Tag Archives: firearms

Another Psychologically Troubled Individual with a Gun, another Military Contractor with Security Clearance

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Another Psychologically Troubled Individual with a Gun, another Military Contractor with Security Clearance

What does it add up to? –another mass shooting, another crime at a federal facility, this time the U.S. Navy Yard in Washington, D.C.

 

Alexis

No need for lengthy soul-searching. The shooter had already been identified as psychologically troubled, before Monday’s mass killing. Aaron Alexis was displaying symptoms often associated with schizophrenia and had sought help. Several police stations were already acquainted with him.

A former Navy Petty Officer, he had been disciplined repeatedly for misconduct, leaving the Navy though remaining on the list as a reservist–honorably discharged under early-release, the service unable to general-discharge.

He had had several scrapes with the law, including at least two incidents involving guns–using firearms without need, shooting out the cars of a tire in Washington state and shooting into an upstairs neighbor’s apartment in Fort Worth, Texas.

As often happens, Alexis purchased his most recent guns in Virginia, hub of weapons commerce on the East Coast.

Thirteen people dead, including the shooter. Mental disease or defect, a pattern of erratic behavior, violent incidents including altercations involving shooting guns, military experience and clearance giving him access to a U.S. armed forces facility.

A danger to self and others.

And what do we do, presented with an individual like this? –Why, under the guidance of the cartel-supporting National Rifle Association, we do the obvious: we let him buy all the weapons he wants. Then the led-by-the-nose-by-the-NRA GOP screams ‘Obama’, or ‘government’, or ‘bureaucracy’, or whatever feeble CouldaShouldaWoulda it will use this time, conveyed by the silk-stocking law-lobbying firms its sponsors fund, to the ever-accepting dues-paying ignorant and resentful. The party line is getting thinner by the month, thinner with wear from every drearily predictable incident–but not necessarily thin enough to defeat every well-funded and highly hyped recall effort in every remote area in the U.S.

The only mystery about this mass shooting is why any respectable media outlet in America would pretend that the NRA has any credibility.

Well-regulated, part 3

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Well-regulated, part 3

Following up on the two previous posts–

As written earlier, as often as we hear about “the second amendment” in the public discourse, we seldom hear the phrase “well regulated.” The first is a slogan for banners and bumper stickers; the second is being obliterated. But the framers of the constitution included that phrase well regulated in the second amendment because it was paramount. It involved among other things two attributes much prized–wisdom, and energy. In those pre-Nietzschean times, after all, wisdom was considered manly. Wisdom and prudence in fact were considered masculine attributes–a perspective often reversed today by a triad of corporatism, media consolation, and consumerism pushing the line that they are qualities we teach women and children. Two sides of the same sexist coin, of course; but the immediate point is the dishonesty of gun lobbyists who hide behind the second amendment even while they and their allies work full-time to make “regulation” a dirty word in every context including children’s toys.

 

Straight to the mouth

Nobody says it, but a phrase like “take up arms” itself implies well-regulated. As Clinton L. Rossiter writes in Seedtime of the Republic: the origin of the American tradition of political liberty (1954), the Cincinnatus ideal ruled: “No army of mercenaries could ever fight as bravely or successfully as a ‘well-regulated militia’ defending hearth and home.” The ability to take up arms was linked inextricably with the willingness to put them down. As such, it was the best alternative to, and antidote against, “the inherent danger of standing or ‘mercenary’ armies, ‘a tremendous curse to a state’ and ‘the scourge of mankind'” in sources quoted from the Revolutionary period.

 

Working from home

This historical perspective yields little justification for freely arming every disgruntled ex-employee or newly separated father engaged in a custody dispute or wishing to avoid alimony and child support, let alone every meth-head, gang member and cartel associate. As Josiah Quincy, Jr., wrote in 1774,

“No free government was ever founded or ever preserved it’s [sic] liberty without uniting the characters of citizen and soldier in those destined for defence of the state. The sword should never be in the hands of any, but those who have an interest in the safety of the community . . .”   [emphasis added]

