On Things: Guns, Virginia & The 2nd Amendment

Welcome to On Things. Today I’m going to write about America’s rabid obsession with guns and the 2nd Amendment — written in 1791.

I worked at an advertising agency a while back and one of our clients, Federal Ammunition, was creating a bullet for the AR (ArmaLite Rifle), a gun that was made for the military to kill more people, more quickly in combat. The bullet Federal makes travels accurately for one mile — which is a cool defiance of gravity but I’m still not sure why anyone needs that. I own some hunting rifles, but I’ve never had any interest in ARs so I decided to ask my brother in law (who owns an AR) about this, namely, why anyone needs to own a gun that can fire rapidly and hit a target up to a mile away. My curiosity led to the question: “do people who own these guns think it’s cool to pretend like they were in the military?” — like how some kids own sports jerseys (note: jerseys can’t kill people) and try to mimic their favorite player, say, Vin Baker. My brother in law, whom I love and respect, got fired up and told me bluntly it had nothing to do with that but everything to do with the 2nd Amendment. Huh. That never occurred to me.

“What do you mean?” I asked. He said, “because if the military has access to these guns, so should the people.” Huh. “Because if the government turns on the people, the people have the ability to form a well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state” (which is what the 2A says). And I thought, in modern times? Huh.