Assault Weapons, US Trained Seditionists & Assaults

 “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, 

the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” 2nd Amendment

It doesn’t take a seasoned soldier to spot military tactics among organized civilians. Watching the January 6th Capitol attack for the umpteenth time makes it pretty clear that there were many among the insurrectionists deploying their US military training against the laws and Constitution of the United States, even as they claimed their own individual, non-judicial right to tell the world what the Constitution says. Fully under the aegis of the then-President of the United States.

What stood out in particular on those Capitol steps was “a line of men wearing olive-drab helmets and body armor trudged purposefully up the marble stairs in a single-file line, each man holding the jacket collar of the one ahead.

“The formation, known as ‘Ranger File,’ is standard operating procedure for a combat team that is ‘stacking up’ to breach a building — instantly recognizable to any US soldier or Marine who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was a chilling sign that many at the vanguard of the mob that stormed the seat of American democracy either had military training or were trained by those who did.” The Times of Israel, January 15th. 

I picked a newspaper from one of our most strident allies – Israel – to make a point. Every nation on earth had a reaction to that Capitol event. Our enemies cheered or smiled smugly. Our allies were aghast. And too much of the rest of the world felt that perhaps “democracy” was fomenting self-destruction, by allowing enemies of the state to own assault weapons and train openly to overthrow the government. And that too many of those enemies were current or former soldiers and police officers, sworn to uphold the Constitution, battering that liberating document with their violence.

For years, stories of angry or demented shooters, often armed with large magazine semi-automatic (some turned fully automatic) military-designed assault rifles, have become commonplace in the United States. Shooters have serially taken out hundreds of Americans in mass murders, from slaughtering young children to mowing down innocent people from a well-situated hotel room to the March 22nd attack in Boulder Colorado. A lone gunman at a local grocery store pulled the trigger enough to kill ten people, including a police officer. The irony is how the City of Boulder tried to protect itself from precisely this kind of assault rifle attack, banning such weapon within city limits. But limits on guns have become distinctly un-American, as red state legislatures are tripping over themselves to permit their residents to be able to carry their weapons wherever they go.

“On March 12, Boulder County District Judge Andrew Hartman ruled that the city cannot enforce its ordinances banning the possession, transfer or sale of assault weapons and large-capacity magazines, citing a 2003 law that bars local governments from prohibiting the possession or sale of firearms, the Denver Post reported.

“‘The Court has determined that only Colorado state (or federal) law can prohibit the possession, sale and transfer of assault weapons and large-capacity magazines,’ Hartman wrote in his ruling.

“The city council voted to pass the pair of ordinances banning assault-style weapons after a 2018 shooting inside a Florida high school in the city of Parkland. Seventeen students and staff at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School were killed in the Valentine’s Day attack.” Jessica Schladebeck for the March 23rd Daily News.

So now we have seriously well-trained militia – Oath Keepers, Three Percenters, Proud Boyz, etc. – armed to the teeth and protected by the very legal system they are trying to overthrow. As the NRA unravels under corruption scandals, state legislatures have stepped in to make the world far more dangerous than an inane place where “the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun”… even though this self-defense assumption flies in the face of reality. There is one “justifiable” gun homicide for every 30 gun homicides in this country.

Mexican cartels are awash in assault weapons purchased in the United States and smuggled across the border. Mexico needs a wall! Anyone can get a gun, most of the time legally. If not in your state or city of residence (hello, Chicago!), then in a neighboring state. Mental illness? Court order against having a gun? Ex-felon unable to own a gun legally? Domestic abusers? Inconveniences but hardly barriers to securing a fine assault rifle.

Even if you believe that the Second Amendment protects ubiquitous gun ownership – which requires totally ignoring that “well regulated Militia” phrase – it is hard to believe that in the era of flintlocks and muskets, our drafting forefathers envisioned the level of sophisticated weapons that exist today. And while the Supreme Court acknowledges that some weapons limits would be permissible, the Court’s standing and very recent ruling suggests that such limits are few. A little legal history:

“[In] United States v. Miller (1939), in a prosecution under the National Firearms Act (1934), the Supreme Court avoided addressing the constitutional scope of the Second Amendment by merely holding that the ‘possession or use of a shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in length’ was not ‘any part of the ordinary military equipment’ protected by the Second Amendment.

“For more than seven decades after the United States v. Miller decision, what right to bear arms that the Second Amendment protected remained uncertain. This uncertainty was ended, however, in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), in which the Supreme Court examined the Second Amendment in exacting detail. In a narrow 5–4 majority, delivered by Antonin Scalia, the Supreme Court held that self-defense was the ‘central component’ of the amendment and that the District of Columbia’s ‘prohibition against rendering any lawful firearm in the home operable for the purpose of immediate self-defense to be unconstitutional. The Supreme Court also affirmed previous rulings that the Second Amendment ensured the right of individuals to take part in the defending of their liberties by taking up arms in an organized militia. However, the court was clear to emphasize that an individual’s right to an ‘organized militia’ is not ‘the sole institutional beneficiary of the Second Amendment’s guarantee.’” Encyclopedia Britannica. 

Strict constructionism? Hardly.  And while it is exceptionally unlikely that the heavily conservative Court would today entertain supporting laws with much more realistic containment, the very nature of the slim majority in Heller, the endless litany of slaughter from assault weapons and the rise of fully  trained insurrectionists legally allowed to carry such arms makes a morally and legally strong argument in favor of vastly more stringent gun-control laws.

I’m Peter Dekom, and we indeed have a uniquely American approach to self-destruction.