I Gave You Power, I Made You Buck Wild

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. 

I hadn't given gun control much thought until the shooting in Aurora last week when I  thought to myself, how many loner, shy and awkward boys need to go ape shit on a crowd before gun control becomes a more serious consideration up in this place? 

Guns are not the only problem, of course, American culture, untreated mental illness (health care is expensive after all), education, the decline of real communities, overpopulation are also to blame, but guns seem to be the one thing that are somewhat in our control. Gun advocates always invoke the 2nd amendment any time the topic of gun control comes up, but one can poke a few holes in this argument or at least have serious debate as to the meaning of "the right to bear and keep arms." 

For one, the reason behind the right to bear arms is that a well regulated militia is necessary to the security of the free state. I don't see people with guns rising up in an organized fashion against the tyranny of Federal government these days, do you? The last time that happened was the Civil War and the South had the brilliant Robert E. Lee at their helm; we know how that ended for them. And even if they did "rise up" today, there is no way that they could defeat the Federal Army. The truth is, if we want to avoid the kind of violence we've been seeing in the last 20 years, either all private citizens should be required to carry guns or none should be allowed to. If we all owned and carried guns, then you could apply the traditional political science argument of deterrence oft used when discussing nuclear weapons. That is, If the US has nuclear weapons, then Russia has to have them too in order to deter one another from actually using them. That theory worked best when we were living in the neat and tidy bipolar cold world era, less so these days when rogue groups everywhere are capable of procuring WMDs. But imagine if everyone in the Aurora theater had guns on them, for instance, then James Holmes would only have the element of surprise to his advantage. People in the theater could shoot back, likely causing chaos and possibly more injuries and deaths, but it would have been a fairer fight with other possible outcomes besides helplessness, vulnerability and sheer luck. Or, better yet, if deterrence actually worked, maybe he wouldn't have done it at all. This argument is pretty ludicrous, in case you were wondering.

The flaw in the right to bare arms is that it is just a right, not a legal obligation, so there will always be an imbalance of power among our citizens. But then the problem becomes that if it were a legal obligation, then people would no longer have the freedom to choose whether or not they want to own guns, thus compromising, well, the very freedom we are so proud of. But when it comes to life or death, is there a choice? When one person has a gun and the other doesn't, the person with the gun has the ability to kill the other, whether or not he exercises that power is entirely up to him. That logically means that the right to bear arms has nothing to do with freedom, it is merely a power that certain individuals have over others and creates inequality, which is the opposite of what the Constitution intended. 

Our forefathers weren't perfect, we are allowed to learn from our mistakes, we are allowed to adapt to our time, and with the way modern weaponry, government and community have evolved, it begs a real debate and real solution to updating or abolishing the 2nd amendment. As it stands currently, it seems outdated and mostly applicable to the era of the 18th and 19th centuries. Our leaders have been complete cowards thus far in dealing with this issue. Now that Obama no longer faces the pressure of getting reelected, it is clearly the time to do something. 

And in conclusion, Nas said it best when he wrote the song I Gave You Power. In this song, Nas personifies a reluctant gun. A concept that is both brilliant and brilliantly executed. It's one of the best songs on the album "It Was Written."

I seen some cold nights and bloody days
They grab and me bullets spray
They use me wrong so I sing this song 'til this day
My body is cold steel for real
I was made to kill, that's why they keep me concealed
Under car seats they sneak me in clubs
Been in the hands of mad thugs
They feed me when they load me with mad slugs
Seventeen precisely, one in my head
They call me Desert Eagle, semi-auto with lead
I'm seven inches four pounds, been through so many towns
Ohio to Little Rock to Canarsie, livin harshly
Beat up and battered, they pull me out
I watch as niggaz scattered, makin me kill
But what I feel it never mattered
When I'm empty I'm quiet, findin myself fiendin to be fired
A broken safety, niggaz place me in shelves
under beds, so I beg for my next owner to be a thoroughbred
Keep me full up with hollow heads

Chorus:
How you like me now? I go blow
It's that shit that moves crowds makin every ghetto foul
I might have took your first child
Scarred your life, crippled your style
I gave you power
I made you buck wild