My Great Good Friends,
With the DJIA at a new high, the Yuan at a new low, and DEFCON reset to its lowest nuclear alert stage, there is a lot to be thankful for in this first post election week.
The fact that we are all the center of our own world was indelibly impressed upon me by a Mr. Hart, my fifth grade teacher. Sprinkling a little sugar water on a balloon to attract some playground ants he then blew it up illustrating every ant thought all the other ants were moving away from her.
Cognizant that I too have an ant’s world view, the election celebrations I am invited to are distinctly Second Amendment centric.
More than once friends have opined that ‘we’, the gun rights advocates, have saved the Second Amendment. I wonder if it might be the other way around.
As constructed by our genius Founders, the Second is the ultimate guarantor of all our other rights. And, as such, a galvanic agent for amping the enthusiasm of conservative rural voters. Voters who, again down to the genius of the Founders, would be disenfranchised were it not for the electoral college. As the Democrat party machines ran up the urban block vote with dependency entitlements, the self reliant coalesced around gun rights.
AnyHowitzer, maybe we did save it. Maybe it saved us,
-ATN
NB: Please see the SPQR.today site for the August 31, 2013 essay ‘Returning to the Second Amendment’ for my analysis of the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy article on international comparisons of violence and civilian access to handguns.
Also the January 9th 2013 and January 14th 2013 essays on the hypocritical politics of gun control may be of interest.