GUNSENSE

AN OPEN LETTER TO MY CONSERVATIVE FRIENDS ABOUT READING THE CONSTITUTION

Dear Conservative Friends Whose Friendship I Value Because You Keep Me on My Toes:

On Twitter and Facebook, whenever we disagree, you always ask me if I've read the Constitution and The Bill of Rights. I can't answer that question on Twitter responsibly, and on Facebook, Second Amendment rants are getting kind of tiresome. 

So I'll answer the question here, once and for all.

Short answer: Yes. I have read both documents many times.

I'll continue with a question of my own: Have you ever read Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken," particularly the last two lines? They go like this:   I took the one less traveled by, / And that has made all the difference.

What do they mean? How do we interpret them?  Let me suggest that the way we interpret these lines will tell us a lot about the truth of the Second Amendment. But first, Frost's poem.

Here are three readings of those two lines, each one of increasingly credible relevance to the text in question:

1. Least credible: "The automobile, at the time Robert Frost wrote this poem (1916), was about to take over American transportation, and Frost is already being nostalgic about walking."
2. More credible: "Walking in the woods offers surprises and lessons to us if we keep our eyes open."
3. Most credible: "Making decisions can at times be difficult, but often the decision least popular with your friends and family will be the best decision for you."

You get my point, right? The three interpretations generally increase in relevance and suitability to the original two lines. Most readers would amend interpretations 2 & 3, and perhaps reject the first one, but we could probably come to a general agreement on the usefulness of each of the three interpretations in understanding these lines.

We might even come to a consensus, and a consensus, a useful commodity in an argument, moves us closer to winning that argument. Especially in a democracy.  After all, majorities matter, particularly on The Supreme Court.

So what do we learn here? We learn that language is often ambiguous and vague. It supports many interpretations. That's what's happening with this poem and with the Second Amendment as well.

So when you plead with me to read the Second Amendment, you're not pleading with me to read the Amendment, but to agree with your interpretation of the Amendment.

If only I would read it this way, you think to yourselves, I would understand it your way.

It's not complicated: the trick is to give your interpretation of the poem or the Amendment the look and feel—the power—of truth. 

Textual interpretation in this country, at least, belongs most prominently to the Supreme Court because the Court is in the business of interpreting the Constitution's Amendments, as well as the Constitution itself.  It's a pretty daunting job description. 

But interpretations are like weathervanes; they take their direction from the prevailing winds of well made arguments.

This is annoying sometimes when the wind doesn't blow your way, but being annoyed doesn't make this observation any less true. We have to interpret the text, and interpretation, or turning the weathervane, is a practice that involves scholarship, intuition, and the arts of persuasion.

So it is empty rhetoric for me or you to announce loudly that we support the Second Amendment. We should, if we are aiming for honesty and clarity, also announce which reading of the Second Amendment we support.

For example, when you ask me if I have read the Second Amendment, you're operating under one of three assumptions. And none of them acknowledge the weathervane. Here are the three assumptions:

1. You feel that I haven't read the Constitution or the Bill of Rights, but that I am blathering on as if I have, and you will not be intimidated by my blathering because you have read these documents, and their meaning is clear and unambiguous, and you believe that if I would read the Constitution and its Amendments, I would agree with you.
2. Or you might admit that I have read the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, but I am not capable of interpreting these documents in a way that would bend me from my current reading, a reading that you find ill-informed, or ignorant, or brain-washed, or socialist, or homo-erotic. (I've been accused of all five, and not all of my accusers in these cases are my friends.)
3. But still, in either case, you believe that you possess the correct reading and that I possess the wrong reading.

 But I would remind you that when we scrutinize a text at this level, we confront a problem. Our comprehension of it, at any given moment in history, is not a function of our ability to find a hidden Grotto of Meaning where, astonishingly, The Truth, suddenly and for all time, is revealed: of gun ownership, of abortion, of voting rights, of Frost's poem. Many readers, far more distinguished than I, have searched for that Grotto, and they have not found it.  

What we have in the place of revealed truth is, in fact, an interpretation of a text's meaning.

