Why does anyone need a high-capacity rifle? It’s a question anti-gun proponents often posit. It stumps some gun owners and gun advocates because it’s difficult to answer. The answer is that nobody "needs" a high-capacity rifle in the technical sense of the word "need." But is the 2nd Amendment a "need" analysis? No, of course not.
I don’t need to write these opinion columns but I do and the things I say are protected by the 1st Amendment right of free speech. I don’t need to be secure from warrantless searches; I’m not a criminal. The 4th Amendment protects me from the State nonetheless. In fact, there isn’t a single protection in the Bill of Rights that I actually need.
Why then do gun owners allow themselves to be duped by this dishonest argument? It’s because they fail to challeng the presupposition that gun owners must justify and articulate a need.
If the 2nd Amendment isn’t based on need, what then is its purpose? Balance of Power. The 2nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was drafted for the sole purpose of balancing the power of the people and the power of the State. The "well-regulated militia" written about in the 2nd Amendment was no more than an assembly of the people. It stands to reason that the 2nd Amendment was intended to propel the people as a whole to a position of power so that government could not usurp their authority.
As our government now monitors our calls, archives social media, reigns over an army of drones, sets up checkpoints and has the most advanced military in the world, does anyone believe we have achieved a balance of power with the State? Probably not. The federal government of the United States is the most lethal force on the globe and probably the most lethal force in the history of humanity. Despite this lethality, just last week residents of Connecticut were compelled by their government to register their firearms and high-capacity magazines. Despite this lopsided balance of power, law-abiding citizens can’t be trusted with a thirty-round magazine. We have wholly failed the charge given to us by our founders to check the power of the federal government. We are only nominally free because at any moment, we could be violently oppressed by our centralized authority.
When one looks at the current balance of power between the people and the State, one sees a people who would be wholly helpless should some government choose to violently usurp our freedoms. We don’t own tanks, drones or sophisticated satellites. We can’t track people from space and we don’t have a navy or air force. At what point do we just concede that we’re no longer citizens, but merely subjects? Our police forces look and act more and more like tactical military units. Any rational observer would conclude that the State is closing in on the people either consciously or subconsciously.
I’m not a conspiracy theorist or anti-government, but I do have a fairly solid grip on history and even a cursory review of the historical record suggests that government has been and continues to be the embodiment of human greed and the soulless search for power. Nearly every mass evil in the history of the world has been carried out by the State. That’s not an opinion; that is fact. American slavery was the product of the State. The Holocaust was the work of the State. The Khmer Rouge in Cambodia murdered millions under the flag of the State. Apartheid was the work of the State. The Soviet purges under Stalin were the work of the State. As much as liberals want you to believe that corporations are evil, it is the State whom you should fear. The last time I checked Microsoft doesn’t have a standing army. With this in mind, should the people be disarmed until they "need" to be armed? Further, who decides when the people "need" to be armed? I’m guessing the people in charge of assessing need are the same people who are continuing government’s long and horrid pattern of violence. I don’t need a high-capacity rifle today. I may not need one tomorrow, but by the time I do need one, it will be too late. In short, the only reason anyone really needs to bear arms, is because the State is so intent on taking this right away. The State’s desire to rule over us is the cause; gun ownership is merely the rational response to that desire.
Even the most horrible incidents of gun-related violence in America pale in comparison to the wholesale evil governments are capable of. Mass shootings are tragic and are a scourge on our culture, but let us not believe that disarming law abiding citizens in the fix. The only rational ending to this thinking is a bolstered central authority and a helpless population. A free people cannot be truly free if they possess no means to repel oppression. An armed population and the occasional violence that accompanies an armed populace are the price we pay to know that we at least have some small chance at preserving our freedom.
Bays is an attorney in Midwest City.
