2nd Amendment: It's about money.

[dutch508]

arendt (1000+ posts)       Wed Jul-09-08 12:54 PM
Original message http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x3587673


Q: What is the cash value of gun rights? A: Its a valuable wedge issue for the GOP.

Edited on Wed Jul-09-08 12:58 PM by arendt

Mods, this is about "wedge issue" politics. I would understand if you moved it to the gun forum, but I posted it in GD for a less biased audience.

--------------------------------


One man with a briefcase can steal more money than a hundred men with guns.

- Don Corleone


1. QUESTIONS

Let me begin with a set of questions. How have gun rights slowed or prevented:

- Bush's war on the Constitution?
- his trumped-up wars of aggression for oil?
- his hiring of vast numbers of heavily armed mercenaries and their placement INSIDE our country?
- his allowing the military to become a "Christian" organization?
- his tearing down the wall between Church and State?
- his turning the media into a biased, pro-GOP, pro-corporate, propaganda machine?
- his looting of the middle class and of the national treasury?
- his outsourcing of our manufacturing base?

The answer is, they have not. Because all of these attacks on our way of life are done by men with briefcases instead of men with guns. You, as a citizen, cannot walk into the backrooms where the deals are done that create these outrages, pull a gun, and make a citizen's arrest. The attack on America is done with "soft" power - lobbyist money, slick lawyers, propaganda campaigns, corrupt officials on the take or blackmailed.

It is only as a result of this soft power that the "hard" power of mercenary armies, habeus corpus-free detention/torture camps, and huge arrays of wiretapping computers and databases is created. Individual firearms are not going to stop "soft" power that has captured and corrupted the government.

If gun rights were important FOR defending our Constitution (as opposed to being defended BY our Constitution), there ought to be some examples of people using these rights to do so. We have people using their First Amendment rights to free speech and free assembly to attempt to stop the country from drifting into dictatorship. We have people using their Civil Rights to fight against voter disenfranchisement. But, has anyone used firearms to try to stop the cops from herding people into Free Speech Zones? Anyone used firearms to stop Blackwater mercenaries from being quartered on American soil?

I hope no one will challenge the obviousness of the fact that gun rights are DEFENDED BY the Constitution because they cannot stand by themselves.

----


Bill of Rights

* 1st Amendment – Establishment Clause, Free Exercise
...........................Clause; freedom of speech, of the
...........................press, and of assembly; right to petition
* 2nd Amendment – Right to keep and bear arms. (RKBA)
* 3rd Amendment – Protection from quartering of troops.
* 4th Amendment – Protection from unreasonable search
...........................and seizure.
* 5th Amendment – due process, double jeopardy,
...........................self-incrimination, eminent domain.
* 6th Amendment – Trial by jury and rights of the accused;
...........................Confrontation Clause,speedy trial, public
...........................trial, right to counsel
* 7th Amendment – Civil trial by jury.
* 8th Amendment – Prohibition of excessive bail and cruel and
...........................unusual punishment.
* 9th Amendment – Protection of rights not specifically
...........................enumerated in the Bill of Rights.
* 10th Amendment – Powers of states and people.

- Wikipedia summary in "United States Bill of Rights"


When I look at the Bill of Rights, it is clear that ALL of these items are meant to be rights PROTECTED BY the Constitution. If someone violates these rights, the citizen's appeal is to the legitimate Constitutional government to uphold these rights, by legal force if necessary. I see no right that is capable of enforcing itself, absent a legitimate Constitutional government. (If you didn't get that about RKBA the first time, read above about "soft" power again.) If the government is illegitimate, ALL of these rights are threatened.
Just last week, the SCOTUS expanded the already large 2nd amendment RKBA. This right is under no threat whatsoever from the government, regardless of the fact that ALL other rights are under threat from this regime. This right is defended and constantly expanded by one of the most powerful, well-organized lobbies in Washington, the NRA. The NRA out-lobbies the police forces of the U.S. on a regular basis.

I repeat, this right is under no credible threat from political action from the left - basically because there is no left left in American politics.

2. ARGUMENTS

When a government as rotten as this one has no problem with RKBA, I am certain that RKBA is no threat to those in power. That is why, in an interchange in another OP that provoked this essay, I called RKBA a "wedge issue". Of course, this provoked spluttering outrage (from a single person, whom I had to eventually put on ignore). But, I stand by my contention; and I have taken the time to write this essay in the hopes of getting answers instead of insults for my trouble.

Let me recap my argument so far. First, RKBA is a right protected by the Constitution, not a means to protect the Constitution. In a modern state, individual firearms are a simple matter for heavily armed SWAT teams to deal with, not a means of defending yourself from a government bent on stripping away your rights and your money with a thousand legal cuts.

Second, the Constitutional RKBA is the LEAST threatened of all our rights, the recent SCOTUS decision being prima facie evidence of that.

