Into the belly of the beast

What would you bet these guys are not members of the well-ordered militia the 2nd Amendment calls for?

For lack of something better to do today, I went to the local annual gun show.  Walking past the Jeep I noticed the Obama/Biden sticker still affixed to the bumper where I had put it last fall and wondered how that would go over given the volatility of gun politics these days. It didn't stop me even with the knowledge this would not be the most popular vehicle in the parking lot at a gun show, despite its big fat tires and liberal coating of spring mud.

I don't go to gun shows because I am any kind of a gun nut.  Mostly a gun is a tool for me.  I go because I continually hope one of those people will be trying to sell the two guns that were stolen from me in a burglary a few years back.  I always carry the serial numbers and check out every one of the guns of the same type as the ones that were stolen.  Other than that I find the historic gun collections interesting and there are often some cool outdoors gear vendors.

Neither one showed up but something new did.  Amid the tables of collectors' guns and assault rifles, knives and magazines and other accessories for sale there were at least five booths dedicated only to the gun rights, second amendment defenders, all of them stern-faced and looking determined, despite the fact they were preaching to the choir.  For the most part I noted and then ignored them as did most of the people at the show.  Among the booths, at least in the moments I was passing, I didn't see any of them engaged in any kind of discourse with people passing by.  They just sat there with cold, blank stares that seemed to be coming from and going into a void.

One claimed to be Defenders of the Second Amendment while two others called for "Trash Begich," who is one of our U.S. senators and who voted this week in the gun nuts' favor against the bill to extend background checks to purchase guns, one of the few Democrats to do so.  I overheard a couple of jokes about background checks as well.

I looked, but still not sure exactly what this means.

It didn't take long to work my way through the show.  I only found two guns matching my criteria and neither had the serial number of the stolen one.  I made one purchase, took a few pictures and left after about an hour. 

As I walked out and drove home thinking about those pompous jerks raising the constitution to defend their right to own weapons designed only to kill people, my thoughts eventually slipped to the events of the week.

I began wondering if those 18th century Boston tea merchants had had a stronger lobby would their product have ended up steeping in Boston Harbor?  Or if slave owners had a lobby would that have even been an issue.  Fortunately in those eras, the United States and the colonies had leadership with backbone. Perhaps it is an eventual result of evolution that the backbone becomes squishy and malleable and subject to acquiescence to anyone with money.

Another question that arises in this week's milieu is what exactly is representative government in a 21st century world?  Who do those senators represent voting against an issue that was supported by 80 to 90 percent of the population depending on which poll you believe.  What kind of representative can look into the eyes of parents mourning the deaths of their children at the hands of a maniac killer toting a weapon one step short of a military machine gun and then vote to let maniacs continue to wield those weapons.

Of course these are the same representatives many of whom voted against the Defense of Women Act and many of whom also would allow rapists to sue for custody rights if their victims happened to bear children.

Take it to its basic tenet.  These people are enabling and even rewarding violence.

And then when other issues come up they haul out the Bible to justify their stands on things like abortion and family values, while in the process denying family status to a portion of the population which now also enjoys the support of more than half the people in the country.  How Christian of them.

I remember as a youngster in school first encountering the lessons of American history and learning how this country was founded and the ideals it was founded upon.  I remember admiring those who fought for and then founded this new nation in the frontiers of the New World. I think I can still recite the preamble to the Constitution. George Washington was easy, but my admiration went as much to Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin. James Madison, people whose intellect, understanding and foresight laid out a blueprint for the world's most successful democracy.  Along with them I most admired people like Lewis and Clarke and Daniel Boone and those mountain men like Jim Bridger and Liver-eatin' Johnosn (more famously known as Jeremiah).  In time though, I also came to admire the Native Americans whom those others pushed off their land. Our history isn't always a proud one. but that's an issue for another time.  It was that period in American History from about the time of the French and Indian War into the 1870s with the spread westward that I always found most romantic.

Over the years it often came as something of a shock that the founders didn't always agree, that there were arguments and compromises and in some cases hard feelings.  I didn't want to know that.  But, out of that process they did establish this nation on principles that mostly are still valid today.  Valid maybe, but employed? Eh, not so much.

