Photos

Over my last several shots, I've been giving you different looks at the protest on 1/19/2013 in support of 'Gun Appreciation Day' outside the Massachusetts State House. See here, here, here and here for the rest of the series. This will be my last shot from here for now.

Much of this debate over guns can be traced back to a grammatically difficult line of text written nearly 225 years ago. It reads like this:

Amendment II: 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.

With that line in the American Bill of Rights, Congress and the various states of the United States affirmed a basic right to own firearms in the United States. It was not particularly specific as to the type of firearm, presumably in part because at that time there were not a particularly large number of options - a handgun, musket, or rifle, none of which could fire more than three shots in any given minute. However, the basic right was affirmed.

Today, that amendment is probably the second most well known, after its predecessor, the First Amendment, which guarantees the free practice of religion and the freedom of expression in speech, assembly, petition and press. Here in this shot, we see the combination of the two, as protesters peacefully assemble to protest what they see as the reduction of a Constitutional right to own weapons.

The signs here are of particular interest to me. The one on the right is simply a printed copy of the 2nd Amendment itself. There are two major controversies over the Second Amendment. The first has to do with its inviolability; the phrase 'shall not be infringed' has been taken to mean by some that not only can Congress not ban weapons, it also cannot limit them in any way. That part is basically already settled law; for example, as far as I know, it is illegal for any American to possess an ICBM (Intercontinental Ballistic Missile), or an operational tank. Congress has at times also banned certain types of firearm, most notably 'assault rifles' which were banned in 1994, though that ban was subsequently lifted. The other controversial statement in the amendment is that concerning a 'well regulated militia'. The amendment was written at a time when the United States had no standing army, and defense - in frontier wars against Native Americans, primarily, but also potentially against bordering empires such as Britain, France or Spain - was left in the hands of citizen militias. Now, of course, the United States has among the largest, and certainly the most heavily armed and equipped, military in the world.

The other sign - the one on the left - fits well with what I was saying about Thomas Jefferson on Saturday. In the previous Jefferson quote, a real quote was mistranslated and applied to an issue it was not at first about: gun laws. This one, however, seems entirely relevant to the issue: a statement implying that the Second Amendment exists so that no one could have the power to disarm a citizen without a fight. The biggest problem with this quote? Thomas Jefferson never said it. It is not correctly attributed to anyone that I know of, but it certainly was not Jefferson; in fact, it is difficult to find any real sentiment on the part of Jefferson toward gun rights at all. But this again shows Jefferson's central place in American anti-government mythology (odd, in many ways, for a country that arguably has the most invasive and least permissive government of most industrialized democracies).

Okay, enough lecture for now. Tomorrow, more State Capitols! But I appreciate the interest these have gotten here - I was expecting to post them and receive very few comments, so it's been interesting to see the debate unfold here and see some outside perspective on this odd American problem.

See the rest of my set from the Gun Rally on Flickr, here.