Gun control in the United States has historically emerged in
three waves. Following the post-Civil War recapture of southern state
governments by white planters, Black Codes
were passed, limiting the freedom of ex-slaves to reject plantation employment,
vote, own land, and keep and bear arms. (This is why it was abolitionists and
Union veterans who founded the NRA in 1871 – not Klansmen, as Michael Moore implies
in Bowling for Columbine.)
The second period of anti-gun legislation was prompted by
the increase in organised crime and political radicalism during the Prohibition
and Depression era, and spawned measures such as the National Firearms Act.
The third wave began in the late 1960s, as part of the ‘White Backlash’ against
Great Society liberalism occasioned by the urban unrest of that era. Chicago
Mayor Richard Daley, the scourge of anti-war protestors at the 1968 Democratic
convention, testified before Congress in support of a ban, and when Bobby Kennedy
declared in favour of gun control on the 1968 campaign trail, the New York Times interpreted it as
pandering to the backlash, calling him “a reconditioned Barry Goldwater
plugging for law and order.” Since then, the Second Amendment, like all civil
liberties, has been most imperilled when politicians have chosen to whip up
hysteria about crime.
The case for gun control rests on a series of falsehoods.
Its advocates tell us that the Second Amendment is a ‘collective’ right,
conveniently separating it from the ‘individual’ rights listed elsewhere in the
Bill of Rights. They tell us that ‘militia’ (a term that the Founders
understood as having a precise legal meaning) means the National Guard, which
was created by statute in 1903. They refer to the difference between the
muskets of 1791 and the semi-automatic weapons of today, but no-one would
similarly argue that the First Amendment doesn’t protect online speech. They cherry-pick
examples of lax state laws governing the purchase and registration of guns, but
ignore the high crime rates of big cities whose gun laws are already draconian.
In addition, the modern push for gun control has arisen in
the context of the post-1960s rise of militarised policing and mass
incarceration. Anti-gun measures are promoted by politicians eager to court
middle-class suburbanites with ‘tough on crime’ rhetoric. Bill Clinton’s
signing of the 1994 assault weapons ban was part of his attempt to outflank the
Republicans to their right on law and order issues – but the increased homicide
rates experienced by American cities in the years leading up to the ban were
not caused by gun availability, but largely by the War on Drugs raising the
prices of cocaine and heroin.
The worst argument against gun ownership is the idea that
guns are unnecessary, as the police will protect against crime. That’s all well
and good for the wealthy, educated whites who dominate the gun control lobby,
but should poor African-Americans and Latinos disarm and rely on big city
police departments with histories of police brutality and institutional racism?
The Second Amendment reminds us that Americans were intended
to participate actively in the defence of their country, rather than being at
the mercy of standing armies and professional police. Its flowery,
eighteenth-century verbiage evokes an era when political debate was framed in
the rights-based language of Enlightenment republicanism, not the
results-oriented language of technocratic neoliberalism. And aside from its
symbolic value, the current Supreme Court has begun putting it to practical use
by striking down some of the worst examples of its violation. With Washington
debating stringent federal gun laws, the body of precedent established with Heller v. District of Columbia could be
the only thing protecting Americans from the fate which befell Australian gun
owners in 1996.