We are all simply trying to turn the text's meaning, the weathervane, the way we would like to see it turned.

How one interpretation gains authority over another is a fascinating subject and beyond the scope of this post. Justice Brennan had the right idea, though, when he asked his new clerks what the most important rule of constitutional law was. "Five," he replied when they drew a blank. "You need five votes to make a majority on the nine-member Court."

And so with five votes, Constitutional truth, like it or not, is born.

But at any given moment, when texts like the Second Amendment become radioactive in our culture, interpretive communities—to use Stanley Fish's influential notion—vie to gain control over the interpretive process and to establish their interpretation—for a host of reasons, some honorable, some not—as The Truth. When the Supreme Court finally weighs in, they will establish one interpretive community as having made a legal and victorious interpretation (and often the Court will create new and confusing ambiguities as they proclaim a victor).

But it is important to remember that, unlike an outdated technology like the mule-drawn plow, the other defeated interpretive communities do not go away.

They often live to fight another day. Another truth for another day when another interpretive community gains the upper hand.

So when you ask me if I have read the Constitution, it is a wasted, and slightly condescending question. Of course I have read it, and of course you have read it as well.

You are dodging the first question you need to ask, and I don't blame you because the first question is much harder to answer. But answering it will clarify matters enormously and chart the course of our future conversations, if they are to have a future at all.

Let me end by asking it: Do you really think that the truth of a text is ever more than the latest successful argument for one of the text's truths?

I await your answer.

Sincerely,

@sidburris

 

 

 

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW: MADDOW UNLEASHES ON SENATOR TED CRUZ

Rachel Maddow commented last night on the recent exchange between Senator Ted Cruz and Senator Dianne Feinstein, as freshman Senator Cruz condescendingly lectured the Senior Senator on the Constitution and the First and Second Amendments. Senator Cruz has a Harvard Law degree and has clerked at very high levels indeed, so one would certainly think that he knows better than to make these arguments. 

Maddow quickly and correctly identified the sexism in his tone and argument. 

Kudos to Maddow for pointing this out.

But I also believe that Senator Cruz was not speaking solely to Senator Feinstein; he was also speaking to the gun extremists, those who have little knowledge of the Amendments and their history, and who dream at night of black helicopters and federal agents dropping into their yards, or compounds, and battering down their doors in search of AR-15's.

Senator Cruz was speaking to these folks as well, and he was trying to give a legal burnish to the more hysterical arguments that Wayne LaPierre of the NRA, and one of Cruz's brothers in sympathy, if not in arms, has been making since the Newtown incident. As we know, there is big money involved in making these arguments—money for the NRA, money for The Institute for Legislative Action (their lobbying wing), and money for the many political candidates whose campaigns the NRA helps to fund across the country.

I'll watch this assault-weapons issue as it develops and keep you posted as well. But note the tell-tale signs of rage, fear, and profiteering that accompanied this national discussion and that are poisoning the national mood. 

Both emotional and physical violence often rises out of fear, and as many of the gun extremists look out on the changing demographics of our country, they are fearful and angry.

And their fear and anger are fueling their abominable and indefensible positions.

They are dangerous now because they are vulnerable. And our country is now less secure because of their rage.

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THE FRINGE FACTOR: GUNS & INTIMIDATION IN OREGON

Weapons Used at Newtown

Oregon State Senator Ginny Burdick recently found herself the object of a derisive campaign of fear and paranoia in Portland. What had she done? Put forward legislation supporting universal background checks for firearms buyers, as well as a bill to keep concealed-carry permit holders from taking their weapons on school campuses. Sound familiar to Arkansans?

 The vast majority of Oregon voters supported her, as did most members of the NRA and other independent gun owners. She was interviewed recently by Reverend Al Sharpton, and you can hear the interview here (her portion begins at approximately 2:30 minutes into the interview).

Here's the summary: She had scheduled a town-hall meeting at Portland State University, and when she learned that the gun extremists were planning to carry loaded weapons to the meeting (legally), she canceled the meeting, citing a conflict in her schedule to avoid the inflammatory engagement. They filmed her later at her house, posted the film online, and claimed that she was a liar, that she had, in fact, no scheduling conflict at all. If you want to read the extremist account of the incident, you can find one of them here.

