People love to complain that too few Americans understand civics anymore.
And while I agree that’s a shame, what’s far worse is that too few Americans understand history.
The particularly obnoxious offenders are the folks who say the Second Amendment entitles people to be as well-armed as the government, and that even limiting ownership of nuclear weapons is a reach.
In the late 1990s, when I was working as a newspaper columnist, I attended the last legal California Gun Show at the Los Angeles County Fairplex.
I didn’t expect to be shocked, but I was. The hatred toward Bill and Hillary Clinton was palpable, and numerous vendors had cardboard figures of the two of them with targets on their chests.
But even worse were the vendors selling weapons that really had only one purpose — to shoot down helicopters.
I got into numerous discussions in my five years as a columnists, and the biggest point I never seemed to be able to get across was that the Second Amendment wasn’t designed to allow people to stand up to the government.
You know what isn’t mentioned in the Constitution or the Bill of Rights?
An Army.
The Founders knew what they were doing. Their greatest fear was that an authoritarian leader would use a large standing army to take control of the country. They provided for a Navy and a Marine Corps to protect against invasions, but they figured that what was needed of an army could be provided on short notice by state militias.
And until the late 1960s, that was the basic interpretation.
Even in the ’70s, conservative Chief Justice Warren Burger said that believing the Second Amendment provided an unlimited right to keep and bear any sort of arms was ridiculous.
Even right-wing hero Ronald Reagan said there was no reason for private ownership of military-style assault weapons, and after leaving office he supported an assault-weapons ban.
You want to own military-style weapons?
All right, then join your state’s National Guard. Spend one weekend a month training as well as two weeks in the summer. Then you can be part of the solution instead of a big part of the problem.
Otherwise, you’re just a guy with issues.