Number One with a Bullet

Yesterday, former Bush advisor Karl Rove accused Barack Obama of being arrogant. Really? This from the guy who told the host during an NPR interview in the fall of 2006, “You may have your math, but I have THE math, and the math I have adds up to a Republican victory in November.” This from the guy who engineered the most arrogant American administration of the 20th century. Pot, meet kettle.

Thursday morning, on the final day of their term, the Supreme Court struck down the District of Columbia’s ban on handguns, ruling that the Second Amendment to the Constitution guarantees individual citizens the right to bar arms. Since the Bill of Rights was adopted in 1789, reasonable people have argued over the meaning of the phrase, “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. About 219 years of confusion could have been avoided had James Madison simply written a more coherent sentence. But he didn’t, so here we are. Believe it or not, the Supreme Court has managed to avoid offering a direct interpretation of said amendment since it first appeared on the parchment. Because of this, the amendment has been generally understood (legally – not necessarily socially) to refer to a collective right, tied to the concept of a militia. This allowed for the development of gun control legislation throughout the years all across the country, culminating in the near total ban enforced in Washington D.C. Well, on Thursday morning, the Roberts Court decided that 219 years of pseudo-precedent don’t amount to a steaming pile of doo doo, and ruled instead that, militia be damned, guns are for everybody. And while claiming the decision did not automatically invalidate every single gun law in the nation, they also cleverly neglected of offer any guidelines on what type of restrictions – if any – might be considered reasonable – effectively invalidating every single gun law in the nation, at least for the time being. In light of this decision, there may currently be more restrictions on speech – which does no physical harm to anyone – than on firearms, which have a history of being quite deadly.

Personally, I think this is a fantastic decision. There is nothing more American than shooting things and blowing things up. This country was founded on shooting things and blowing things up, and no one else does it better than we do. We have the homicide rate to prove it. Prior to this, only cops and criminals in D.C. could engage in this illustrious American past time. But now, anybody can shoot whatever they want, wherever they want, with whatever they want. Until a case comes before the court that might push them into defining what limitations may or may not be reasonable, it is open season. Grand Theft Auto all over Chicago and Washington D.C. I can’t wait.