Those of us living in the Rocky Mountains
are steeped in America's famous gun culture--and we therefore know well
the binary debates surrounding the Second Amendment. Firearm
enthusiasts--the vast majority of whom use weapons responsibly--believe
the Constitution protects their right to bear arms. Gun control
advocates counter that the Constitution doesn't give anyone the
inalienable right to wield automatic weapons that can kill scores of
people in seconds.
This is the stultified
freedom-versus-safety quarrel that seemed to forever define gun
politics--that is, until anti-government activists started bringing
firearms to public political meetings.
In early August, a protester came to a
raucous Tennessee congressional forum packing heat. Days later,
President Obama's health care event in New Hampshire was marred by a
protester posing for cameras with a pistol and sign reading, "It is
time to water the tree of liberty"--a reference to a Thomas Jefferson
quote promising violence. And this past week, 12 armed men--including
one with an assault rifle--not only showed off their firearms at Obama's
Arizona speech, but broadcast a YouTube video threatening to
"forcefully resist people imposing their will on us through the
strength of the majority."
These and other similar examples are
accurately summarized with the same language federal law employs to
describe domestic terrorism. Generating maximum media attention, the
weapons-brandishing displays are "intended to intimidate or coerce a
civilian population." Yes, the gun has been transformed from a sport
and self-defense device into a tool of mass bullying. Like the noose in
the Jim Crow South, its symbolic message is clear: If you dare engage
in the democratic process, you risk bodily harm.
With that implicit threat, the incessant
arguments about gun ownership have been supplanted by a more
significant debate over which should take precedence: the
Constitution's First or Second Amendment?
Based on America's history, the Founders' answer to that question clearly lies in the Bill of Rights' deliberate sequencing.
The First Amendment ethos guarantees
people--whatever their politics--a fundamental right to participate in
their democracy without concern for physical retribution. It is the
primary amendment because America was first and foremost created not as
a gun-owners' haven, but as a place to shelter citizens from
oppression.
Over two centuries, we have taken this
tradition seriously, enacting statutes reinforcing freedoms of speech,
creating the secret ballot, and outlawing harassment at Election Day
polling stations. This is why, whether tracing roots to colonial
England, Nazi Germany or any other tyranny, so many Americans say they
came here specifically looking for protection from political
persecution.
While the First Amendment doesn't ensure
credibility or significance, it is supposed to guarantee freedom from
fear--a freedom that is now under siege. Citing the Second Amendment and
the increasingly maniacal rhetoric of conservative media firebrands, a
small handful of violence-threatening protesters aims to make the rest
of us--whether pro- or anti-health reform--afraid to speak out.
And so we face a choice that has nothing
to do with health care, gun ownership or any other hot-button issue
that protesters of both parties are fighting over. It is a choice about
democracy itself--a choice that comes down to the two axioms best
articulated by, of all people, Mao Zedong.
One option is willful ignorance: We can
pretend the ferment is unimportant, continue allowing the intimidation
and ultimately usher in a dark future where "political power grows out
of the barrel of a gun."
Better, though, is simply making public
political events firearm-free zones, just like schools and stadiums.
That way forward honors our democratic ideals by declaring that
politics may be war, but in America it is "war without bloodshed"--and
without the threat of bloodshed.