I was interested in politics and guns long before it was normal for people to take an interest in much of either. Growing up in the household of a hunter and police officer, I had them all around and found them fascinating. The politics thing I can't explain.
But because of this, I've seen a lot of politically themed movies, and all of them are nonsense to some degree or another.
After all, while there will inevitably be some kind of conflict--that's what drives stories, after all--the truth is that the "good guys," which are invariably Democrats, will still just find a way to get what they want or need by the end of the movie because storytelling doesn't have to live in the real world.
So when an op-ed opens with a bit from the movie "The American President," in an unironic fashion, I start to roll my eyes. Especially when it's presented with the fictional context stripped away until some big reveal several paragraphs later.
The reason this matters is that the movie in question ends with the president, played by Michael Douglas, throwing out a crime bill his administration had worked hard to find a compromise on, only to announce he was going to take away people's guns.
The author apparently thinks this is a good thing.
So said this “American president,” who went on to win big on Election Night. As he proudly proclaimed when he reworked his opponent’s campaign slogan, “I am Andrew Shepherd. And I am the president.”
Sadly, though, this president exists only in an idealistic film called “The American President.” Michael Douglas played Andrew Shepherd, and two particular lines in his press conference speech explain why there has never been an Andrew Shepherd in the White House and likely never will be. First, a president, especially in his or her first term, is “so busy keeping [that] job” that he or she forgets to do that job — keeping campaign promises and keeping America safe and secure. A big reason why that is, especially when a hot button issue like gun control is involved, is, in Andrew Shepherd’s words, because “nobody ever won an election by talking about gun control,” or abortion rights, or global warming, and so forth.
And we, the People of These United States, are stuck with wishy-washy Democrats and Republicans we elected because they were the only real choices we had on Election Day, and those hot button issues never get resolved.
On December 13, we saw the result of that at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. (Two more followed over the next two days, by the way.) And, of course, we saw it on a beach in Sydney, Australia.
Australia supposedly has some of the toughest gun control laws in the world, but that’s irrelevant because it misses the point. Gun ownership is the point, as Andrew Shepherd understood. As a first step, he wanted to keep handguns out of the hands of private citizens.
“Guns don’t kill people,” we’re often told; “People kill people.” True, but the only way to prevent people from killing people with guns of any kind is to take those guns away — period. Does a hunter really need an AR-15 to shoot down a quail? There’d be much more lead in that bird than there’d be meat.
If a person doesn’t need to own a gun — of any kind — that person should not be allowed to buy that gun.
First, no one has ever claimed you'd use an AR-15 to hunt quail. The fact that he'd even suggest that's an argument means that the author, Shammai Engelmayer, knows nothing of either guns or hunting.
Which is why it's hilarious he seems to feel he's fit to tell us what we need for either.
However, even if we ignore the fact that he doesn't know that shotguns are what you use for bird hunting and rifles are for larger game, it doesn't matter, because hunting doesn't fit into the equation.
Neither, of course, does "need."
"If a person doesn't need to own a gun" is a bold pronouncement from someone based in New York City, where there are police on every street corner, and they still can't keep the general public safe. The truth of the matter is that if any right is ever predicated exclusively on whether someone needs to do a thing, then it's not much of a right.
Nothing in the Second Amendment says a damn thing about needs, hunting, or anything of the sort.
It's not about that. It's about keeping our nation safe from enemies foreign and domestic. It's about having the right to go into a store and buy what I want simply because I want it.
If we decide that "need" has to enter into it, then the very government we're supposed to be a check against will get to decide what "need" actually means.
Engelmayer's piece asks when Americans will decide it's enough already with so-called gun violence. He acknowledges that murders can happen without guns, but he still fixates on guns and asks when we'll see the light or whatever.
The answer to that is that we will never decide it's enough.
The fictional president he quotes starts that climactic speech with "America ain't easy," which Engelmayer parrots. Well, America's not easy. It's messy, and part of that messy nature is that we respect rights even when they get in the way of all sorts of things we want to stop because they're objectively bad. That's because rights don't just go away because we don't like what some people do with them.
That's why America isn't easy.
The fictional president and the all too real op-ed writer, though, forget that "ain't easy" is a feature, not a bug, because it means we can stand against the government that would, say, herd Jews into cattle cars or destroy our right to vote, speak freely, or a million other atrocities that start with stated intentions that sound great, but never stop there.
In no way is the Second Amendment about need, hunting, or anything of the sort.
It's because it's about freedom, and freedom is messy. It's messy because it's worth it.
