For extreme gun nuts like LaPierre who insist their battle is all about the Second Amendment and constitutional rights, the question is: what do they do once they reach a point where constitutional rights intersect? Do they believe that the founding fathers insisted that some constitutional protections hold precedence over others? Does LaPierre believe that their intent back then was that gun ownership rights would supersede the rights that apply to those who today are producing violent movies or manufacturing violent video games, for example? When LaPierre obfuscates the NRA's role in the easy availability of assault and other weapons by attacking violent video game and movie makers, what is the underlying message being delivered? Is he proclaiming the NRA's disdain for the constitution as it applies to the movie and video game industries? Has the NRA's level of contempt for the free market rights of those industries reached that which it has shown toward advocates of sensible gun control which include 70 percent of his organization's own members ?
One might sense that what's being advocated in this article is abolishment of the Second Amendment; something that's likely as taboo among progressives as it is to those gun nuts on the far right who claim to be strict constitutionalists. But for most of these ultra right windbags, it's all false art. In the strictest sense very few of them are "strict" constitutionalists. Think not? Solicit their thoughts about the suspension of habeas corpus or ask how they feel about warrantless wiretapping ; both crude assaults on the constitution which occurred during the Dubya era. The rapt silence of smug, in-your-face moral pontificators like Bill Bennett or Bill O'Reilly , both of whom took every opportunity to miss any opportunity to express outrage over the constitutionally-questionable dictates of the Bush administration, calls into question the sincerity of their high-minded advocacy of the sanctity of the constitution we hear from them today.
But charges of constitutional hypocrisy rarely stick to most progressives with whom this writer is acquainted. There's no questions that many of them abhor the verbal ambiguity written into the Second Amendment which -- in terms of potential for literal misinterpretation -- probably places that Amendment in a tie for second place with the U.S. tax code (the Holy Bible, of course, places first.) But most are no more anxious for an abolishment or change of wording in the Second Amendment as they are for a reversal of Roe v Wade.
But on this issue, I'm ready to play lead guitar for the right wing Constitution Hypocrisy Band although certainly not in a style the wing-nuts would appreciate. I'm all for revamping the constitution -- by abolishing the Second Amendment. At the very least it needs re-wording in a way that strips away the rhetorical ambiguity that permits common sense gun control to be circumvented.
For me, when it comes to constitutional protections, it's a matter of degrees. I suppose that theoretically, you could kill a person with an X-Box if you hit him or her hard enough in the face with one enough times. But killing is not what X-Boxes are designed for. And while some X-Box video games and those produced by other gamers are in fact, designed to teach one how to shoot to kill, a gun is still required in order to carry out what you've learned. So, the question becomes what constitutes the deadliest threat to public safety, a violent video game, or a Mac 10? And, if the answer is either stripping away the right of someone to carry a product designed to kill or the right to play Duke Nukem somewhere out in cyberspace committing mass murders , I'm all for curtailing gun-toting rights.
Fire when ready
Today, in light of advancements in the type of weaponry apparently covered under the Second Amendment, it may be time to transform the American landscape into a gun-free zone -- literally. But because of its dubious wording, the Second Amendment prohibits most of the guns people own -- from derringers to AK 47s -- from being legally confiscated. So the most logical step is obvious: amend or get rid of the Second Amendment to get rid of the guns, or get rid of those who insist on owning them.
Perhaps not surprisingly, it's the latter step that I find most appealing. Therefore, it is hereby proposed here that those who insist on owning certain types of armaments be shipped off -- guns and Second Amendment protections in tow -- to their own gun-filled paradise. Ship them off on "bullet" trains to an area of the country designated solely for such folks. Many of these ultra-constitutionalist types are begging for succession anyway. Give them their space; perhaps in some giant red state like Texas. It could perhaps be called "Glockville."
It's hardly a unique idea. Glenn Beck has already scoped out a patch of land up in Rick Perry country in preparation for the jump off of the latest of his wacky end-of-times-themed boondoggles, this one, a place he's calling Independence, USA . But if you're kind of not really into Beck but are one of those Americans ""who agree that being prepared for the emergencies of life and being proficient with the American icon of Liberty -- the Rifle -- are prudent measures-- The Citadel , up in the mountains of Idaho, has been accepting applications since December.
But for the hardest of the hard core gun nuts -- the jacked-up, Type A, alpha dogs whose applications even the Citadel would be likely to reject -- why not set them up in Glockville? That would leave the rest of America gun free thus forcing all the urban bangers, rural rubes, backwoods sod busters and suburban wanksters into finding alternative ways to annihilate themselves. Let them use their fists, sticks and stones, two-by-fours, bows and arrows, poison darts, baseball bats, "looks that kill," Vulcan death grips, X-Boxes -- whatever. But no guns for anyone, possibly even, the police. After all, shouldn't fight training, four-foot-long nightsticks, mace, pepper spray, taser guns, choke holds, helicopters, night vision goggles, and a persistent swarm of similarly trained and equipped backup officers be sufficient to handle unarmed lawbreakers? It has worked fairly well for quite some time in Britain.
I envision Glockville as the place to be for those stalwart fanatics so deeply swallowed up into gun culture that they harbor wet dreams of 50 caliber slugs flying from their butts. The type who sleep most warmly in the embrace of frigid steel and plan to meet their maker at the pearly gates with a firearm firmly in the grip of their cold, dead hands. I see it as a homeland for gun nuts to live in their natural milieu of stupefied, post-rational, sub-normality, removed from the potential grasp of Obama's cultural tyranny. It would be the ideal place to gear themselves up for the looming apocalypse and to hang out in wait for the inevitable black helicopters. Glockville could be the wild frontier coveted by yahoo Second Amendment fetishists whose ignorance-based paranoia ignites in them, an irrepressible urge to stockpile tons of canned goods, shitloads of dried foods, and a whole bunch of other weird-ass "survivalist" goods like "powdered" water and "clean" coal, while also hoarding as many of every kind of weapon as humanly possible.
I anticipate that Glockville's citizenry would quickly confer explicit gun ownership rights upon themselves through enactment of a"44 Magnum Carta" that would supplant the Second Amendment thus eliminate any confusion over the status of their inalienable right to kick ballistics with any weapon they so desire. Just load up and fire when ready. Meanwhile, one can only imagine the ways that -- for gun fanatics -- life in Glockville would be like living in gun-culture utopia. I foresee businesses like "The Gat;" and "Baby Gat;" there would be "Gunplay Dates;" "Freaky Friday Shootouts;" the Saturday morning "Fast and Furious 10k Gun Run"; the Saturday Night Festival of Firing Squads;" "Sunday Shotgun Weddings;" "Machine Gun Mondays;" "Tech Nine Tuesdays;" "Cirque de AK" performances (something to do with creepy contortions involving guns); semi-annual "Open Carry Cotillions;" and "Semi-Automatic Swap Meets" where virtually anything firearm related could be had -- from bazooka-bearing Barbie dolls to pacifiers shaped like rocket launchers for the wee ones.
Obviously, most of this is hyperbole and hopefully, all of it is something most progressives and sensible gun owners on both the Right and Left would find appalling (rocket launcher pacifiers: really?). But it seems quite likely that a there are a whole lot of extreme gun nuts out there who would find life as described in Glockville to be hardly beyond the pale. In fact, there are perhaps many that would find it quite appealing.
And that's just appalling.
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