Second Amendment Illustrated

Amendment II:

A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

No, Obama is not coming to take your guns.  The Government is not going to pry them out of your hands, cold and dead or otherwise, but that is actually because of Amendment V not Amendment II, so let's leave that for now.  Let's talk guns.  I just completed my Maryland hunter education course on Saturday, so I spent the day with a fairly broad cross section of the American public, who were learning how to go out in the woods and hunt without shooting each other in the face (former VP Cheyney?  Did you pay attention in class?).  People who use firearms for sport, and as I found out, police officers and game officials, are required to take this class to ensure that they have a basic level of firearm safety awareness. So good on us.  There were people in class with all levels of experience, from people who have never held a gun before to people who had been hunting and using firearms since they were kids, but still need that little yellow card.  There were also some NRA types there, who could be nudged into spouting the usual rhetoric about the second amendment right and issuing dire warnings about the need to complain to your legislature about the "blah, blah, blah, they're gonna take our guns."
Anyhow, with such a fresh picture in my mind of the state of gun ownership in America, I'm going to do this with pictures.  First of all, when the Second Amendment was written, gun looked like this:

Not this:

Now I understand that technology is cool and all, but you just can't go on a shooting rampage with a muzzle loader, but you can with a semi-auto long gun with a 15-30 round magazine.  The second gun is supposed to be wielded by people whose job it is to fight people, most likely people that have guns of a like character.  If you want to hunt, you use guns like this:

Those are shotguns. They are, hands down, the most useful sort of firearm for putting food on the table.  If you really need a rifle, and you are allowed to use one (meaning you don't live in the flatland where a rifle bullet can travel like 5 miles). You might perhaps need the venerable 30-06 with a scope to take out Bambi.  That looks like this:

Still looks cool, you still feel mad, bad and dangerous to know carrying it through the woods, it still makes a big old bang.  Those are pretty much what you need to kill any animal it's legal to kill.  And those don't look much like the guns that are used in most of our alarming mass shootings.

But what about self defense?  Okay, let's talk about that.  Most people thinking about defending their castle from the bad guys think about this:

Which looks pretty nice, and would certainly win you the scary award.  But the thing is, the gun pictured above is not very effective, self defense wise, because, even under the best of conditions, a capable marksman is going to have to practice and train regularly to be able to hit the broad side of a barn with a handgun.  Add the adrenaline and stress of an actual home invasion and, well... good luck.  For defense, I would much prefer this: 

Yup, that's a shotgun again.  This time dressed up in his "get the hell out of my yard," costume.  Notice the snub barrel and the reliable pump action that really doesn't jam without some serious help.  Also notice how you would hold that thing, with two hands and an intuitive aiming stance.  Also note how you can buy non-lethal rounds, from bean bags to rubber pellets to rock salt that will definitely put a hurtin' on your would be violators, but which will let them live until the police get there to take them to the pokey.  And I can't think of a single piece of legislation or regulations that would "infringe" on my right to own and use one of these in a safe and reasonable manner.

But the second amendment says militia right, so it technically doesn't even deal in any of this common sense.  It's actually talking about the units used during the American Revolution, farmers and other civilians who took up their muskets to help fight the British.  Now we believe a lot things about the Militia, most of them are not true.  See combat is a tricky thing.  During the American Revolution, the Militia were primarily used as a distraction so that the regular Army of actual trained soldiers could do it's thing.  In other words our dear General Washington wrote to his nephew: 

I am wearied to death all day with a variety of perplexing circumstances, disturbed at the conduct of the militia, whose behavior and want of discipline has done great injury to the other troops, who never had officers, except in a few instances, worthy of the bread they eat.

Hmm. that leads me to a thought about one of the more propagandist positions of the NRA and others who are against reasonable gun control, which is that the citizens of this free nation need to be ready to take up arms, if (the implication is usually actually when) the government decides to take away all our freedoms, rather than sitting around writing up papers that guarantee it.  Now I have several pieces of news on this front.  The first is that, thankfully, the government has never been over-run by maniacs who decided to impose military rule.  Good for us, because the second piece of news is that if these guys:

Are sent after you, you are in big trouble, I don't care how many of these:

these:

or even these:

you have in your basement.

Know why you're in trouble?  Because those guys have more training, even if you have the same gear, they know how to use it better, and they know how to work together, and they have been conditioned to do so to rather devastating effect.  Oh, and they have these:

So, if you want to "defend" yourself against your own government, you know, good luck with that.