Thursday, January 15, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Mercury

Second Amendment liberal

It's not an oxymoron for this Big Government gun nut

By Steve Sebelius

Most of the time it's simply an unwelcome contrast, like a glass of Sauvignon Blanc with a well-done steak or a pair of chocolate-brown socks worn with a charcoal-gray suit.

Second Amendment liberals.

Our numbers are few, and we are generally treated like cigarette smokers looking down on cigar aficionados: It's all tobacco, after all, but there's tobacco and then there's tobacco, if you know what we mean.

Those who with loud voice and courage of conviction defend to the death (or at least to the end of the 10-minute segment on cable news) the First, Fourth, Fifth and 14th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution suddenly blanch when it comes to the Second.

A refresher: "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."

Those 27 words make most liberals cringe. They see gang violence, school shootings, suicides, children killed or maimed at play and disgruntled former employees coming back to get their revenge.

But if the Constitution means what it says elsewhere, no amount of horrific violence can justify disregarding the plain meaning of those 27 words. If we do, we put everything else we prize so dearly about our founding document in peril, literally and politically.

Why am I a Second Amendment liberal? Because I see no contrast with a nation striving for justice, equality and compassion for all and the vital role guns have played in our history. I see no incongruity with supporting taxes, welfare and universal health care with the security for the free state that flows from the barrel of a gun.

The founders, after all, put the Second Amendment in the Constitution because they were acutely aware of the value guns had played in the Revolutionary War. America won her freedom with muskets and black powder, not flowery speeches and votes in distant Parliament.

And the founders of the new country, facing a world every bit as uncertain as ours, knew that every American capable of defending this country may one day be called upon to do so. And if awful tyranny ever captured its own government, the founders knew that another revolution was a last resort.

So the next time you hear some National Rifle Association spokesman disparage the value of a fully automatic, Russian-made AK-47 "assault rifle," or speak of the joys of hunting deer, quail or geese, remind him that the Second Amendment wasn't written to help sportsmen, but revolutionaries.

Liberals like myself, who embrace the role of Big Government to help people, whether it's building a road or operating a hospital, often cannot conceive that this government would turn on its citizens. But the same has happened countless times in human history, and it's almost universally preceded by the systematic disarming of the populace. No legitimate government will ever seek to take away the weapons of its citizens, and any state that does has lost its legitimacy.

My liberal friends may argue that the Second Amendment applies to the "militia," the modern-day National Guard, not to regular people. But that's not what the U.S. Supreme Court believed as recently as 1939 (when, by the way, a gun-banning Adolf Hitler was planning global domination).

In United States vs. Miller, the court held that "...the Militia comprised all males physically capable of acting in concert for the common defense." In other words, all regular citizens.

This is not to say that people don't do bad things with guns, or that some gun owners are bad. But if we don't ban cars for the occasional idiot who misuses one by driving drunk, how much less can we ban guns for their misuse, especially since owning them is a guaranteed constitutional right?

Some of my liberal friends will argue that the Second Amendment is a savage instrument born of a savage time, and that progress has left us without the need for guns, save for the military or police. But what constitutional precept couldn't fall to the same argument? Isn't the Constitution now under attack by conservatives who want to increase the government's power to protect us from terrorists? What greater fear could terrorists have than a heavily armed populace, trained to use their personal arsenals for the common defense of this nation?

So I may be the subject of odd curiosity from my fellow liberals when I hold forth on guns, and my desire to see every citizen be able to purchase belt-fed weapons at Target (without the nasty and unconstitutional business of registration, by the way). But my intentions are pure: We have a free country, but only because of guns. And if we're going to keep it free--whether from Islamic fundamentalism or homegrown tyranny--we'll need guns to do it.