Editor’s note: Jon Margolis is VTDigger’s political columnist.
[L]ike so many public debates these days, the argument over guns now roiling both Vermont and the rest of the country has become more tribal than substantive, with each side trying harder to score points than to make them.
Too bad. Listening to each other has some merit.
So while Rep. Patrick Brennan, R-Colchester, spoke with more certainty than warranted when he said one of the Vermont gun control bills, S.55, “does nothing whatever” to make schools safer, he wasn’t wrong to challenge the bill’s supporters to explain why they think it will do very much.
Requiring a background check of everyone who buys or is given a firearm might mean that fewer potentially violent people will get firearms. That seems to be what happened in Connecticut, where the murder rate fell after tougher gun laws were passed. But it remains conjecture, not incontrovertible fact.
Even more simplistic is the insistence by some pro-gun activists that the bills before the Legislature violate “a constitutional right.”
Maybe, but probably not. If the bills are passed and challenged, the courts will decide. But one need not be a lawyer – merely fluent in English – to conclude that most if not all the provisions under consideration would pass the constitutional test established by the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in District of Columbia v. Heller.
That’s the 2008 case concluding that the Second Amendment makes gun ownership an individual right, without connection to a “well-regulated militia.”
But the ruling, written by the late Justice Antonin Scalia, made clear that the “right is not unlimited. It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.” It’s OK, Scalia wrote, to outlaw “possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill,” or to ban carrying guns “in sensitive places such as schools.”
So states may limit how, where, when, to whom and what guns are sold without violating a constitutional right as interpreted by the Supreme Court, the only interpretation that matters.
Still, all that is open to debate. What is not is the often-repeated assertion that the private ownership of guns will somehow protect an individual – or even the entire body politic – from the oppressive behavior of a tyrannical government.
Or as Rep. Brian Savage, R-Swanton, said during the debate, “we are beginning to lose the means with which to ensure our freedom.”
We are not, whether or not these bills pass. To begin with, there is no tyrannical government, and none is imminent. Americans are freer than they have been during most of their history. Not that long ago, people went to jail for expressing unpopular thoughts and books were banned if the self-appointed protectors of public morality found them naughty.
These days, speakers sometimes get shouted down on college campuses, but they don’t go to the pokey. They get a bigger advance on their next book. And these days, the naughtier the book (or movie) the bigger the sales.
It isn’t that civil liberties are never violated. Jefferson said “eternal vigilance” was needed to protect liberty, and he’s still right. Most of today’s violations concern non-white young men who are more likely to be stopped on foot or in a car by agents of government (police), frisked, harassed, and often much worse.
Yes, even in Vermont, as shown by the recent University of Vermont study finding that black and Hispanic drivers are far more likely to be pulled over than whites.
This does not mean it would be good advice to urge these young men to carry a loaded weapon and shoot the cops who stop them. It would be very bad advice. Good advice is urging them to organize politically, find good lawyers, provide examples of mistreatment to enterprising journalists.
Threats to freedom are best met by ideas and institutions, not by material objects, even gas-operated, semi-automatic, high-caliber material objects. They don’t do any good.
Just consider the following improbable hypothetical: Suppose the government did become tyrannical, the executive branch somehow taking over or cowing the Congress, the courts, the newspapers and the networks. It happens. (See Venezuela, Turkey, Hungary).
When the edict forbidding critical commentary came forth from Washington, your humble agent here would hope to be among those with the courage to disobey, sitting at this very keyboard writing words the powers that be did not want written.
And when the powers that be came to get me, they would … get me, no matter how well-armed I might be. No matter how well-armed 50 or 100 or 500 of my friends and neighbors might be. That’s because under the Second Amendment you and I have the right only to “bear arms,” meaning the right applies only to arms that can be borne, and not even all of them.
As the Heller decision notes, “no amount of small arms could be useful against modern-day bombers and tanks.” Or, it could have added, against machine guns mounted on armed personnel carriers, grenade launchers, helicopter gunships, or laser-guided rockets, all wielded by people well-trained in using them.
Even Justice Scalia, in his long and argumentative decision, didn’t come close to claiming any connection between the right to bear arms and protection against an excessively intrusive government. Individuals had a right to use guns for “home defense” the ruling said, not because the guns served any political purpose.
And that “home defense” can be effective only against run-of-the-mill civilian trespassers such as a burglar. Don’t try it on a government official unless you want your home to be invaded by a force far superior to any you could match.
It’s easy to see why some might resist understanding that rights and freedoms are protected not by anything they can touch but by intangibles – an independent judiciary, an aggressive press corps, a robust civil society, people who take seriously their responsibilities as free citizens of a republic.
Guns are fine for hunting, target-shooting, perhaps self-defense. When it comes to protecting our political and personal freedoms, a gun is impotent.
