--------------------------------------------
I am no expert either, but Edward's view strikes me as plausible as to the
'right to bear arms' being a constitutional right in terms of the potential
roles of a 'militia' of citizenry: it is obvious, in historical terms, to see
the political importance of this in guaranteeing freedom under the
Constitution. The importance of this may now be obscured because the US is
further away, historically, from the experience of tyranny that informed its
Constitution; but once we allow that tyranny can happen anywhere, we should
allow that it would be a mistake to think of this constitutional right as being
merely of 'historical' importance. (What has changed, and which affects the
character of the problem, is the character of weaponry itself - which is
potentially far more powerful and accurate than when the Constitution was
drafted so that mass killings by a lone gunman were not possible then.)
It is also right to set the debate in terms of kinds and degrees of
'gun-control' rather than in terms of a false opposition between 'no-guns' and
'no-gun control'.
But among Edward's interesting comments is a thesis about the opposition of the
self-reliant and the state-dependent/self-entitled, and that this divide
corresponds somehow to the divide over 'gun-control'.
This thesis, aside from whether it has a grain of truth, amounts to a kind of
ad hominem [there's a better latin tag, I'm sure, but I'm not going to dig it
out]. It is one that tends to skew rational debate.
It's an ad hominem that plays to the gallery and might be met with the
counter-argument that it is crooks bearing arms who are on the side of the
self-entitled rather than the self-reliant; and that there is nothing lacking,
in a general attitude of self-reliance, where we seek to take weaponry as far
out of the equation of a civil society as we can. The central aim of
civilisation is the reduction of violence.
D
L
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