Let us now tell Tales of the Pioneers, and Trudging to School Through Snowdrifts; maybe even How the Nuns Used to Rap our Nuckles as a Way to Gain a Respect for Education and the Catechism and Celibacy.
I cannot do those things. Born in western Washington State, I can remember a winter when it snowed nearly a foot, and I never met a nun until I was old enough to be a grown man, although not that.
I do remember that--our family being larger than our house and our resources--a number of us slept in what was a hen house; clean, with a single-board wall, and a miserably ineffective wood-burning stove for the most brittle winter nights. Or only for bedtime. Long before morning, the stove was cold, too.
But all of that is just background scenery for saying that there was a stack of Zane Grey books in the chicken coop. Zane Grey by flashlight. Zane Grey and the Riders of the Purple Sage. Under the Tonto Rim. Valley of Wild Horses. Tall, taciturn, righteous cowboys. Proud women. Lawless men, cattle rustlers. Nearly forgotten trails up to the rim, and faintly perceptible old Indian passageways to Mexico. Men who shot from the dark like cowards, and men who shot surely and reluctantly, without self-interest, except perhaps for a sister lost, or an unforgettable love, or simple decency.
Guns. We were not a hunting family, but we had guns. I played with guns. We played at hunting. We hunted as play. We pretended to be gunfighters. I saved money to buy a 30-30 Marlin.
I was a natural for the imaginary cowboy life: I was a second-generation Norwegian whose ancestors had nearly-forever been fishermen and farmers and laborers. I fit right in. The whole nation fit right in beside me, or I beside them. We claimed the heritage of the Old West; a frontier to be conquered, Ohio and Tennessee, Missouri, Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado and New Mexico. Oregon. California. Alaska. Wild West. "Go west, young man, go west!", Horace Greeley advised. We did.
On horseback, alongside wagons, carrying guns, ready to protect ourselves, to shoot thieving strangers in the saloon, shoot ourselves in the foot, shoot at the moon, deer, crows, and knot holes. We imagined it all.
It is impossible to tell the story of America without guns; not just guns for finding food, or for protection, but guns for imaginary dangers, for learning how to be a man, or a good woman alongside her man, but guns for the rite of passage, for fun, for boasting and bluffing and maybe even going to war. Guns to quiet our paranoia about what the neighbors had in mind, or what the Catholics were going to do, to protect ourselves against what we imagined.
Did you miss any episodes of Gunsmoke?
The Second Amendment to the Constitution has very little to do with any of that. The Second Amendment has to do with how we used to put our military together. We called up the State Militias. A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. For a State, a Nation, to be free, it might need to call up its militia, and when they were called, they needed to come armed. People had to have a right to be armed because the State might need to protect itself.
Of course, our militias do not work that way any longer. Such a chaos of arms and ammunition would cripple a modern army.
Nothing in the Second Amendment has anything to do with a gunfight at the OK Corral, or with hunting for food or for the pleasure of marksmanship. It has nothing to do with going for a walk on the Kenai Peninsula, or in Montana.
The fact is that, in the modern world, the Second Amendment has to do with almost nothing. When the Nation-State call us up to go to war, it also provides us with guns. The Second Amendment might--just might--establish that there are conditions that support the right of a citizen to own a gun, for certain purposes. The Second Amendment isn't about hunting, or collecting, or target practice, or living out at the end of the County Road. That legislation should be specified clearly, on its own, not as a contortion of what militias used to be.
What we should do is spell out what those circumstances are. It will not be to enable the State to call up a militia ready to go to war. We have progressed far past the conditions once conceived. But does anyone doubt that there are other conditions, other uses for guns, that one should have a right to? I would not go for a walk up a salmon-spawning creek in Alaska without a gun! I have no doubt that there are people who need guns to find food, just as they need fishing poles, or John Deere tractors. I do not think people need guns to kill things just for fun, because that is sick. But some people have a legitimate need for guns. And some don't.
We should spell out, as well as we can, who can own guns, and where, and what their training and responsibilities are. If we have to register our cars, and our dogs and bicycles, should we not also have to register our guns? Do we not have a right to know that our cranky neighbor has seventeen guns, and wants to buy an automatic rifle to protect himself from . . . whom? The kids in the elementary school?
