Ends, means, and slippery slopes

We're off to a rollicking good start here! I'm picturing Rutger Hauer in Blade Runner after Harrison Ford has just dealt him a vicious blow with a steel pipe smiling and shouting, "That's the spirit!" Lay on, MacDuff!

So let me tell you a little more about my life story. In February of 1991 I was living in a little house on Chevy Chase boulevard in Glendale. Not the glamourous part of Chevy Chase, lower down, in the flats, where working people and graduate students live. Despite not being the most upscale of areas I never worried too much about safety because Chevy Chase was a very well traveled street, and I figured you'd have to be a fool to try anything with that many potential witnesses around. (In retrospect I have to wonder who is the greater fool, the fool, or the fool who assumes that there are no fools.)

One night I came home after dark and found that the light we kept on a timer had not come on. I figured that the bulb had burned out. As I came into the house I caught a hint of movement out of the corner of my eye. Sure enough, someone was climbing through the window! I shouted "Hey" and a split second later I heard a loud BANG and saw a muzzle flash. I screamed and hit the deck.

The next few minutes were a blur. I remember crawling over to the phone, dialing 911, and being really surprised at how quickly the police showed up. To the best of my recollection it only took them a minute or two, but that was enough. The burglar was long gone. In the aftermath it turned out that the gun was a '38, and the bullet had missed my left knee by about a foot. (It penetrated an interior wall, ricochet off a heating duct, and ended up being embedded in the far wall of the living room.)

The burglar had apparently been there a while. The house had been tumbled, and the CD player (a high-tech item back in 1991) was wrapped in a pillowcase all ready to go. While the police were dusting everything for fingerprints they got a radio call: "We got him."

They put me in the back of a squad car so that it wouldn't be obvious to the perp that I was there to identify him and drove down the block. Sitting on the curb was a young hispanic with his hands cuffed behind his back.

The truth of the matter was that I had no idea if this was the burglar or not. Everything had happened very fast, and the house was pitch black. And yet, the police must have some reason to think this is the guy, right? They wouldn't just arrest some random kid off the street, would they? So if I tell the truth I could be letting a dangerous criminal back on the streets, and his next victim might not be as lucky as I was.

Happily, I had a cop-out. The real perp had left fingerprints all over the house, and would have gunshot residue all over his hands. (One of the really striking things about having a gun go off that close to you is the smell. It's an acrid odor, not unlike burned hair. And it lingers for a long time.) So I told them the truth, that I had no idea whether this was the guy or not, figuring that if it were him they'd figure it out from the physical evidence. I like to think that I would have made the same decision even without that kind of fallback, but life has not yet faced me with that stark a moral test.

So I speak with the authority of an actual victim of gun violence (and, for what it's worth, as someone who has never owned a gun, and God willing never will) when I say that it is absolutely clear to me that the Second Amendment supports an individual's right to bear arms. The wording is abundantly clear: "...the right of THE PEOPLE to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." The same "the people" as in "We the People," as in "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures...", as in "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." It is particularly untenable to say that the Second Amendment is talking about state militias when the tenth amendment specifically distinguishes between rights reserved to the States OR to the people. And if you look at the historical context it becomes even more clear.

This is not to say that I do not support gun control. I do, for obvious reasons. Taken on its face, the Second Amendment protects people's right to own nuclear weapons, which I think is something everyone but the most hard-core member of the NRA would agree is a pretty bad idea. But the right way to fix this problem is not to pretend that the Second Amendment doesn't mean what it says. The right way to fix this problem is to recognize that the Second Amendment was written in a time when "arms" meant muskets, not AK-47's. Back then gun control was enforced by economics and the available technology. Nowadays we need a different mechanism. And that is why the Constitution includes procedures for amending it.

If we don't do it this way, if we decide that the ends justify the means when it comes to gun control, then we have no leg to stand on when someone else comes along as says that, say, torture is acceptable if it saves lives. Or that you have no right to privacy because the word "privacy" doesn't appear in the Constitution.

Robert Bolt hit the nail on the head in "A Man for All Seasons":


Roper: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!

More: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?

Roper: Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!

More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down (and you're just the man to do it!), do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!


I recognize my neighbor's right to bear arms for my own freedom's sake.