She had, in fact, tactfully deprived them of their opportunity to disrupt a political town forum with loaded weapons. A classic case of nonviolent non-cooperation. Gandhi would have been proud. And that made the extremists angry.

Earlier in January, two men had appeared in southeast Portland carrying rifles over their shoulders, and in the wake of Newtown, citizens were concerned and called the police. The two men, it turned out, had licenses to carry in public and had previously made such aggressive displays of their lawful rights. One school, rather than take a chance, closed for the remainder of the day. Watch the video here.

This, of course, is intimidation of the most obvious sort. And it is an irresponsible exercise of a constitutional right. But it is the kind of intimidation and fear that we find in the gun extremists who insist on stretching the Second Amendment beyond its reasonable perimeters. 

Never, I suspect, has such a distinctly fringe element of the American public been handed such a powerful megaphone as when it slings a loaded weapon across its back.

These folks get our attention because they can take our lives. They know it, and we know it.  

Angry Second Amendment extremists and their AR-15's will always get our attention. 

And that's intimidation—from the tiniest portion of the American public, the fringe groups still susceptible to the NRA's dire rhetoric designed to increase sagging gun sales in the traditional markets.

The extremists are being duped by the gun lobbies, and most of them don't know it.

But in the meantime, they can hurt you and your loved ones. They can spread fear and panic to orderly communities. How do we resist them? What do we have that they don't have?

1. The NRA members—Remember, paradoxically, even the majority of the NRA membership disagrees with the radical doctrine of its executive VP and national spokesperson, Wayne LaPierre. They don't live in Wayne's World. The NRA membership, the responsible gun owners, are on our side regarding many of the core issues.
2. The numbers—91% of Americans support increased background checks in some form and most support a ban on assault weapons. But we are the majority, the vast majority, and we are being held hostage by an extremist minority, who in turn are being supported by the gun industry.  
3. The facts—With each new study that appears, the myths of the NRA-inspired fringe are gradually being exposed. In short, more guns leads to more gun-related deaths. For an update on these studies, and a way to respond to the NRA, see our page, "Talking Back to the NRA."

The problem is not that we must take back our country from a well-armed fringe group; they are not powerful in that sense.

But we must, I believe, regain control of the dialogue.

Before Newtown, politicians were afraid to confront the NRA. Now with Newtown in our rear-view mirror, many national leaders are beginning to show signs of resistance, of talking back to the NRA. Organizations like Moms Demand Action, and people like its founder, Shannon Watts, are taking the struggle to Washington, DC, and they need our help.

We help them be realizing initially that we have the numbers, and we have the facts. That is the first step toward building the proper mindset for real change.

Or at least that's what Gandhi thought. And that, at least, is something that we can all do.

 

 

 

WAYNE'S WORLD & THE NEW NRA: A VIOLENT FANTASY

On February 28, The Rolling Stone ran a piece, by Tim Dickinson on guns entitled, "The Gun Industry's Deadly Addiction." Dickinson presented several facts about gun sales that would be well known to those in the gun industry—and to the gun-industry watchdogs—but to the general public are probably less well known.

For example, I didn't know that guns used for hunting now account for less than 25% of the market, while as recently as 2008, that number would have hovered at 50%. A generation ago, more than half of American households reported having a gun. Today, that number is one in three. Millennials, or those born after 1980, don't care about guns at all: less than 20% report having a gun in the house. That's bad news for the gunmakers who predict that the hunting industry will drop another 24% by 2024.

So why all the fuss about guns, right?

Dickinson discovered, as you'd expect, that the industry has adopted a host of new strategies to bolster its drooping sales. By changing its marketing strategies, the gun-makers hope to appeal to kids through organizations like Families Afield, a group, in Dickinson's words, that "pushed more than 30 states to jettison regulations that protect kids from guns—removing restrictions on hunting licenses or no longer requiring that children take a gun-safety course before hunting with Dad."

