What The Second Amendment Means

Why do I own a gun (or two or three)?

Well, first of all, because they’re fun to shoot (and become so the more one does it). Second, because they are tools with a purpose – and very appropriate ones at that. Thirdly, and mostly, because it’s my right.

In an otherwise tremendous post from Richard Fernandez (aka Wretchard), he make this comment in response to another comment about the Second Amendment:

The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed

I think the 2nd Amendment prevents real doomsdays and here’s why. Most fascisms come to power when a population, terrified of chaos, desperately accepts the first strong man they come to. When everyone turns into refugees fleeing looters with their possessions on wheelbarrows it is any port in storm. In countries that exist with iffy governments, communities can start the old neighborhood watch when news from the capital looks bad. This preserves enough enough democratic space to buy the requisite time to reconstitute things in a rational fashion. A country with a Second Amendment can call a congress or convention to figure things out. A country without is an a binary space with order and chaos as the two alternate values. And no, it does not accept nulls. A society which can hold out for a while doesn’t have to turn to a Boulanger in desperation. It gives the local status quo inertia even when the national scene may be in flux.

We are so lucky (some people might used the term blessed) in this country to have both the first, but especially the second amendment.

PS, Wretchard has too much class to go after that fraud, Peggy Noonan, for not mentioning once in her whole article how “she helped to get us where we are, and she knows it” (quote from another comment). The commenters make sure that you the reader know about Ms Noonan’s previous actions.