I cannot do those things. Born in western Washington State, I can remember a winter when it snowed nearly a foot, and I never met a nun until I was old enough to be a grown man, although not that.
I do remember that--our family being larger than our house and our resources--a number of us slept in what was a hen house; clean, with a single-board wall, and a miserably ineffective wood-burning stove for the most brittle winter nights. Or only for bedtime. Long before morning, the stove was cold, too.
But all of that is just background scenery for saying that there was a stack of Zane Grey books in the chicken coop. Zane Grey by flashlight. Zane Grey and the Riders of the Purple Sage. Under the Tonto Rim. Valley of Wild Horses. Tall, taciturn, righteous cowboys. Proud women. Lawless men, cattle rustlers. Nearly forgotten trails up to the rim, and faintly perceptible old Indian passageways to Mexico. Men who shot from the dark like cowards, and men who shot surely and reluctantly, without self-interest, except perhaps for a sister lost, or an unforgettable love, or simple decency.
Guns. We were not a hunting family, but we had guns. I played with guns. We played at hunting. We hunted as play. We pretended to be gunfighters. I saved money to buy a 30-30 Marlin.
I was a natural for the imaginary cowboy life: I was a second-generation Norwegian whose ancestors had nearly-forever been fishermen and farmers and laborers. I fit right in. The whole nation fit right in beside me, or I beside them. We claimed the heritage of the Old West; a frontier to be conquered, Ohio and Tennessee, Missouri, Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado and New Mexico. Oregon. California. Alaska. Wild West. "Go west, young man, go west!", Horace Greeley advised. We did.
On horseback, alongside wagons, carrying guns, ready to protect ourselves, to shoot thieving strangers in the saloon, shoot ourselves in the foot, shoot at the moon, deer, crows, and knot holes. We imagined it all.
It is impossible to tell the story of America without guns; not just guns for finding food, or for protection, but guns for imaginary dangers, for learning how to be a man, or a good woman alongside her man, but guns for the rite of passage, for fun, for boasting and bluffing and maybe even going to war. Guns to quiet our paranoia about what the neighbors had in mind, or what the Catholics were going to do, to protect ourselves against what we imagined.
Did you miss any episodes of Gunsmoke?
The Second Amendment to the Constitution has very little to do with any of that. The Second Amendment has to do with how we used to put our military together. We called up the State Militias. A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. For a State, a Nation, to be free, it might need to call up its militia, and when they were called, they needed to come armed. People had to have a right to be armed because the State might need to protect itself.
Of course, our militias do not work that way any longer. Such a chaos of arms and ammunition would cripple a modern army.
Nothing in the Second Amendment has anything to do with a gunfight at the OK Corral, or with hunting for food or for the pleasure of marksmanship. It has nothing to do with going for a walk on the Kenai Peninsula, or in Montana.
The fact is that, in the modern world, the Second Amendment has to do with almost nothing. When the Nation-State call us up to go to war, it also provides us with guns. The Second Amendment might--just might--establish that there are conditions that support the right of a citizen to own a gun, for certain purposes. The Second Amendment isn't about hunting, or collecting, or target practice, or living out at the end of the County Road. That legislation should be specified clearly, on its own, not as a contortion of what militias used to be.
What we should do is spell out what those circumstances are. It will not be to enable the State to call up a militia ready to go to war. We have progressed far past the conditions once conceived. But does anyone doubt that there are other conditions, other uses for guns, that one should have a right to? I would not go for a walk up a salmon-spawning creek in Alaska without a gun! I have no doubt that there are people who need guns to find food, just as they need fishing poles, or John Deere tractors. I do not think people need guns to kill things just for fun, because that is sick. But some people have a legitimate need for guns. And some don't.
We should spell out, as well as we can, who can own guns, and where, and what their training and responsibilities are. If we have to register our cars, and our dogs and bicycles, should we not also have to register our guns? Do we not have a right to know that our cranky neighbor has seventeen guns, and wants to buy an automatic rifle to protect himself from . . . whom? The kids in the elementary school?
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