History and Real Life

Before I came to my current career of general shit-disturbing, I completed a PhD in American history and taught it at the undergraduate level for about 15 years.  I loved American history. I still do, even though it is no longer a daily part of my life. I do occasionally get called upon by friends and colleagues, however, to explain things to them. Things like the Electoral College, the concept of  "separate but equal," and, of course, the Second Amendment.

Passed in 1791, the second amendment says:  "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." Which is why, 21st century logic goes, you see "unloaded weapons only" signs on the doors of hunting and fishing outfitters in the US, and a strict ban on weapons at the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville.

Country Music Hall of Fame, Nashville. 2007.

Personal views on the need for such behaviour aside, I get that people who hunt might actually show up at a hunting goods store with their gun. I get that people might be truly aggravated by country music but I'm not sure that Porter Waggoner's sequinned suits need to be met with packed heat. And I'm pretty sure that guns don't belong anywhere in public life in the way they do in the United States.

Case in point: My friend Jeff, who lives in Colorado, relates this story of his Sunday afternoon trip to the mall:

In the parking lot, a young father was cajoling his very young and somewhat recalcitrant son into their car. Prominently displayed on the man's hip was a handgun, in a black nylon holster. To my eye, which is admittedly not expert in the identification of firearms, his gun and holster looked quite similar to the weapons carried by many police officers.

I'll say that I'm never bothered when I see folks driving around with shotguns or hunting rifles in their vehicles. And doubtless I pass by many folks with concealed weapons in their homes, their cars, or on their persons.

I'll also grant that this young man may in fact have had years of training in the proper use of that gun. He may have been an off duty cop or a decorated veteran. But given that he wasn't in uniform or working in some obvious official capacity ... I have to assume that he was just another average joe like me.

And here's what struck me. I cannot construct any reasonable scenario where this man having such ready access to this weapon made him, his son, me, my wife, or any of the other people in that parking lot more safe. Quite the opposite. It's my judgement that the gun on that guy's hip made each and every one of us there measurably less safe. 

I read Jeff's facebook post about this today and I wondered who taught that guy American history, and how. I wonder if he was taught that after the Revolution, the United States was so fearful of tyranny that it spent years debating how it would unite. That by 1789, it had ratified a Constitution creating such a framework but also clearly laying out a process for its own amendment. A process which, of course, resulted in the Second Amendment.

It's important to parse every word of this Amendment: in 1791, the United States had no standing army, and the right to bear arms was a way of ensuring that the country could call on a militia, or "people's army" -- not just any militia, mind you, but a "well regulated" one. 

So I am sick of hearing that it's someone's constitutional right to walk around with a gun, simply because umpteen generations ago their forefathers lived in a completely different context and fought for the right to bear arms. And, incidentally,  I'm sick of these folks ignoring the fact that their forefathers also insisted that such a right be well-regulated. 

And I am, quite frankly, sick of those people saying that they should have the unadulterated right to carry a gun because the Constitution says so, and the Constitution can't be changed. After all, they only have that right because the Constitution was changed.

And incidentally, the NRA and other (to my mind) nutty right wing organizations only have the right to say most of what they do because the the constitution was changed. Barack Obama will only be permitted to serve two terms as President because the constitution was changed.   

Women have the right to vote because the Constitution was changed. Every African American person you can think of got to be that person because the Constitution was changed, and not just once.  

Statue of the Clinton 12 in Clinton, TN. 2008.

What about when an amendment isn't the best idea in the world? When, say, the amendment prohibiting (for the best of all possible reasons)  the production, transportation and sale of alcohol in the United States ends up instead increasing the demand for alcohol and fueling an illegal underground? Why, then, you change the constitution with another amendment!

Rack room at the Buffalo Trace Distillery. 2007.

Read the amendments to the U.S. Constitution, and for good and for ill, you will see the social and political history of a people. They are not a perfect people, and it's not a perfect country. But in striving for a more perfect union more than 200 years ago, they put in place a few measures to ensure that future generations could find their way around laws and principles that no longer work.

It's strange -- a few days ago, I jokingly posted that with term papers and exams rolling around, I knew I made the right decision to leave academia. But now I feel a certain degree of guilt, because all I can see is an intellectually dishonest and fundamentally dangerous public policy born out of a complex history that's been taught simplistically and reduced to tropes and platitude. 

A lot of things, big and small, are behind why 20 children and 7 adults were killed in Newtown, CT last Friday.  And one of them is the willful refusal to understand the past, and to move beyond it.