I’ve listened to a lot of different kinds of people lately,
since the latest really big mass
shooting in America. (We have to qualify
them now, since we have varying degrees of “mass shooting” happening on the
regular in this, the Gravest Country on
Earth.)
I’ve listened carefully to the young people organizing en
masse and walking out of their schools, staging sit-ins outside the chambers of
stuffy old Senate Majority Leaders. I’ve
listened carefully to red-faced, right-handed apocalypticals who’ve been
convinced in their very guts that any kind of gun-control legislation is the next
phase of the Liberal-Elite Government’s takeover of Freedom. I’ve even listened to well-researched podcasts
that carefully trace the relatively recent rise of the NRA and its obsessively narrow reading of the 2nd Amendment—an obsession which began, ironically, not
with White Rednecks but Black Panthers claiming the right to arm themselves for
their own protection.
For any readers unfamiliar with the Second Amendment to the
American Constitution, it reads, bad commas and all:
“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.”
As short as it is, it’s a doozy, not the least because clear
people see it as loaded, while loaded people see it as clear.
Let’s ignore for a moment the whole “well-regulated militia”
part; regulation is a dirty, liberal word, so let’s focus on the arms part.
I think one reason even our well-meaning, red-faced,
right-handed apocalypticals have become so mobilized, so patriotically inflamed
about this particular Amendment in recent years is this: as the instruments of
political power have grown more and more, well, powerful, it becomes more and
more difficult to believe that We the People have any control at all over our
own politics. Information, media and education:
out of our hands. The economy, jobs, foreign
trade and interest rates: out of our hands.
Voting, gerrymandering, the
electoral college and runaway campaign finance: out of our hands. These are important instruments of power, it’s
true, but let’s face it: when Americans want to feel powerful, especially when
we start to fear that we’re not, the first form of power we grab for—instinctively,
you might say—is the armament.
After all, how is the average, increasingly uncritical
American citizen supposed to feel powerful when the Black folks are getting
shot in the streets, the White folks are losing their unquestionable majority privileges,
the Brown folks are threatened with deportation, the Red folks are getting
even more of their grounds poisoned and dug through with pipelines, all the while some
Yellow folks across the ocean are building nuclear missiles, and not a one of
us can honestly believe that our teeny, tiny vote makes a damn bit of
difference? Of course we need assault
rifles! How are we supposed to defend
ourselves against our own military and police forces, King George and the Liberal-Elite if they
have them, and we don’t? In fact, I
think we need to go all the way with this argument.
Therefore, in the fairly recent but still somehow hallowed tradition of
the 2nd Amendment, in order that the People shall feel empowered and
secure in their person (which after all is why we have a Constitution in the
first place), here is my proposal:
I propose that, immediately and forthwith, every man, woman
and child in these United States of America be armed with a tactical nuclear weapon.
It is the best and only way, in this crazy Age and this crazy Day, to
insure the security of a Free State. And that's what we're after isn't it? Security? Or was it Freedom? Note
that I include children in this demand.
Age-limits are a slippery slope and where will it end? Any limitation is logically the same as total
limitation, I’m sure the NRA will agree.
The second Amendment gives us no limits on the size of the arms we have
the right to keep and bear—Madison even capitalized the word!—and yet time and
again, the Government has given literally trillions of our hard-earned tax dollars
to private contractors to build itself Stealth bombers and Raptors and Smart
Bombs and Blackhawks and subs and tanks and depleted uranium rounds while We the People quibble over bump-stocks and clip-sizes and
age limits. Why shouldn’t every American
have access to that wealth of technology, being necessary for the Security of a
free state?
I say: No more!
Put a nuke in the hands of every citizen and I guarantee we
will have all the Freedom we can stand, once and for all! And if it brings about the Apocalypse, well, isn't that our God-given right too?.
My red-faced, right-handed friends are sick of waiting for it anyway.
