The Pursuit of Happiness

473

When I was in boot camp one of the first lessons we learned about soldiering was the difference between a gun and a rifle. “This is my rifle it is to shoot,” said my DI, holding an M1 up in the air. “This is my gun,” he said next, pointing to his penis. “It is for fun.” If a slow learner mistook a rifle for a gun after that lesson, he’d likely find himself on his back wriggling his hands and legs in the air shouting, “I’m a cockroach, Drill Sargent! I’m a cockroach!”

I’ve been a bird hunter – ducks and pheasants – for most of my life, but that early training is the one that’s stuck in memory. Naturally (hoho), it has caused me to think about the quality of arguments we’ve been hearing about the 2nd Amendment lately.

Assume I ran about town with my penis flapping around for all to see. I suspect you’d want local law enforcement to intervene. But suppose I’d tattooed “This is my gun it is for fun” on said member, and resisted arrest because I was not only exercising my 1st Amendment rights to free speech but also presenting a sound military training lesson as well. Makes sense, right?

When the founders wrote the Bill of Rights they didn’t intend for an individual’s right to bear arms to morph into a Yosemite Sam cartoon any more than they would endorse the legitimacy of my 1st Amendment exercise. They were certainly not opposed to the right to bear arms, but their primary 2nd Amendment objective was to reject the establishment of a national standing army, both for its expense and for the possibility that corrupt leaders could use it to abridge our freedoms. If people truly cared about the 2nd Amendment, they’d join the National Guard, attend regularly scheduled training, and they’d never vote for politicians who have created the largest and most expensive military industrial complex in the history of mankind.

This especially goes for Democrats. Stop nominating and running war hawks for national office, stop waging endless wars, and start paying attention to the intention of the Bill of Rights.