Examples of persons depended upon to be well regulated included “freeholders, citizen and husbandman” (Quincy); the government (“Pacificus,” pseud.); and “the publick” and “the collective body of the state” (Samuel West, 1776). Examples of people and entities who could not be depended upon to be well regulated included “a strong military power in the very heart of their country” and “the power of soldiers” (Samuel Adams); “the supreme magistrate and his creatures” and “every thing of a factious nature and complexion” (‘Pacificus’); “rulers” (West); “unjust and unlawful force” (“John Locke,” pseud.); “a few disaffected individuals” (West); and “oppressive officers” (Thomas Jefferson). [Quoted in Rossiter]

In short, well-regulated meant democratic (and republican); unregulated meant anti-democratic. All the individual liberties supported by Jefferson in Virginia before the Declaration of Independence–including Habeas Corpus, the right to a fair trial, and freedom of the press–had the same fundamental aim of regulating those who would insolently go overboard in oppressing others:

“These are the invaluable rights, that form a considerable part of our mild system of government; that, sending its equitably energy through all ranks and classes of men, defends the poor from the rich, the weak from the powerful, the industrious from the rapacious, the peaceable from the violent, the tenants from the lords, and all from their superiors.”

Part of the picture here is that the founders liked to see things done well rather than badly. As with well regulated currency, it was all rather like having your heart keep pumping and your blood circulating, to which the sweet air of freedom conduced. Even getting rid of a tyrant was supposed to be done well, rather than badly; as in John Milton’s epic narrative there was payback even for getting rid of an alleged tyrant poorly or for wrong motives. Thus the arbitrary, the irrational, the selfish all fell into the bad column; peaceableness, reason and looking out for others fell into the good column. Quoting Rossiter again,

“Resistance in the extreme sense of outright revolution–the “appeal to God by the sword,” as the Colony of New Hampshire labeled it–was never to be undertaken except by an overwhelming majority of a thoroughly abused people. There was no place in Revolutionary theory for the coup d’etat of a militant minority dedicated to the building of a new order. Samuel West expressed this thought in his election sermon of 1776:

‘If it be asked, who are the proper judges to determine, when rulers are guilty of tyranny and   oppression? I answer, the publick; not a few disaffected individuals, but the collective body of the state must decide this question.'”

The well-regulated was meaningful. The meaningless was anathema, including meaningless selfishness. Hence it goes without saying that revolution for its own sake was no democratic ideal for American colonists:

“Finally, all colonial writers agreed with Jefferson’s assumption that any exercise of “the Right of the People to alter or to abolish” government would be followed almost immediately by an exercise of their associated right “to institute new Government.” For all their flirtation with the state of nature, for all their loyalty to the mechanistic explanation of government, Americans could think of man only as a member of a political community. Men did not revolt against government to eliminate it entirely and return to a state of nature, but to organize a new one, “laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.” God granted men the right of resistance to help them preserve orderly constitutional government, not to induce them to fly from the tyranny of arbitrary power to the tyranny of no power at all.”

The lessons of history are many, and mixed. But adhering to principle is not cherry-picking.

Well regulated currency

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Well regulated currency

The ordinariness of “well regulated” in eighteenth-century America

The following is a quick, representative list of American newspapers before and after the Revolutionary War explicitly recommending, or reminding of the need for, a “well regulated currency”:

  • New England Weekly Journal (Boston, Mass.) February 4, 1734. Issue CCCLVIII, page 1. “Money well regulated and established is the measure of all other things.”
  • Boston Gazette, or Weekly Journal. June 4, 1751. Issue 1629, page 1. A “fixed invariable currency” is linked to “well regulated” trade.
  • Boston Evening Post. January 4, 1762. Issue 1375, page 2. Brief historical argument says a well-regulated currency was one of the goals of the court (American) since 1650. The same piece goes on to say, pointedly, that “they were under no great fears of offending the government in England” in so moving.
  • The New-London (Connecticut) Gazette. March 8, 1771. Vol. VIII, issue 382, page 1. A well regulated currency is contrasted to the evils of counterfeit.
  • The Providence (Rhode Island) Gazette and Country Journal. August 25, 1787. Vol. XXIV, issue 1234, page 2. Also contrasts well regulated currency with counterfeit.
  • New York Daily Advertiser. March 19, 1819. Vol. II, issue 601, page 2. Declaims on “well regulated currency,” brings in “Asiatic countries.”
  • Richmond (Virginia) Enquirer. December 5, 1833. Vol. XXX, issue 61, page 2. Importance of a safe and well regulated currency.
  • Richmond Enquirer. Dec. 27, 1833. Vol. XXX, issue 70, page 4. Same.

