Head on over to Blue Oregon-- a purportedly progressive website-- and listen in to the comments on Steve Bucknum's post about the Democratic Party of Oregon officially becoming a staunch second amendment party by adopting a pro-gun platform. If you're like me, the post and the comments may well turn you "Green" with nausea.
The DPO has jumped gleefully into the arms of the "Guns and Ammo" crowd by passing a resolution to "recognize and support the right to keep and bear arms." The Democratic Party, in other words, has officially accepted the gun lobby's interpretation of the second amendment to the U.S. Constitution and a similar provision in Oregon's Constitution. As a result, says Bucknum, no more false anti-gun labels will be hung on Democrats running for office in rural Oregon. And just maybe, those "few individual Democrats who speak for themselves and not the Party that say all kinds of crazy things...", like Ginny Burdick who doesn't want concealed weapons on school property, will decide not to run again.
For the record, the second amendment says this (with syntax adjusted for the modern reader):
"The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed [because] a well regulated militia [is] necessary to the security of a free state."
Court battles over whether that translates to an individual right have gone on for a century and a half. Although the gun lobby's "individual right" interpretation may currently be in the legal ascendence, there should be no argument about whether any such rights are inviolable. As the writer of the website "A Case for Gun Control" points out,
"First, it important to note that no right is absolute, even those supposedly granted by God and guaranteed in the Bill of Rights." .....
"If the right to own a gun interferes with public safety, that right can morally be abridged, in order to protect public safety."
I'm a registered Democrat who believes that guns are manufactured for one purpose - to kill other living creatures. I don't hunt, and I don't oppose hunting on moral grounds, but I am a firm proponent of gun control for weapons that aren't normally used for hunting. That would include handguns. Handguns are manufactured for the express purpose of killing other human beings. I believe that the sale and manufacture of handguns in this country should be outlawed. To those who argue that handguns can be used for recreational target practice, I ask: Practice for what?
The epidemic use and ownership of handguns in America is a clear threat to public safety. If "bearing" handguns is indeed a Constitutional right (by my reading of the second amendment, it is not), it is certainly a right that can be "abridged" to promote the safety and welfare of American citizens.
If that positon makes me an anti-gun Democrat, so be it. Hell, I voted Green in 2000, and I can vote Green again.
You're not saying this, but some readers may mis-interpret, so just for the record.... BlueOregon itself, of course, doesn't have a position on gun control. BlueOregon doesn't take any positions or endorse candidates. It doesn't even go out for donuts.
That said, I think there's an interesting conversation going on out there about the role of gun control as an issue for Democrats. I think we're headed for a pullback from the usual absolutist views - and instead starting to see a more nuanced view that argues that guns are a major problem in the cities, but not really a problem in the rural places.
That's partly why Howard Dean had an A+ rating from the NRA while governor of Vermont. FWIW, there's a lot of conversation about this over at http://www.WesternDemocrat.com.
Posted by: Kari Chisholm | July 21, 2005 at 03:38 AM
My reference was to BlueOregon as a forum for progressive voices, although I don't see how the site and the people who contribute to it, who do advocate certain policies, can be viewed as separate and discrete entities.
I'm curious, Kari, about your reference to the "usual absolutist views." Got any examples?
Posted by: Terry | July 21, 2005 at 10:54 AM