Today apparently the will of the people is not nearly as important as the will of a small group of zealots whose organization doesn't even represent its own membership but instead works only for the benefit of the people who manufacture those weapons that maniacs use to mow down elementary school children, an audience in a theater just out for some evening entertainment, and on and on.  Yes I am talking about the National Rifle Association, an organization whose solution to gun violence is to put guns in more people's hands -- teachers for crying out loud.  Do we value what teachers do so little that we think they should also pack firepower and be responsible for shootouts with deranged people blasting away with assault rifles?

It's doubtful those well-intentioned founders envisioned individuals with military weaponry mowing down children when they wrote about the right to bear arms in order to maintain a well-ordered militia.  At the time that well-ordered militia would have been armed with single-shot muskets, not the sophisticated 10, 30, 100-round rifles of today.

The idea of some form of gun control has always been a debate in my own mind.  I own guns.  I don't brandish them around, I seldom even see them as they are kept in a well-secured safe.  My defense has always been that owning a gun in Alaska is not the same thing as owning a gun on the streets of Chicago.  Originally I bought one for hunting but I seldom go  Now about the only time I haul one out is for my trips into the Bush.  There is always a very real possibility of an encounter with a bear and though some might argue, it is my preference to hold the upper hand in that power struggle.  So far, the only encounter I've had where I felt the gun was necessary was resolved without firing a shot.  That doesn't mean the next one will end the same way.  A large percentage of Alaskans hunt, I would guess the highest per capita rate in the country. Also major ethnic groups in the state depend on subsistence hunting for food. So, Alaska stands in a different position than most of the states and perhaps our senators can be given some leeway.  How many of those hunters need assault rifles is another matter.  Answer? Zero.

Yellow machinery, not a joke, this is a functioning AR-15 complete with DeWalt colors and logo.

But, with the Alaska angle involved, it is easy to see why Alaska's senators voted against strengthening ownership requirements.  Probably 75 to 90 percent of their constituents, including me, own guns.  However one of those senators is a mother and the other a liberal Democrat.  And their votes, in a national tribunal were selfish, imposing their need to pander to their constituents for votes on issues that desperately need some action.  We have had a school shooting in Alaska and several other threats so we are not immune and gun violence, particularly the domestic kind, occurs all too frequently here.  Those two particular senators still would have had a tough time explaining themselves to voters here.  But, in doing so they selfishly voted against those children killed in Newton,  the kids killed on the streets of Chicago, former colleague in Congress Gabrielle Giffords, and all the other victims of gun crimes. their families and friends.

Like I said, I own guns, but I do not in any way defend the use of military-grade assault rifles, high capacity magazines or anything else that enables the child killers of today.  They could be taken away tomorrow and I wouldn't blink an eye.  That goes for background checks as well.  While they won't catch everyone, they will catch a few, and anything that slows down the process of purchasing a weapon adds a measure of protection.  At least you wouldn't be able to get angry, walk into a gun store and buy one, then get back and shoot the source of your anger before there was time to cool down.

To see the effects of stringent gun controls one only has to look at crime statistics in countries that have them.  The difference is startling.  And one thing really jumped out at me.  If you look at a graphic of crime statistics in countries with gun controls and another of the ones with the most and fewest people in prison, they almost match each other.  Kind of bites into the old saw that "if guns are outlawed only outlaws will have guns," doesn't it?

Still it is complicated.  As I said even I am conflicted.  There was that purchase at the gun show today.  What was it?  A high capacity magazine....

.. but, this was not for an assault rifle or even what could be qualified as a high-power hunting rifle.  It was a 25-round magazine for a .22.  I have only used this rifle for target practice, instructing a couple of youngsters in the use of firearms, and an exercise we used to call plinking.  That is essentially a walk in the woods, occasionally taking a shot at some random target, a discarded can, the last leaf on a tree in the fall and once in a while, maybe a squirrel.  I have never taken that last shot.  The magazine is merely for the convenience of not having to stop and slowly force 10 rounds at a time into the normal clip made for this rifle.  That's all.  And, if it were made illegal I could surely do without it, and gladly in the knowledge some goofball could not own one either, one that would hold much more deadly ammunition, as he planned his assault on a kindergarten full of children.