Part I:
A Liberal with a Gun

I’m sure there are many non-Americans who are dumbstruck at the circus going on in the U.S. about gun control—a circus overrun with the clowns of far-right conservative gun-mongering. I cannot apologize for those clowns, because they don’t speak for me and we’re not all as stupid as they are. I won’t rehash the oft-argued points for and against gun control, since you’ve likely heard it all before. Instead, I’ll focus on just one thing: The limitations on the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, which guarantees our right to bear arms.

Let’s do a quick primer for non-Americans who are unfamiliar with our Constitution—and plenty of Americans who haven’t a clue about it either.

 The first ten amendments to the Constitution are called the Bill of Rights; these are very important things that our Founding Fathers felt had to be codified first. “Founding Fathers” refers to those who drafted and signed the Constitution, who were all white, some of them slave-owners, all of them owning property, none of them at the bottom of the social and economic barrel. I know, it sounds ludicrous, but to be fair that’s the sort of people who have written similar documents throughout human history. If you ’re a non-American who thinks Americans are all stupid, let’s be clear: People are stupid everywhere, and no nation has the corner on that market. But when it comes to gun nuts, the United States has a special breed of stupid.

For the sake of full disclosure, let me outline my beliefs before I rant. Socially, I’m left-wing, liberal, and progressive.

I’m a strong-minded atheist, the last great minority here. We’re still treated like second-class citizens, but at least we’re not being systematically murdered because we don’t believe in whatever fairy tale someone else does—although plenty of Christians here would probably love to change that. But we don’t allow persecuting atheists or any religious adherents because we don’t like their beliefs, because those beliefs don’t hurt anyone.

I have always believed in the right for any two people to marry, whether straight or gay, and in fact believe we should allow any number of willing human beings to legally join together if they so desire. Why? Again, it doesn’t hurt anyone.

I believe in a woman’s right to choose what happens to her body—unimpeded by anti-abortionists, unhindered by religious madmen, unfettered by constituent-ass-kissing politicians. I believe this because a woman having an abortion doesn’t hurt anyone. Many will argue that the unborn fetus is a person. It isn’t.

So when it comes to the Second Amendment, you might expect a left-wing liberal progressive to be all for outlawing guns. But not this liberal. I’m a liberal with a gun.

I never owned a firearm until after we bought our house in 2007. It’s the last house on a dead-end street and, as we later discovered, was across the road from a house owned by a local prostitute who, with her boyfriend, also apparently was a meth dealer.

She would frequently have piles of visitors—drug buyers, johns, party animals, etc. They’d fill the dead-end street with cars and all too often park at the bottom of my sloped driveway. Yes, they would actually block my access to my own property, and when beat on their door and politely ask them to move, they were always rude, intimidating, and uncooperative. I guess you can’t expect good manners from dealers, addicts, whores, and johns.

One night, things went too far.

Part II:
Choosing a Weapon to Kill Someone With

One night, when I came home and again could not drive onto my property because some inconsiderate asshole had parked at the bottom of my driveway again, I’d had enough. This time when they answered the door I let the guy know how pissed I was. He scoffed at me and made it clear that the car was staying where it was. He’d move it when he was damned good and ready, and what did I think I was going to do about it?

I guess I snapped. I should have just gone home and called the cops. But no, I had to pop my cork. I hollered that he’d better get his ass out and move that car, because I was going back to my house for a baseball bat and was going to smash that car completely to hell.

It was daring and stupid, because these were dangerous people. I made it home without being attacked by anyone, but before I went back out to teach some windows and headlights a serious lesson, somehow I found the presence of mind to call the police. I think the neighbors suspected that I might do this, and they quickly cleared all the cars out by the time the cop arrived. I later told the police chief that I was done living in fear of these people and was considering buying a handgun for personal protection.

The idea of shooting someone was abhorrent to me. But I had to protect myself and my wife. Of course, Elaine made it abundantly clear, as she had on many occasions, that she would never allow a handgun in our house. She’d never agree to such a purchase, so soon after that I went to the local gun store alone and without her knowledge. After perhaps fifteen minutes filling out the paperwork and waiting three minutes for the salesman to make a telephone call for the federal background check, I was cleared to buy. It was that simple.