Women are now on the gun-seller's radar too—see their new fashion-forward, pink assasult weapons. Firing ranges mimic video games, and you can pay your money and kill bleeding zombies, or you can buy a "Black Ops" package after the popular Tom Clancey video games. And of course, there are the survivalists, those para-military organizations that believe our government is actively planning to kick in their doors and steal their weapons. One of the most notorious of these is James Yeager, the CEO of Tactical Response, and he's all over YouTube. If you're curious, have a look at this video. Yeager's worried about a dictatorship, and things like that. 

Yeager even made it on to The Colbert Report. 

A few days after The Rolling Stone published its piece on guns, The Southern Poverty Law Center wrote a letter to the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security. You can read the letter here. It appears within a study of hate-groups in the country, but here's the essence of the letter's appeal:

As in the period before the Oklahoma City bombing, we now also are seeing ominous threats from those who believe that the government is poised to take their guns.  Because of the looming dangers, we urge you to establish an interagency task force to assess the adequacy of the resources devoted to responding to the growing threat of non-Islamic domestic terrorism.  

  You can read their full report here. This is the fourth consecutive year that these so-called patriot groups have increased in numbers, and as President Obama enters his second term, it's not a stretch to label the growth of these organizations as partly inspired by racism. In fact, since 2008, the year that Obama took office, these groups have risen by a figure that is mind-boggling—813%! 

Still, when we look at the movement in Arkansas to place guns on our campus—statistically, some of the safest places in America—the fear, even hysteria behind it, the unwillingness to look at the numbers, make more sense when viewed in this national climate of fear and uncertainty. 

Part of this fear and paranoia is understandable—jobs have been scarce, Congress has been dysfunctional, and the economy has suffered, although it is finally showing signs of recovery.

But part of this fear brings out the very worst of our country: the gun industry seeking to shore up its fading customer base by creating markets of fear and para-military paranoia. In the hands of Wayne LaPierre, the NRA has been a central player in this game, and it is both sad and dangerous to see our country falling prey to these profit-based campaigns.

And LaPierre, tragically, doesn't speak for the vast majority of the NRA membership, nearly three-quarters of whom support increasing the scope of background checks for those who purchase firearms.

But as I read these two pieces back-to-back, I was left with one overriding conviction:  LaPierre, while turning his back on the organization he represents, is pandering to the fears and fantasies of a clear and potentially violent minority of the American people. And he's doing it to shore up the gun market.

Listen to his language. Soon after Obama began seriously discussing gun-control legislation in February, LaPierre posted a typical screed on The Daily Caller, a conservative website. LaPierre's piece is called, of course, "Stand and Fight," although it's never clear who precisely is standing and where they will take this stand.

Side-note: As I read the piece, I felt a kind of rising nausea, a sense that violence at this level will have its psychic effect on all of us.

But for those who decide to stand and fight with LaPierre, here are the enemies that are coming: illegal immigrants "whose jobs are murder, rape, robbery, and kidnapping," members of al Qaeda, "a tsunami of gun control," "looters . . . wild in South Brooklyn," "hurricanes," "tornadoes," "riots," "terrorists," "gangs," "lone criminals," "European style debt riots," "Bloomberg, Soros, and the rest of their ilk," and "the coming siege." It's quite a catalogue. Apparently, LaPierre is afraid that when these torrents of color and poverty come for his guns, the Navy Seals won't have time to get there and assist him. So he's arming up now. And he wants you—or rather, he wants women, children, and paramilitaries—to do the same thing.

The Southern Poverty Law Center report gets it right, so let me repeat their warning: "As in the period before the Oklahoma City bombing, we now also are seeing ominous threats from those who believe that the government is poised to take their guns." 

Wayne LaPierre stands at the center of this myth-making machine that pits the federal government against those who would "stand and fight,' which means "buy military-grade weapons."  I'm convinced that this latter number is comparatively small, but as Timothy McVeigh showed us, it only takes one.

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A LEGISLATIVE SHOTGUN: WELCOME TO THE AR CORRAL

At the time of this writing, I count eight gun-bills at various stages of life, death, or limbo in the Arkansas General Assembly. You can have a look at them here. Perhaps more exist. They're sometimes hard to track when you have a day-job doing other things.