 

Currency issued by Massachusetts

It is in this light that the words of the Second Amendment should be read: “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state . . .” The founders knew that an ersatz, inconsistent, unregulated version of money would destroy a nation’s economy.

 

North Carolina scrip

There should be little surprise here: Currency aside, a quick search of American newspapers around the time of the Revolutionary War shows the wide popularity of the term “well regulated.” Far from being archival or fine print, the phrase was as ubiquitous in the federal period as it is lacking in the public discourse of our time. It was as emphasized in the American states of the eighteenth century as it is submerged today. To call something well regulated–commerce, currency, a militia–was praise, but it was more than merely praise; it was a much-used trope, a common-sense reminder, an exhortation that such-and-such was needed in order to bring us to that fundamental equilibrium, that bedrock stability and protection of being well regulated.

 

Signs of the times

Probably the praise was bestowed more often than it was deserved; a real estate advertisement in a couple of 1763 New York papers mentions a nearby “well regulated” tannery, and other real estate listings refer to farms and other property as well regulated. “A well regulated theatre” justified either the existence of playhouses or some types of control of same in newspapers from Charleston, S. C., to Boston, in the 1780’s and 1790’s. But it was over-bestowed because it was high praise. Thus one prominent preacher was eulogized as having a “well regulated zeal” for the Deity, among other virtues.

It would be oversimplification to read this as a convenient top-down invitation to knuckle under. For one thing, the emphasis was on voluntary virtue, not regulation by others; on social self-restraint as a recognition of an ancient and rational distinction of meum and tuum linking individuals in a just society, not setting one against everyone else.

For another thing, it was often used in pre-Revolutionary reminders to the English king. Thus we get pointed mentions of “a well regulated monarchy” in The Providence Gazette of Nov. 1, 1766; “a well regulated state” in the Aug. 24, 1767, Boston Gazette; and “well regulated laws” in the Oct. 30, 1767, Connecticut Journal. These are bottom-up, not top-down. The reminders do not tend to get less forceful as 1776 draws nearer. References to “a well regulated state” in Boston papers of January 1773 oppose the well regulated to tyrannous acts. The Connecticut Journal, again, of Feb. 4, 1774, opposes “a well regulated society” to favoritism (by the English government) that results in “impunity” for serious offenders. The New London, Conn., Gazette of March 31, 1775, opposes “a well regulated city” to martial law (and quartering of troops). The common denominator here is the distinction between tyranny and the well regulated. Being well regulated is not the hallmark of tyranny; quite the contrary.

As with ‘well regulated’ theaters, schools, cities, states, societies, currency, commerce, emotions, and even thermometers, militias were also frequently referred to as “well regulated” in the argot of the time.

Not that they started that way. The earliest mentions of ‘militia’ in American newspapers occurred in 1704, never in conjunction with ‘well regulated’ or any other kind of ‘regulated’. But then they were all foreign. The ten references to a militia in 1704–when apparently the word became fashionable in reporting–all pertain to armed forces deployed in service to the crowned heads of Europe. None are colonial forces in the New World. As those bruisers at the Oxford English Dictionary remind us, the very term militia in the modern sense was relatively new in the eighteenth century. Its modern meaning was codified in a dictionary, Phillips’s New World of Words, only in 1706: 

“Militia, a certain Number of the Inhabitants of the City and Country formed into Regular Bodies, and train’d up in the Art of War, for the Defence and Security of the Kingdom.”

This sense of the term remained constant up through the time of Adam Smith, in his famous Inquiry into the Wealth of Nations in 1776:

“It [the state] may . . . oblige either all the citizens of the military age, or a certain number of them, to join in some measure the trade of a soldier to whatever other trade or profession they may happen to carry on… Its military force is [then] said to consist in a militia.” (II. v. i. 300, quoted in O.E.D.)

After the term militia came into vogue, the term well regulated militia got to be thick on the ground in American print. Only partly was it a defense and justification, to the English governors, for having local troops. It was more an accurate reflection of the way sensible, self-directed people in the American Colonies would have felt, from early on, about an unregulated assortment of pseudo-soldiers, the mentally ill or drunk, or self-promoting chiselers, armed to the teeth with military-style hardware.

More later