I knew almost nothing about handguns, so I only had a short list of requirements for the salesman. I wanted a small gun. It had to be lightweight. I needed to be able to easily conceal it. And if I ever had to actually shoot someone, I didn’t want to have to pull the trigger twice. As unsettling as it felt to me, I was shopping for a handgun that would end the life of someone threatening me. I never thought of myself as that cold-blooded, but, folks, if it comes down to me or the bad guy, it won’t be me.

I walked out with a Taurus Millennium Pro PT145 .45-caliber semiautomatic polymer handgun. It took my furious wife a long time to even accept that it was in the house, let alone be okay with it. It was even longer before she’d handle it and let me show her how to work it—so that she could protect herself if the need arose.

Within a few weeks of purchasing my handgun, I took the NRA-certified gun-safety course required under Maine law in order to get a concealed-carry permit. Yeah, the only legally acceptable course was one certified by a group representing the circus clowns of gun rights. It started off shaky; I was the only liberal in a class where, for the first 45 minutes, I had to listen to the instructor raving about how Obama was going to take all our guns. But once we got to the educational part of the course, it was actually enjoyable. Target shooting is fun, and it turned out that I was a great shot. After the course, I applied for and was awarded a concealed-carry permit through my local police department. The whole process from start to finish represented very little effort on my part.

And there’s the crux of the problem: It’s just too easy. Beyond my clean record and nice demeanor, how did the feds, the instructor, and the police department know that I wasn’t just itching to blow people away? Because the law doesn’t let them. And if the gun nuts have their way, it will stay just like that, or even get more lax.

I’m all for tougher requirements. I’m for psychological and intelligence testing for anyone who wants to own a gun. I think you should have to be certified mentally stable and not dumber than a pile of rocks in order to own a gun. Those requirements would probably thin out the gun-nut herd in a hurry.

Currently, the gun nuts want gun ownership to be free of any restrictions. Apparently, they believe that everyone should be able to buy, own, and carry guns regardless of who they are. And their sole basis for that position is that the Second Amendment is utterly holy and should never be restricted in any way.

Part III:
Those Other Rights

The thing is, the Bill of Rights actually is restricted in many ways. Let’s review a few of those amendments.

First Amendment
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

As an atheist, I can certainly attest that the government indeed has long attempted to establish Christianity as the country’s religion. It took a long time to get forced prayer out of public schools, and many Christians would give anything to get it back in. Meanwhile, we still have God on our money and in our Pledge of Allegiance, thanks to Congress utterly ignoring the First Amendment.

However, no one has true “free exercise” of his religion. In this country, you can’t kill, rape, or abuse, or own people because your religion says that you can. And why not? Because your right to freely exercise your religion ends when your actions harms others.

Freedom of speech or the press, you say? Try inciting a riot. Try giving a speech urging your followers to kill someone, or write an op-ed demanding that someone shoot the president. Those are called “fighting words,” and your right to free speech ends when that speech harms someone else. You can’t defame, slander, or libel someone freely, either. Why? Because it harms others.

Fourth Amendment
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

This seems very clear: In order to be searched, law enforcement needs to obtain a warrant based on probable cause. But during a traffic stop, a police officer is allowed to search without a warrant if he has probable cause. Citizens can be searched without a warrant when crossing the border into the U.S. And exigent circumstances says that a police officer who feels that someone is at risk, that a suspect might escape, or that a suspect might destroy evidence can act without a warrant. Why are there so many limits on such a clear right? Because your right ends where harm of others begins.

Fifth Amendment
“No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”

Limitations can work the other way around, too. The Fifth Amendment says that a person is guaranteed due process under the law. But take Miranda v. Arizona in 1966, a case that decided that when the police arrest a suspect, they must advise him of his rights: he doesn’t have to talk; if he does, they can use what he says against him; he can have an attorney present during questioning; and the court will appoint an attorney if he can’t afford one. This is a limitation in favor of the citizen, as it protects him from the government infringing on his right to due process.

But Miranda also limits itself with the “public safety” exception. In one case, a cop had a man in custody in a grocery store and discovered that the man was wearing an empty shoulder holster. Under Miranda, the cop should have read him his rights before questioning him, but out of concern for public safety, the cop asked where the gun was. The suspect told him, and the cop secured the gun. Where Miranda gives extra protection, this exception ensures that your right to that protection ends when others’ rights or safety might be at risk.

