Provisional Truth | Essays | June 2, 2008
As Published at LewRockwell.com 05/31/2008
Thanks Charley Reese for
Some Good Advice
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.
Recently I took
Charley Reese’s advice (LewRockwell.com,
01/22/2008) and exercised my Second Amendment
right to keep and bear arms. I’m trying to exercise as many
of those constitutional rights as possible these days, while
available, given the increasing tendency of governments and
do-gooders to subjugate, circumvent or creatively interpret
those rights.
(Note: Many more
accurately have observed I was granted a "privilege" by the
state of Oklahoma.)
Fortunately I
have not had occasion to try out the Fifth, Sixth or Seventh
Amendments, but I thoroughly have enjoyed the First and now
am looking forward to the Second. Gettin’ while the gettin’s
good, I guess – one never knows these days.
For the first
time in my life, at age 52, I’m a gun owner. I bought a
pistol, to be precise, from a local dealer who did an
instant background check (clean, apparently, swiped my
credit card, and bagged up a serviceable Smith & Wesson 9mm
with case, lock, cleaning kit and a hundred rounds of
ammunition in the span of a quarter-hour.
I returned to
the gun store, which also houses an indoor shooting range, a
week later after learning everything I could about my S&W,
including fieldstripping and cleaning. It was time to learn
to shoot.
It takes
practice, as I learned. Handling the gun, shooting,
adjusting sights, more shooting, cleaning, more shooting.
Only after a couple of hundred rounds did I begin to feel
comfortable handing my pistol, and that was in an indoor,
controlled, target-practice environment.
I brought my
wife with me to the range the following week and taught her
how to shoot. She liked it, and not only the part about
pointing the pistol downrange, aiming and squeezing off a
couple of rounds.
She also
learned how to load and insert
clips magazines,
remove empty clips
magazines, and, most importantly (in addition to general gun
safety), she learned how to rack the slide and lock it open
and unlock it again, all without chipping a fingernail in
the process.
(Note: I
originally referred to magazines in error as "clips.")
Operating the
slide was the most challenging aspect for her. It takes some
strength, dexterity and practice, but by the end of our
session she had it down, just like on television.
We will need
considerably more practice and experience should we need to
be able to react to a life-threatening situation, which is
the other reason, besides target shooting, I took Charley’s
advice.
As Mr. Reese
observed, “These days, everyone would do well to add a pinch
of paranoia to his otherwise sunny disposition and trusting
nature.”
So now we’re
signed up for an Oklahoma Self-Defense Act class which, upon
completion, will make us eligible to apply to the state for
concealed carry permits. Once the permits are issued we will
be legally enabled to carry a concealed weapon in Oklahoma
and the 31 other states which honor Oklahoma’s permit,
subject to a few obvious restricted places like schools,
jails and sporting events.
Under what
circumstances we will use our concealed carry permit we
largely will determine based on the kind of situations in
which we expect to find ourselves in the future. As an
example, on a recent four-hour hike in the hills of
southwest Oklahoma, all I had in my backpack, besides lunch,
water and sunscreen, was a decent hunting knife, but,
paraphrasing Charley, bringing a knife to a gunfight never
does one all that much good.
Not that we
expected a gunfight on the trails but next time, along with
our permits, we’ll bring the pistol, and it will be ready on
my hip, not unloaded in a backpack, because these days
you just don’t know and fortune favors the well-prepared
and well-armed.
Good call,
Charley. And it’s all the more timely given an upcoming
Second Amendment decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in the
matter of District of Columbia v. Heller, its first
consideration of our right to bear arms in nearly 70 years.
For all the
confusion the Second seems to cause, it appears pretty
straightforward to me.
Recently I read
a commentary which interpreted the “well regulated” part of
“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the
security of a free State…” as the ability of a state (or
county, parish, city, town) to control – regulate – any and
all aspects of gun ownership, as Washington D.C. has
attempted.
I’m no
constitutional lawyer, and I don’t play one on TV, but even
I know the phrase “well regulated Militia” refers to
well-trained, well-ordered, disciplined fighting units, like
the British Army against which we fought for independence,
whose members, in those Bill of Rights days, were called
“regulars” (full-time professionals, as opposed to part-time
reserves).
Those British
Army regulars were most unlike the farmers and shop keeps
who originally comprised our colonial militias which
combined to form the Continental Army led by George
Washington.
It would seem
the Founders, who wanted no standing, “regular” army but
having learned at great cost the risk of not having
well-trained, well-ordered, disciplined fighting units
available when necessary, determined that prohibiting
private gun ownership might impair our preparedness and
ability to repel future invading armies, such as the
British, again, in 1812-1815.
In 2008,
despite a standing national armed force and standing
professional state militias, I would think the Founders
would look favorably on any of us “people” owning guns and
knowing how and when to use them.
After all, if
our regular military, reserves and national guards all are
out of town liberating the democracy-deficient peoples of
the world, who else would be available to repel any future
foreign invaders if our Second Amendment right becomes
infringed?
So thank you,
Charley, for some common sense advice. We have taken while
it remains our right to do so.
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