President Obama’s Mule and the Second Amendment

The Second Amendment is the mule of US laws. It has been reinterpreted, refined and debated intensely. But it is still alive in the 21st century.

Here it would be too presumptuous to bring a legal argument in favor of its abrogation. But as citizens whose lives are affected by it, we can argue with our common sense. It is well said that the law is the last refuge of the scoundrel.

To many gun lovers, the Second Amendment is more a religious stance than a law — a sacred right enshrined in our tenets of liberty.

It is also a sacred cow for the gun lobby and the National Rifle Association (NRA), which spend millions to protect the amendment, making it a lucrative entitlement for arms merchants.

Politicians deal with the issue with kid gloves in order not to upset the powerful gun lobby.

When the Brady Bill was brought to the US Congress in 1993, the gun lobby fought it tooth and nail. The bill got nowhere near prohibiting guns; instead it only mandated federal background checks on firearms purchasers in the US, and imposed a five-day waiting period on gun purchases until the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) was implemented in 1998.

Incidentally, Sen. Bernie Sanders voted against the bill, betraying an inconsistency in his socialist credentials.

What, in fact, the gun lobby meant, was that any person out of a mental asylum must be able to acquire guns. This means that my life and my safety are dependent on the sanity of my armed neighbors. I have no other protection. Our entire society is hostage to the dark motives of lunatics.

The defense of the Second Amendment and consequently the right to own arms should not be politicized as the life of ordinary citizens is affected by it. Nor should it be enshrined in Republican dogma, since Republicans are also vulnerable to assault by arms. The Brady Bill was named for James Brady, an aide to President Ronald Reagan, who was seriously injured during an assassination attempt on the president in 1981.

Every times a mass murder takes place in the US, gun prices soar sky high. Why? Because the gun lobby uses scare tactics suggesting that the government can adopt bills to restrict gun sales, or President Obama may issue an executive order to limit gun use and confiscate existing guns.

Like any professional salesman, the NRA has catchy slogans to promote its business. One of the slogan is: “Only a good person with a gun can stop a bad person with a gun.”

The adage is false, because there is the element of surprise. Any criminal with a gun has the added element of surprise going for him or her.

To disprove the slogan, it is worth finding statistics on how many “good persons” have been successful in self-defense, in that kind of tense situation. Most probably, very few.

The other slogan which is equally false is: “Guns don’t kill people; people kill people.”

But the availability and abundance of guns empower potential murderers to dominate their victims quickly.

Of course, there is also the argument that if someone is determined to kill a person, he or she can use any kind of weapon. That may be true but still, the presence of a gun increases the odds for committing a crime.

The rights to gun ownership and freedom of speech have their limitations. The French philosopher Voltaire said, “I will defend your right to free speech to death, but your freedom stops where my nose begins.” The freedom to own guns causes nose bleeds for the great majority, yet its defenders persist in their zeal to defend their dangerous game.

The film “Bowling for Columbine” by Michael Moore is an outstanding indictment of the gun lobby. Many statistical data are provided in the documentary and the US is compared to many other countries such as Canada, where gun control is strict, and fewer people fall victim to gun crimes.

The ordinary citizen has the right to argue that if the government has allowed loopholes in the law for me to buy a gun for self-defense, then that government, which taxes my income to the last penny, has abandoned its obligation to protect me. Either I should be entitled to a refund or the government has to allow loopholes in other services, such as in foreign policy. Like the issue of self-defense, the citizen must conduct his or her own foreign policy individually or ask the government not to send taxpayer money and arms to Turkey, to be used for killing Kurds.

All these arguments may look absurd but they are not as absurd as the implication of the Second Amendment.

Gun lobby activists ignore the latter part of the amendment. The thrust of the Second Amendment entitles the individual to bear arms “in a well-regulated militia.” The requirement thus intends the citizen to be armed to defend the republic, something they do not have to do anymore since the country already has an army. The gift of life is precious and irreplaceable; guns are replacable and disposable.

To bring the US up to the standards of Canada or Scandinavian countries, the entire population of the country needs to be disarmed. That is a challenge not only to a militia but also to the entire US armed forces.

Otherwise, we have to wait for the next Orlando, San Bernardino or Columbine.

The gun laws are obsolete as is the use of mules in the US army.