Rights

Sid Leavitt sent me an advance copy of a post he's doing that riffs on the one I did about the machine gun rental deuce-and-a-half I spotted the other day.

This right to bear arms, I'm not just being outrageous when I say it extends to all manner of arms, conventional, nuclear or otherwise. But really, with great power comes great liability riders. While I don't think Congress has the right to abridge your right to own a Thompson .45 machine gun with a hundred round drum, I think Congress has every right to expect you to be insured or bonded sufficiently to cover the potential loss of life and damage to property that could result from your mishandling it.

If you own a car, you're required to carry liability insurance on it. The potential hazard you pose based on your age, driving record and so on is used to size up how big a menace you are, and you pay accordingly. Even without factoring in presently banned/tightly regulated weapons such as full auto machine guns or F14s, mandatory insurance would be about as sensible a gun control plan as you could get. Guys who own arms actually suited to hunting would likely pay the least because statistically, that's not where your gun mayhem is generated. Someone in an urban area with a concealed carry permit for his 9mm auto, he's probably paying a higher premium. It doesn't mean he's wrong to own and carry the gun, but if he has to use it, he can potentially hit an innocent party, or the gun could be taken from him and used by the bad guy, etc.

A belt-fed .50 machine gun is a dangerous tool to be sure. But its dangers are not incalculable any more than the dangers of a '98 Honda Accord. Get into artillery, fighter-bombers, nuclear warheads, you start to get into things that the insurance rates would amount to a ban. Bill Gates or Warren Buffet might be able to swing the umbrella policy for an aircraft carrier (though maybe not). But with very few people able to afford such toys to begin with, the risk pool would be tiny and any insurer would be asking hard questions: Why do you feel the need for a fully armed Apache Helicopter, Mr. Trump?

Of course nukes, I doubt you could write a policy sufficient. It's not as if they have peaceful applications, even nearly peaceful applications like machine-gunning junk cars as a team-building exercise. And given the potential to wipe out a couple hundred thousand people and a huge chunk of real estate at one go, well. Imagine the insurance claim for Hiroshima. All those people, all those buildings, all that fallout. Hurricane Katrina is small beer by comparison.

This is where I'm a man with no country. I really believe it's fine if you feel like owning a machine gun and are responsible about it. Given sufficient resources and a large chunk of Montana for a back yard, I might join you. Which alienates me from all the Volvo-driving NPR folk.*

But the gun nuts I've known get so hung up on the Second Amendment they forget why it's there. For the most part, they seem to care little for the other nine Amendments, as long as they have their guns. I can relate — I'm the same way myself about beer.

But the Second Amendment was there so we could overthrow the government when it inevitably went to shit. The guns were just there to protect the other rights. It was the Founding Fathers' way of saying (more or less), Look, we're going to set up a government you wouldn't want to overthrow. There'll be peaceful means of redress and reform, and we're so serious about not being a government reasonable men would overthrow, we will guarantee reasonable men have the means to take us out if we're lying.

Of course, if they could see us now, they'd apply for recolonization. But at the time, the power of any government was modest by modern standards. The State had at its disposal swords, muskets and cannon. The people at large had swords, muskets and cannon.

Fast-forward to 2008 and the State has Stealth Bombers, night vision goggles, cluster bombs, mustard gas, spy satellites, 'nukular' bombs, M1 tanks, helicopter gunships and so on, and the civilian public has swords and muskets. We don't even have cannons, though the 'muskets' have gotten better.

But then, the American Revolution was a beautiful fluke. The French Revolution is more typical: violent overthrow of an unjustifiable regime that yields another unjustifiable regime. America was the only come-as-you-are revolution, a country founded by revolutionaries who did not try to remake man in their own image. I still believe you have the right to keep and bear arms, and yes I mean pretty much any sort of arms, but I don't put any stock in the notion of violent revolution. Such an enterprise might only be as nasty as the Civil War, but it would probably be much worse. And the resulting government(s) would almost certainly be disastrous.


*Full Disclosure: I've listened to a lot of NPR. And I owned a Volvo for a few years. We all make mistakes. I even once thought Communism looked good on paper.