… a Recent Example
(c) 2018, Davd
I’m genuinely impressed, how well my March 1st ‘post’ has held up in the Gun Control clamour. I did like the basic argument — enough to repeat it for emphasis here. But that Second Amendment was written and voted into law, over 200 years ago … and times have changed. What hasn’t changed, is human nature, including its application in men’s teamwork.
Not long after my March blog was published, BBC published “Four key dates that shaped the US gun debate” which reported on a June 2008 US Supreme Court decision deeming Second Amendment rights to be individual [by the smallest of majorities]. I had not noticed that decision from my home in a forest in Canada … and it was far enough from consensual, that i did not revise my published blog1. The words “A Well Ordered Militia” are there at the front of the text of that second article of the American Bill of Rights. I am still convinced they are there for good reason.
Can that good reason, still support gun ownership? I do believe it can.
Does that good reason, still support gun ownership in most of the United States? Of that, i’m not nearly so sure. Does it support gun ownership in most of Canada? It ought to in most of the rural Canadian landscape — but often, governments are not in harmony with that support, that direct local democracy — which is a “social problem” much more severe than apparent.
To quote, to repeat from that blog that has been in first position for more than six weeks, and intentionally:
A militia is more local than a national army. Its members are not full-time soldiers, they might not even be paid. In specifying a militia, the U.S. Founding Fathers were neither proposing to fund and administer a large standing army, nor advocating centralization—rather the alternative. They were saying that the sensible and public-spirited men of each locality should get together, organize provisions for the common defense, develop a command structure by consensus, and meet on some kind of mutually agreeable schedule to practice. These men (and i would guess, a tiny minority of women with an aptitude for such things) would then be among the first responders to violent trouble—and, if the US National Guard stories i’ve read be an indication, also responders to natural disasters.
It is in that context—of locally organized and led, locally and more-or-less consensually disciplined, public service and defense—that i read the Second Amendment to protect “the right to keep and bear arms.” It protects the local citizenry from being disarmed by a central government, but i read it to protect the local citizenry as a community, not as individuals. It was written within a generation’s time after the Revolutionary War, when the forced quartering of British troops in American homes and the brutality of Hessian mercenaries were living memories; and i read it as much more a matter of direct local democracy and self-defense than of individualism.
This very month, i saw imperfectly, an example of the local militia meeting a threat.
Recently, a cougar2 killed several cats and small dogs in the remote village to which i moved late last month. At least one local woman, mother and grandmother, saw that cougar at closer range than she found comfortable. At least three local men said they had shotguns handy. (None mentioned rifles — this is a village, and rifle bullets “carry too far.”)
Last week, a neighbour came in from a long walk with his two Welsh Border Collies — medium sized dogs whose weight adds up to slightly less than his — and said they had not scented the cougar. Whether a local hunter or a Government “Conservation Officer” killed3 that cougar, is a whole lot less important than that she was removed from the village, in a manner safe for the humans and pets living here,
The departure of that cougar was much less than a military matter. It was an example, at least “of sorts”, of local men doing violence with discipline and teamwork, to deal with a threat . Central government might have been involved, but it didn’t need to be… and that is the essence of “A well ordered [local] militia”.
The local wisdom includes:
‣ that shotguns and not rifles are the weapons to use to defend a village against a big predatory cat;
‣ who has the hunting skill and self-discipline to take part in that defence;
‣ much knowledge about cougars and their behaviour;.
‣ considerable general advice about prudently avoiding the cougar, for those who don’t belong in the hunting party.
The second point is specific to a village. The central government can’t know it “worth a hoot”, and trying to centralize the problem and the response, is socially inefficient at best.
The other three points are known to local people and (let us hope) the central government also. There is nothing to be gained by centralizing the task nor the assessment of the cougar threat.
In sum, the local people know how to remove an old cougar who has gone from preying on deer to killing easier prey like domestic cats and small dogs, co-operatively and safely. It is not the warlike employment of “A
Well-Ordered Militia…” but it partakes of the local wisdom that central government cannot know and cannot match.
That local community advantage is much of the foundation of the U.S. Second Amendment. It exists where local communities exist; which was ‘most of the United States’ when the U. S. Constitution and Bill of Rights were composed and voted into law… but which is not most of urban nor suburban North America today4.
With that community advantage, “the right to keep and bear arms” works better than bureaucratic “gun control”, Without it, well, … we don’t know well enough to say — and so, the demands for “a world without guns” seem plausible, even preferable, to many.
(But don’t tell that “world without guns” slogan to the people whose pets were killed, whose women and children, even men, were threatened, by that cougar.)
Notes:
1. Writing from Canada, i can leave that recent decision out of consideration more easily than a US source can; and as a sociologist with a few publications specifically in criminology, i can emphasize the natural social surveillance and control that a community enjoys and a large city lacks.
2… said to be a female too old to have any more kittens.
3… or trapped and relocated, though that seems unlikely if the animal was too old to breed.
4. It may be that i, a recent arrival, am inferring more of a local community from the few hunters with whom i discussed the cougar threat, than is extant. It is much more certain that such local communities were the norm in the early rural United States (and significant parts of Canada at that time),