Based on those two points, I renew my question: What is the cash value of gun rights? To me, it seems that the only "cash value" to be found here is as a wedge issue.

Like all wedge issues, the job of RKBA is to split an opposition party. By making RKBA a litmus test, the uniform opposition to the Bush regime can be splintered into warring camps. The most powerful wedge issues bring out "ontological" fears - that is, fears for one's very existence. (Like: gays are going to rape you and your children. Atheists are going to prevent you and your children from getting your place in heaven. - Notice how children are always prominent in ontological propaganda.) This fear leads to an obsessive focus on a single issue, to the detriment of the overall goal. RKBA sure fits that bill: "you can pry the gun out of my cold dead hands". Ontology in spades. Macho flop sweat by the bucket.

In the past, I had made the mistake of thinking that gun rights was just a fringe issue, with no bearing on me. I have never owned a gun, and have never felt that owning one would be good for me. I grew up in a family full of cops. There were guns all over the place; police guns, hunting rifles, shotguns. I was never interested. I trusted the police to do their jobs. I felt that I was less capable than they were when it came to guns. The police opposed NRA campaigns to legalize assault weapons and concealed carry. That seemed sensible to me.

But now, I see that gun rights is not a fringe issue, but a wedge issue. Huge amounts of energy are being wasted on this legal non-issue (see point 2 above), while the country is burning down around us. What was a matter of personal choice is now escalating into ideological warfare, with demands for concealed carry of guns into places where they can only result in further, distracting, political fights. Given the legal protections in place, worrying about gun rights is the equivalent of watching "missing blonde girl" news stories. And, in my opinion, it is wasting the time of people on DU and turning the gun forum into a ghetto of ideologues.

The only other places I have seen this kind of one-dimensional ideological fervor is in the various kinds of fundamentalisms that afflict America: religious fundamentalism, and financial (laissez faire) fundamentalism. In each case, there is an idealized world with a one-size-fits-all answer to problems. And there is glee amongst the GOP at the success of their "let's you and him fight" strategy of political divide-and-conquer.

3. CONCLUSION

If someone could point me at what they consider to be a list of "reasonable regulations", maybe we could get DU out of this black-and-white world. But, I perceive that even that term, which was meant to be neutral and precise, has become just more grist for the ideologues' mill. Anyway, I am looking for a sensible statement that defines what the majority of people would accept, so that I can point to it as evidence that I am not a "gun grabber", merely someone who thinks we need to do less about a right that is under no threat and more about all the rights that have already been stolen.

I do not want to confiscate guns. It is a fool's errand in this gun-crazy culture. I just want people to stop going absolutely ballistic every time the correlation between excessive gun rights activism and wedge issue politics is pointed out.

My priorities are to impeach Bush, restore some semblance of Constitutional democracy, stop the wars, and stop the looting. I haven't got time to argue about missing blonde guns.

Thank you for holding your fire until now. Ducking and covering.

arendt

 
 

[DumbAss Tanker]

Arendt certainly has a long-winded and poorly-crafted way of saying "Arendt is a tool."  Pretty clear the dumbshit doesn't understand either side of the RKBA argument and has a conceptual framework limited to stifling any discussion of controversies that might interfere with the Obamessianic Ascension.

[MrsSmith]

Aren is having DTs. 

Isn't it funny how Pres. Bush is to blame for so many things that Clinton, and even Carter, did?   

[Chris_]

One man with a briefcase can steal more money than a hundred men with guns.

- Don Corleone

Now you want something REAL SCARY, libtard?  I carry a briefcase, and inside that briefcase I gots me a GUN TOO. Now, how much money can I steal?

[Airwolf]

Anyone that is that stupid can certainly come and get my gun. He can have it one bullet at a time and then I'll beat him with it when the guns empty.

[Bondai]

- Bush's war on the Constitution?
- his trumped-up wars of aggression for oil?
- his hiring of vast numbers of heavily armed mercenaries and their placement INSIDE our country?
- his allowing the military to become a "Christian" organization?
- his tearing down the wall between Church and State?
- his turning the media into a biased, pro-GOP, pro-corporate, propaganda machine?
- his looting of the middle class and of the national treasury?
- his outsourcing of our manufacturing base?

WTF?

[BlueStateSaint]

- Bush's war on the Constitution?
- his trumped-up wars of aggression for oil?
- his hiring of vast numbers of heavily armed mercenaries and their placement INSIDE our country?
- his allowing the military to become a "Christian" organization?
- his tearing down the wall between Church and State?
- his turning the media into a biased, pro-GOP, pro-corporate, propaganda machine?
- his looting of the middle class and of the national treasury?
- his outsourcing of our manufacturing base?

WTF?

I think that we can cue "Woo-Hoo" at this moment . . .