Once upon a midnight dreary: A defense of the Second Amendment

by John C. Street

It was hard for me, a non-lawyerly type, to understand how shutting down the Pennsylvania Instant Check System (PICS) for a few days to upgrade the antiquated program was a breach of the Second Amendment.  I opined, therefore, the shut down/up-grade of PICS was poorly timed, surely, but this, I believe(d), could be perfectly “described as stupidity.”   

No sooner had I penned out and e-mailed that opinion to this paper, though, than I started to have second thoughts.   “Was I wrong,” I kept asking myself?  “Was it really, as the founder of the Second Amendment Foundation feared, ‘a strategy … for arbitrarily suspending the constitutional right to keep and bear arms.’”      

Long story short, I had a terrible time getting to sleep that night.  Good Wife and I had gone to the local tasty-freeze a little late in the evening and milkshakes are having that effect on me lately.  And when I finally did nod off, I had a really weird dream in which I was having a conversation with a man who looked to be from another era, like back in the colonial days maybe, and he talked to me like he knew me and knew how that PICS thing had been pestering me. 

“Proponents of the Second Amendment,” he started off, “are inclined to make it sound like the authors of the constitution had a crystal ball but that’s not the case I assure you.  What they really had was a keen understanding of what was taking place in Europe and that, as the language of the Constitution reveals, had a profound impact on ou …I mean, on their thinking.”

He paused for a moment then and studied me carefully to see if I understood.  “As you may recall,,” he continued at last, “the people ruling those European countries back then weren’t much concerned with trifling matters like ‘personal freedoms’ and ‘human rights’ and this lack of concern extended to their ‘subjects’ living abroad, especially those living here in America.” 

At this point he held up four fingers for emphasis and proceeded to outline what he called the “to-do” list set forth in the Preamble of our Constitution.  “First and foremost,” he began, “the framers believed they needed to ‘establish justice’ as a bedrock for all that was to follow.  Next, and please remember what was going on at the time, they knew they had to ‘provide for the common defense.’  Third, they understood how important it was to ‘promote the general welfare.’  And, last but, as I shall endeavor to explain, not least, they wanted to ‘secure the blessing of liberty for themselves and posterity.’ The operative word is ‘secure.’”

After a short pause to gather his thoughts he added, “The authors of the Constitution understood all too clearly that a man with a gun can insist on the rights of a ‘citizen,’ a man without a gun is relegated to being a ‘subject.’  So, in order to make certain that ‘citizens’ had a way to insist on being afforded all their other rights, they ratified what is arguably the most important ‘Right’ of them all, ‘the right of the people to keep and bear arms.’”

Again he paused and for a moment I thought my dream might be ending.  But then, a studious look came over him and I could sense he was thinking about something that needed explaining.  “Now, over two-hundred years later, and just as w … or, I mean, as the framers of the Constitution feared, some within the government want to renege on parts of the ‘to-do’ list. ’We’re smart people,’ they assure us, ‘you don’t need all those guns anymore.  Just give us your Saturday night specials and your assault style weapons and, oh, what the heck, maybe all the rest of your handguns too.  You can keep us in line with your hunting arms but, gosh, do you really need those pump and semi-automatic shotguns for that?’”

He’d used a theatrical voice, mocking the politicians, but now his tone turned hard.  “The divide-and-conquer scheme is very real,” he said with a scowl, “and we need to take it serious. Some might think it harsh that so much retribution was inflicted on that poor gun writer, Jim Zumbo, for opining on his blog a short time ago there was no place in the hunting community for assault style, semi-automatic firearms. But it’s imperative, you see, that threats to the Second Amendment not go unchallenged.”  

After pausing to let this sink in, his face began to brighten and I knew he was nearly finished this time.  “You were right all along about the shut down of PICS,” he said, nodding his head with approval.  “As stupid as it was, though, it was one more piece of a pattern that should raise a public protest from anyone who understands the role of the Second Amendment. “

As I strained to hear he let out a sigh and these were his final words.  “Alas as you said and I regretfully agree, there’s no law against being stupid.”