November 28, 2023: Gun Control Histories: Myths, Realities, and the 2012 Election

[30years ago this week, Congress passed the groundbreaking gun controllegislation known as theBrady Bill. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of key moments andlayers to the debate over gun control and guns in American society, past andpresent!]

[NB. Iwrote this post in a pre-election series back in 2012, obviously, but I thinkits histories and contexts are far more broadly relevant than that, and remainvery much so today.]

On thestakes of 2012 for the newest phase in our longstanding, conflicted nationalrelationship to guns.

When youremember how the American Revolution—or at least the military portion of it—gotstarted, the 2nd Amendment sure makes a lot of sense. After all, theMinutemen who fought the Redcoats at Lexington and Concord, who fired that shot heard ‘round theworld, were a militia in the truest sense of the word: farmers andother locals who brought nothing more than their own lives—and their ownguns—to those crucial first conflicts. And for manydecades after the Revolution, state and local militias continued to serve asthe nation’s primary armed forces, with a standing army being assembledas necessary (during military conflicts such as the War of 1812 and the MexicanAmerican War, for example) but not consistently maintained. Given thosecontexts, the syntax and logic of the 2nd Amendment—whichreads in full “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the securityof a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not beinfringed”—seem perfectly natural and uncontroversial.

But theterm “militia” has of course come to mean something completely different inearly 21st century America, and the shift to my mind signifies theother side to our national relationship to guns. These contemporarymilitias, comprising communitiesof heavily armed resistance to perceived threats (from thegovernment, from the United Nations, from ethnic or racial “others”), see theirguns, and their right to bear them, not as a part of our shared nationalcommunity, but as a wayto defend their own lives and security within, and yet fundamentally outsideof, that nation. For these Americans, it seems to me, the key words in the 2ndAmendment are “free” and “the people,” since in this reading of the Amendmentits guarantees have nothing to do with the government (which would presumably dothe regulating of militias) nor the nation (the State) and everything to dowith every individual gunowner. There is of course no necessary conflictbetween individual gunowners and the national community—again, the Minutemenwere composed precisely of such individuals, coming together to fight for theirfledgling nation’s interests—but such conflicts have without question come toform a complex, controversial, and crucial part of gun culture in America.

Whichbrings me to today, and specifically to the “Stand Your Ground” laws that have,in response to pressurefrom the NRA and ALEC and other conservative organizations, been passed bynumerous state legislatures since the ascendance of Tea Party majorities in the2010 elections. How we analyze these controversial pro-gun laws—which factoreddirectly into theTravyon Martin shooting and other recenttragedies—depends precisely on whether we see them as part of our nation’sfounding identity, a legacy of the Concord Minutemen; or part of thecontemporary militia movement, tied to the 21stcentury Minutemen and their ilk. But in any case, there’s no doubtthat the 2012 election—which NRA vicepresident Wayne LaPierre has called “a turning point for gunrights”—will greatly influence these narratives moving forward; there’s lessthan no evidence that a second-term President Obama would ban guns or dismantlethe 2nd Amendment (as LaPierre warns), but certainly an empoweredRepublican majority (nationally and at that state level) could continue to passmore laws like “Stand Your Ground,” and otherwise to push forward thisextremely pro-gun agenda.  Which would bea very American thing to do—but what version of America it would embody is anentirely open and significant question.

Next guncontrol history tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What doyou think? Histories or contexts you’d highlight?