Policy:
Scott re "2nd Amendment"

I've been considering this topic for a very long time. The right to keep and bear arms played a key role in several formative episodes of my childhood.

I hate guns. I hate the concept of an object designed only to kill.

I hate the fact that there is no easy way to explain the evolution of human society without also tracking the rise of military power.

I hate that the right to keep and bear arms also helps the oppressor, not just the oppressed.

I hate a very great deal that the right to keep and bear arms was very much infringed for two very distinct populations of homo sapiens here in North America while the second amendment was being written, and for nearly 150 years afterwards.

And I hate that when those segments of population choose to pursue a free state, they were hunted, tracked, dispossesed, and murdered by those that already had one.

I also hate that most citizens of the United States do not recognize that we already have a well regulated militia that secures our free state, and equate a militia with a bunch of unempoyed wackos stockpiling ammunition in bunkers in the woods.

But I love the sentiment that 2A was meant to express.

"We're not the English, We're you. And we won't do anything to hack you off, becuase you could do it right back."

I seem to recall reading that in another book, once. Not many people understand that one today, either. But it's in every house and hotel room in the United States.

Go figure.

—Scott
May 2004

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