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Guns without roses

WASHINGTON — Unlike many who recently have joined the debate about

gun rights, I have a long history with guns, which I proffer only in the

interest of pre-empting the “elitist, liberal, swine, prostitute,

blahblahblah” charge.

I grew up in a home with guns, lots of them, and was taught early how

to shoot, care for firearms and treat them respectfully. My father’s rules

were simple: Never point a gun at someone unless you intend to shoot them;

if you intend to shoot, aim to kill.

Dear ol’ dad was a law-and-order guy—a lawyer, judge and World War

II veteran who did everything by the book—except when it came to guns.

Most memorable among his many lectures was a confidence: “There is only

one law in the land that I would break,” he told me. “I will never

register my guns.”

I suppose if he hadn’t also opposed bumper stickers, he might have

attached the one about “cold dead fingers” to his fender. He also might

have liked a slogan I read recently: “With guns, we are citizens; without

them, we are subjects.”

By today’s standards my father would be considered a gun nut, but his

sentiments were understandable in the context of his time. Like others of

his generation, he had witnessed Germany’s disarming of its citizenry and

the consequences thereafter. Thus, the slippery slope of which gun rights

advocates speak is not without precedent or reason.

But the history of gun control laws is not without contradictions and

ironies that belie the current insistence that guns-without-controls is

the ipso facto of originalist America. In fact, the

federal government of our Founders made gun ownership mandatory for white

males, while denying others—slaves and later freedmen—the privilege.

Today, the most vociferous defenders of gun rights tend to be white,

rural males who oppose any regulation. But theirs was once the ardently

held position of radical African-Americans. Notably, in the 1960s, Black

Panthers Bobby Seale and Huey Newton toted guns wherever they went to make

a point: Blacks needed guns to protect themselves in a country that wasn’t

quite ready to enforce civil rights.

In one remarkable incident in May 1967, as recounted in The Atlantic

by UCLA law professor Adam Winkler, 24 men and six women, all armed,

ascended the California Capitol steps, read a proclamation about gun

rights and proceeded inside—with their guns, which

was legal at the time.

Needless to say, conservatives, including then-Gov. Ronald Reagan,

were suddenly very, very interested in gun control. That afternoon, Reagan

told reporters there was “no reason why on the street today a citizen

should be carrying loaded weapons.”

The degree of one’s allegiance to principle apparently depends mainly

on who is holding the gun.

While black activists were adamant about their right to protect

themselves, the National Rifle Association wasn’t much interested in the

constitutional question until the mid-‘70s, when an organizational split

produced a new leader, Harlon Carter, who was dedicated to advocacy and

determined to dig a deep line in the Beltway sand.

The Second Amendment debate about what the Founders intended was

clarified in 2008 when the U.S. Supreme Court in District of Columbia v.

Heller determined that the right of the people to keep and bear arms

included individuals, not just a “well-regulated militia.” However, as

Winkler pointed out, Justice Antonin Scalia’s opinion left wiggle room for

exceptions, including prohibitions related to felons and the mentally ill.

Scalia was not casting doubt, the justice wrote, on “laws imposing

conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.”

This still leaves open the loophole of private sales that do not

require background checks, which President Obama wants to close. We will

hear more about this in coming weeks, but the call meanwhile to ban

assault weapons or limit magazines in the wake of the horrific mass murder

of children and others at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut is

hardly draconian. It won’t solve the problem of mentally disturbed people

exacting weird justice from innocents, but it might limit the toll. Having

to stop one’s rampage to reload rather breaks the spell, or so one would

imagine.

One also imagines that the old Reagan would say there’s no reason a

citizen needs an assault weapon or a magazine that can destroy dozens of

people in minutes. He would certainly be correct and, in a sane world,

possibly even electable.

Kathleen Parker is a columnist for the Washington Post Writers Group; email kathleenparker@washpost.com.