I learned from those who follow the General Assembly that gun-bills are perennial favorites, and that the current numbers aren't shocking. In the 89th gun-friendly General Assembly, however, some of these bills are passing, and that has not always been the case.

If you look carefully at the legislation, you'll see that our lawmakers are trying to build the infrastructure that would encourage and manage both a thriving gun culture and, more importantly, a healthy gun economy, and they're using, to deploy an obvious metaphor, a shotgun approach to do it. They're firing lots of bills at a single target—more guns in the culture.

Of course, supporters of these bills will argue that they are concerned about the public safety of our students and citizens on our school campuses, and I believe that many of them honestly feel that more guns lead to less crime, to paraphrase John Lott's controversial book.

I don't agree with that assumption.

But have a look at a checklist of the bills' original agendas (before they were passed or defeated), and it seems clear to me, at least, that one of the original intentions behind them was to build an expressway for guns to go places they've never previously gone: allow faculty & staff to conceal-carry on campuses; lower the price of the licenses; allocate $250 K to the Concealed Carry Division of the Arkansas State Police; refuse to release the names of those who hold concealed-carry licenses; put guns in churches; put them in K-12; allow open-carry; allow guns in cars parked in employer's lots.

In other words: broaden the market for guns by giving them more traction in our culture, more venues where they are welcome, thereby placing them more squarely in our daily lives by making the licenses to conceal them both more affordable and private, and by giving our citizens more places where they can legally carry them.  

Whatever we might argue about public safety—and that's a continual dialogue—it's a sound marketing strategy as well. 

In short, the legislature is building the infra-structure and the legal apparatus to fast-track guns to the heart of our culture—in this case, to the center of the educational arena. Some have called this shotgun-style legislation a smart strategy.

"Smart" is not a word that occurs to me when I consider these bills. "Profitable" pops to mind. But "effective?"

Well, yes, the word "effective" makes sense too, as long as I'm allowed the adverb "grimly."

LOVE & GUNS IN THE NATURAL STATE

Governor Beebe finally signed HB 1243, and while many of the news outlets reported that the law will allow faculty and staff who hold concealed carry permits to bring their weapons to our campus, that was not the real story.  The real story lay in the fact that the bill received such stiff resistance from the schools and their administrators that a compromise was forced. As a result, the current bill allows the Board to opt out of concealed carry on an annual basis. The struggle shifts to that Board now, of course, who are appointed by the Governor, except on those campuses—Northwest Arkansas Community College, for example—where they are elected.

At the same time that Governor Beebe was signing the guns bill, a couple of monks, Norbu and Yeshi,  who are originally from Tibet, arrived in Fayetteville. They are currently living in Minnesota. I met them at the house of my friend, Geshe Dorjee—also a Tibetan monk—and when I got there, they were already busy painting the treasure vases that they would then consecrate and bless.

They have given their lives to nonviolence and compassion, and when you are around them, these are the two human emotions that seem most abundant. I felt it was somehow significant that they arrived in the middle of this legislative gun fight.

I told them what my colleagues and I had been doing over the past month—fighting gun legislation, particularly two bills that, taken together, would have allowed guns in our school system from kindergarten through the university. The K-12 bill never got out of committee, and HB 1243, as I reported, was amended.

Both of them shook their heads in disbelief, and then laughed. And then went back to painting their vases. That was the extent of their commentary. But it was an eloquent commentary.

We all need to be painting our vases, directing our energies toward the kinds of activity that will increasingly render guns an unrealistic solution to the very real problem of American violence. While immediate dangers require immediate reactions, cultivating environments, perspectives, and activities where guns seem antiquated solutions will set in motion the long-term responses to violence that an armed—and often fearful—citizenry cannot provide.

Love and guns will always be a part of American culture. As we continually cultivate the one, and look for its long term benefits, we must always be vigilant regarding the other, and guard against its immediate dangers.

It's not an easy thing to do, but working together, painting our own vases in our own ways, we can right the balance.