Ninth Amendment
“The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”

This was the quiet amendment for most of the first two centuries of the United States. But in recent decades, it has been a linchpin in many SCOTUS cases. Texas once criminalized abortion, but Roe v. Wade overturned that in 1973. Connecticut once criminalized contraception, but Griswold v. Connecticut overturned that in 1965. And Planned Parenthood v. Casey in 1992 ended a Pennsylvania law that, among other things, required a spouse to be notified of his wife’s intention to get an abortion. Why were these laws struck down? They harmed the woman and infringed on her rights.

There is a simple pattern in all of this: If your exercise of a right harms someone else, then you don’t get to exercise that right.

Part IV:
The Second Amendment

“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.”

There are plenty of limitations on this amendment. “Arms” doesn’t mean you can carry around a rocket launcher or a handheld nuclear device. In Maine, even with a concealed-carry permit, you cannot carry into a place that serves alcohol—presumably because of the risk that you might get drunk and shoot someone. In fact, being required to pass a background check to buy a gun, being required to take a gun-safety course, and having to pass another check to get a permit are all limitations of the Second Amendment. We have those limitations to prevent harm to others. And, let’s be honest, those limitations are minor bumps in a process, and they don’t away a right.

We need more of these common-sense checks and balances. We need to find ways to ensure that dangerous, mentally ill people don’t have guns for the same reason that we prevent felons from having them. But when intelligent people try their damnedest to construct common-sense legislation, the gun nuts see red. I’ll never understand it. Get professional help or go back to kindergarten, people. Yes, I’m saying that those people are either crazy or stupid, because they’d have to be one or the other to ignore common-sense gun-control measures.

Gun nuts seem to think that the Second Amendment has a special place above the other amendments in the Bill of Rights. They live in paranoia that the government will take away their guns, and if they’re crazy or stupid then maybe that should happen. Their fantasy world is so surreal that their guns seem to be all that matters to them, even as gunmen blow away innocent people in schools, movie theaters, and parking lots. They think that mass-shooting deaths are unfortunate collateral damage that we must endure for the holy right granted by the Second Amendment.

They’re wrong. We need more gun control. We need more background checks. We need to ascertain the intelligence and mental health of people and disallow dangerous people gun ownership. We need to identify these people and take their guns away before they kill innocent people in a church or mosque, a shopping mall or a street corner. Or before they kill more helpless first-graders who think that school is a safe place to be.

Last year, horrific new statistics showed that of all mass shootings in the world, 31 percent of them happen in the United States—despite the U.S. only having 5 percent of the world’s population. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that if we take action to reduce how many guns into to crazy people’s hands, we’ll have fewer gun deaths.

President Barack Obama finally had enough of seeing all of these senseless gun deaths while our elected officials in both houses of Congress refused to do anything about them. So Obama recently announced that he would take executive action on gun control, legally bypassing Congress. Predictably, the gun nuts and the conservative politicians who pander to them shot down his ideas before they’d even heard what those ideas were.

And what terrible things did the President announce? Horrible things. Dreadful things. Things that utterly gut the Second Amendment. Things like requiring that anyone selling guns for a living must register as a firearms dealer and conduct background checks on customers. Things like investing money for access to mental-health services and research into gun-safety technology. Things like adding new federal agents to combat this runaway problem.

You might think that the people who shot down Obama’s ideas without hearing them would feel a bit sheepish when they heard of these sensible, sane ideas. Sadly, that didn’t happen. They all just doubled down.

I am all for the President’s first-step ideas, but we need much more. Don’t get me wrong: I want us to have guns. I want any potential invaders on American soil to be met with bullets no matter what city they march into, no matter what small town they land in. I want Americans to have plenty of guns.

I just don’t want to blindly let every American have them.

David M. Fitzpatrick is a fiction writer in Maine, USA. His many short stories have appeared in print magazines and anthologies around the world. He writes for a newspaper, writes fiction, edits anthologies, and teaches creative writing. Visit him at www.fitz42.net/writer to learn more.