"What's going happen ... if the public decides to do that? He's going to send in U.N. troops, I don't want them in Lubbock County. I'm going to stand in front of their armored personnel carriers and say 'You're not coming in here,"
- Thomas Head, County Judge in Lubbock County, Texas
- Spokesman for UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon
Texas is certainly a lot to contend with, especially considering how many guns exist in that state that are owned, privately, by civilians, although I would guess that in the event of a large-scale UN invasion, these Texans would cause plenty of harm to their own people if large numbers of them were involved, merely as armed civilians. When I was an undergraduate, my professor gave us an account of a conversation he had with a shopkeeper in Arizona, while he was a professor at Brown University, travelling to Arizona for a conference. I am not recalling his words perfectly, and I doubt he was perfectly recalling what he heard, but it was, more or less, as follows: "You know what it is with you northerners and easterners? If you all had carried guns, the attack on the World Trade Center would've never happened." There are plenty of gun-owners in Connecticut and Rhode Island, plenty in Massachusetts, and plenty in New Jersey, PLENTY in upstate New York, and PLENTY in Long Island, as we can see from the murder rates of these places. Also, just for fun, we can see the Huffington Post has claimed in June, 2012 that Chicago has a higher murder rate, per capita, than Kabul.
Let's put this all into perspective. I think we can all agree that guns have a very visceral sort of appeal. Most of us - including many females among us - loved playing with toy guns or imaginary guns when we were children. And I think most people see profound intuitive value in owning their own gun when their lives are threatened by a human enemy and the forces entrusted to resist the enemy do not seem sufficient or trustworthy. A perfect example, which I will discuss in a subsequent paragraph, is gun ownership among American gangs who feel threatened by other gangs and are loath to rely on the police.
But let's start from the beginning, which unfortunately means relying primarily "official" accounts of history that only deal with affairs in which the government was directly involved, rather than infighting among ordinary citizens. In another blog post I wrote about gun-related laws in the English colonies on the American east coast. Among the thirteen colonies, there was only one (Pennsylvania) that did not at any point require gun ownership among adult males (with certain exceptions, of course, which varied depending on the specific colony. Allowing natives and slaves to own guns would defeat the purpose of these laws). Among these twelve colonies, five of them - Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Virginia and North Carolina - required all gun owners to bring their guns to church services. This practice continues today in churches that hold a Bring Your Gun to Church Day, albeit for symbolic reasons more than for practical reasons. This policy seems to be inspired by the policy of universal military service which was in place in the country that ruled these colonies, both before and after Restoration. Several of the colonies organized citizen militias which required all young men to serve for a certain number of years, so long as they were among the good guys.
In fact, I was just reading on Wikipedia that until the 20th century, the major American military engagements were fought largely, if not primarily, by private militias, state militias, or militias organized by an English or Dutch colony and their Native American allies. Of course, I'm not claiming that Wikipedia provides us with the absolute truth, but Wikipedia is a live debate between thousands (millions?) of people who are determined to prove each other wrong. To start with, the main forces in the American Revolution was the Massachusetts militia - consisting primarily of last-minute amateur enlistees - and enthusiastic bystanders with guns. At that time there was no United States, but in the following hundred-some years, state and private militias would be the main contributors to the American efforts in the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, the Civil War (on both sides), and the Spanish-American War. Also, not surprisingly, they were the primary force in just about all of the Indian wipe-out campaigns, from the Pequot War to the John Wayne wars. And even since the start of the 20th century, the National Guard has a significant role in the major American military engagements, some small-scale interventions, and in Operation Iraqi Freedom, where they had a much larger role than was originally intended. The National Guard has also had a crucial role in aiding those harmed and in maintaining order in instances of domestic turmoil, such as the September 11th attacks or the attack on a children's hospital in Oklahoma City (an event which I find far more revolting. See below). The National Guard has also played the role of the aggressor in such instances as the Waco siege.
In short, there has always been a very clear context for the Second Amendment to the Constitution, ever since it was ratified. The Second Amendment stipulates the following: "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." In the 121 years since this amendment took effect, the text has remained the same. So the right of people to own guns, and the
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