American government at the federal level is capable of great generosity as witnessed by the Marshall Plan, with which we rebuilt Europe after World War II.  At the state level the governments are capable of idiotic lunacy.  Witness the drives against all forms of homosexuality.  Witness the promotion of tobacco planting.  And finally observe that our state governments as well as the federal government are under the sway of the National Rifle Association.  Our gun laws cause the rest of the world to shake its head at their lunacy.  This essay is basically a commentary on one aspect of the laws that govern the ownership of firearms by the general public.

The second article in the United States Constitution provides that firearms must be available for the use of “well-regulated militias” of the government.  The National Rifle Association (NRA) has bullied the Congress and the various legislatures into holding that everyone is entitled to be armed on all occasions because of this Constitutional provision.  NRA spokesmen have contended, within my hearing, that if a citizen wants to use an AK-47, he is entitled to do so.  I take great exception to that thought.
As a vegetarian, I feel no urge to consume the meat of geese, ducks, rabbits, squirrels and other creatures that are murdered in the name of sport.  Our most famous hunters are Cheney, the Vice President, and Antonin Scalia, the Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, who go hunting together but never discuss any of the cases that are before the Supreme Court.  In considering the use of firearms, other names come to mind.  There were Lee Harvey Oswald, James Earl Ray, and Sirhan Sirhan.  They are the men who murdered John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., and the President’s brother Robert Kennedy.
At the current time, we have found that the authorities in the city of Washington DC wish to ban firearms from those who don’t need them for their work.  The NRA has fought valiantly and has taken the position that everyone is entitled to a firearm of any kind as a means of protecting himself in the nation’s capitol.  The Supreme Court may well rule that the citizens of Washington DC are indeed entitled to carry AK-47s or other firearms for their protection.  Please keep in mind that such a provision in the law would take place in the city in which the President of the United States resides.
In the state of Virginia, which obviously adjoins Washington DC, we find that in the past two or three years, a case of tragic proportions occurred. In that incident, there was an unstable person attending the Virginia Military Institute who legally bought a firearm and used it to kill something like 30 other people at that school.  No one has attempted to put the dealer who sold that firearm to that unstable person out of business.  As far as we know, he is still selling handguns and other firearms to citizens who may or may not be competent.
At this point, a disturbing thought comes to mind which constitutes the elephant in the room.  In less than two weeks, the American government hopes to install a new President who claims African parentage.  The fact that Mr. Obama will be our first President of Afro-American citizenship may arouse some citizens to say that he has no right to occupy such a high office.  There may be others who would calculate that one way or another, the Bible, which speaks of slavery, would bar such a person from the Presidency of the United States.  And then there are nuts such as James Earl Ray, Lee Harvey Oswald, and Sirhan Sirhan who may well think that their place in history would be guaranteed by the assassination of a new President.
Only Mark Shields, the syndicated columnist, has openly commented on the thought that Mr. Obama is a tempting target for mentally unbalanced people such as the three mentioned earlier.  But the fact remains that as a black man, Mr. Obama presents another reason for attracting the attention of would-be assassins.  For my part, I hope that Obama lives forever completely unharmed.  But I know that there are those in this society with its lack of gun laws who would see reason to do him harm.
As long as the laws governing guns are in their current state, it is clear that persons who would do harm to the President may buy firearms.  And as long as the President is required to make public appearances, he may well attract that sort of person.  I am not much given to worry, but given the situation, I hope to see that the elephant in the room will be led peacefully away.  This country has had its share of murders of common people.  I hope that there is never an occasion in the future when we must mourn a prominent figure such as the President, the Senator from New York Robert Kennedy, or the preacher, Dr. King.  We have had enough killing.  And if the gun laws were tightened to strangle the National Rifle Association, I would support that effort with great vigor.
 
E. E. CARR
January 6, 2009
Essay 359
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Kevin’s commentary: I agree with the premise of this essay moreso than the conclusion. The idea that it’s fucking bonkers to arm a civilian population with assault rifles or even pistols is sound. School shootings would be exponentially decreased (does this make sense? isn’t an exponential decrease wouldn’t be a logarithm of some sort? these are important questions) if parents didn’t own handguns and rifles for them to pick up.
Presidential assassination though is a different beast. Sure, a gun ban would presumably keep John Smith from picking up a gun and offing Obama on a whim, but 1) it wouldn’t, really, because everybody who has a gun basically has one already, so banning the sale of new ones wouldn’t actually decrease the amount of guns in circulation for some time and 2) you’re sure as hell not going to get away with easily taking all the civilian guns mentioned in point 1 without causing a lot of problems. But even if it did, that’s not really important because Joe Schmoe is not really the threat. Security around the president is so good that a yokel with a shotgun isn’t going to be able to get close enough to take him out. Maybe a hunting rifle could do it but it seems to me that someone who really really wants to get the job done is going to have to go to extreme measures to get uniquely powerful ordinance which is always going to be illegal for obvious reasons. If he or she is committed to his or her plan, securing this ordinance is going to happen regardless of state policy re: gun control.
On that note, I’d like to say hello to the NSA, who surely is following Ezra’s Essays because within 24 hours this blog will have been indexed by Google and it talks about presidential assassinations. Hilariously though the house republicans are currently holding our government hostage so I bet most of the NSA has been furloughed and hasn’t been able to spy effectively on the American populace for the last few weeks. The poor dears.
For clarity I’m posting this on October 16th. The ‘date published’ is just something that I do in order to track how far behind I am in my publishing schedules.