• GUN PROLIFERATION’S RUBICON?

This week found the gun industry crossing a threshold, which may signal a new momentum for living dangerously in America. Harrold Independent School District in Texas plans to arm its staff and teachers with guns. A Rubicon is being crossed that may signal a collapse of any likelihood that guns will come under any effective control for many years to come. From Miami to Vancouver, violence on all North American city streets is real. Two millennia have passed since Caesar uttered the famous line, “Alea iacta est,” (the die is cast) as he crossed the Rubicon River into Italy. The threshold crossing was a declaration of war. There would be no return for Caesar from that fateful decision in January of 49BC. There may now be no restitution for ascendancy of common sense over the creed of the gun.

Guns in the hands of educators sets an extreme example in the minds of children eager to learn from their supposed scholarly and erudite teachers. Now students will know there is a gun in each classroom.

The debate over James Madison’s Bill of Rights rages on without help from the current Bush/Cheney controlled Supreme Court which struck down Washington D.C.’s ban on private handgun ownership this week. The city had rightly reasoned and acted on its objective to reduce the out of control gun violence, deciding that handguns should be kept unloaded and disassembled. Not an extreme measure, but a precautionary measure nonetheless. The Supreme Court decided that the Second Amendment not only grants rights to militias to have guns, but it also grants that right to individuals.

Gun manufacturers have done a masterful job of influencing Congress, and affecting perceptions through a broad swath of the population to the point where being against private gun ownership is perceived as being unpatriotic. Most cleverly, gun makers have denounced any and all responsibility for the use of guns, and have distanced themselves very cleverly from the slaughter that is occurring on the streets. They effectively advertise the overwhelming firepower of the gun and its ability to kill, but secret themselves behind the chant of millions of believers who trill in unison and confidence, “guns don’t kill, people do.” Of course, fists, baseball bats and knives were centuries go surpassed by the gun in efficiency for proficient killing, and the modern small weapon is a beautiful example of technological potency in the art of surprise. Particularly when the surprise is that in an instant, you’re dead. No chance of defense or aegis.

The reality on the streets is that North Americans no longer feel safe in any of their cities. Between the impact of illicit drugs and readily applied extreme force, citizens are less concerned with their own government attacking them, if they ever really were, and more concerned with being attacked in their own neighborhoods. A whole society lives in fear. Madison and the First United States Congress never envisaged the social, political and economic realities of this century.

While the Bill of Rights’ eminent intentions and ambitions must be retained, its dictates related to guns require fresh perspectives. It is a government’s principal and foremost responsibility to protect its citizens. All other capacities imbued in its existence and obligations are secondary.

Guns in the hands of teachers is final proof that society not only does not feel safe, it no longer is. The government is failing its citizens. The crossing of this Rubicon is momentous evidence that the government should seriously revisit the right to bear arms, which was originally intended for militia and protection of citizenry in a military context. It also provided citizens some comfort against an potentially oppressive government, as well as provided for the purpose of killing game. Given the caliber of weapons now readily available on the market today compared to a slow to load musket, that right and its present connotation, results in murder and mayhem across the whole landscape, yet would provide no comfort against a despotic government armed with a nuclear arsenal. Most of all it results in widely felt fear.

The world, its population levels and its technologies have changed. In the framework of modern society, bearing arms no longer serves a legitimate purpose of protecting society. A gun in every home, or in the hands of every citizen, is tantamount to anarchy, and is no longer a symbol of Free Men.