. Thus the Clinton Administration must have reckoned in sending a $30 billion anti-crime bill to Congress.
Who could possibly oppose building dozens of new prisons to hold felons whose mandatory-minimum offenses weren't even crimes when my grandparents were young? Who would dare speak up against putting more police on the street, even if there's no demonstrable connection between per-capita police and violent crime rates?
However, in the late summer of an election year, no politician is about to come out in favor of pork-barrel spending, either. Thus Sen. Bob Dole must have reckoned in building Republican opposition.
Who could possibly support borrowing from future
generations in order to finance midnight basketball? What
sane person wants more make-work projects for those social
workers who operate brain-washing programs that are called
counseling
and therapy
?
Thus the battle turns, not on the actual contents of the
bill, but on whether we perceive the legislation as
fighting crime
or wasting money.
While they're battling for our hearts and minds, there's also the National Rifle Association, annoyed because the crime bill would ban assault-style rifles.
Most of this argument, either way, is based on emotion. Assault-style weapons aren't a major contributor to the American homicide rate, so banning them -- assuming that a ban would be effective, which is a major assumption -- would not make for a safer society. In fact, such a law would likely produce a more dangerous environment, because a ban would give the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms more excuses to besiege and kill American citizens.
On the other hand, hunting might be a sport with a
bolt-action .30-06, but with more firepower, it turns into
something else. I enjoy well-oiled precision machinery
about as much as the next guy, but let's quit pretending
that there's anything sporting
about these weapons.
Like handguns, they're made for killing.
And I'm disappointed in the NRA. Proponents of gun control generally interpret the Second Amendment as an exercise in nostalgia that allows the local lads to tote muskets as they drill on the village green.
How about an honest reading of the Second Amendment? It
says that the right of the people to keep and bear arms
shall not be infringed.
Constitutional scholars often point out that the
document begins with We the people of the United
States.
That is, the Constitution is not a mere treaty
among states, but a charter directly from the people, who
hold all rights but cede certain powers to governments.
Thus constitutional rights reserved to the people
must be personal rights, not rights of state militias.
So the right to bear arms is a personal right, not a
state right. Why did the Founders place it in the Bill of
Rights? There's the tricky introductory phrase, A
well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of
a free State.
How does one regulate militias and keep them from getting out of hand? Perhaps by insuring that the public has the right to be as well-armed as the militia.
The Founders were deeply suspicious of government and feared tyranny. That's why they made it difficult to obtain convictions against criminals, and why they set up three branches of government so the branches would fight with each other rather than uniting to oppress the citizenry. That's also why they prevented the government from enjoying a monopoly of lethal force.
Taken to modern times, though, this analysis starts to sound ridiculous. If the military has tanks, ballistic missiles and thermonuclear warheads, should citizens also be able to own such devices?
Well, if we go by the original intent of the Founding Fathers, yes. At the end of the 18th century, the most potent weapons system was a ship of the line toting a few dozen cannon. Governments built and operated navies of such vessels.
So did private citizens, who would sometimes contract
with the government to operate as privateers,
using
their personal warships to attack enemy shipping. The
Founders obviously approved allowing of such firepower to
reside in private hands, because the Constitution gives
Congress the power to grant letters of marque
--
that is, to contract with private warship owners.
Given that, the Second Amendment must mean that we private citizens enjoy the absolute right to own and operate any weapon, no matter how powerful. American citizens in 1791 held and exercised that right, and no amendment passed since then has abridged that right.
That's why I'm disappointed with the NRA. It presents itself as a fervent defender of our Second Amendment rights, and it doesn't even come within a day's ride of advocating the full scale of armament rights that our Founding Fathers obviously wanted us to have.
What a bunch of wimps. They say they believe in preserving our constitutional rights, but they don't even support private ownership of machine guns, let alone cruise missiles.
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