Because current events have pushed me to write
about Second Amendment issues over and over and over again lately, I give
you: A reprise of “Tommy Gun,”
the original studio version of which is on Give ’Em Enough Rope (1978). When I featured this song once
before, I wrote about the band’s disdain for terrorism despite their fairly
radical political views:
You
better strip down for the customs run
Tommy
Gun
Waiting at the airport
till kingdom come
And
we can watch you make it
On
the nine o’clock news
Standing
there in Palestine
Lighting
the fuse
Whatever you want,
you’re gonna get it!
More generally, though, “Tommy Gun” is about the
way the modern world is plagued by violence, and, in that context, it’s every
bit as relevant today as it was nearly thirty-five years ago:
You ain’t happy
unless you got one
Tommy Gun
Ain’t gonna shoot the place up just
for fun
Maybe
he wanna die
For
the money
Maybe
he wants to kill
For
his country
Whatever he wants, he’s
gonna get it!
…
Tommy Gun
You’ll be dead
when war is won
Tommy Gun
But did you have to gun down
everyone?
I can see it’s
kill
Or be killed
A national
destiny
Has got to be
fulfilled
Whatever you want, you’re gonna get
it!
Tommy
Gun
You
can be a hero in an age of none
Tommy
Gun
I'm cutting out your
picture from page one …
In fact, “Tommy Gun” seems all the more on point
right now, when you consider this: In the aftermath of the horrible school
murders in Connecticut – which were, after all, committed with .223
caliber Bushmaster assault rifle – Sen. Diane Feinstein announced the other
day that she plans
to introduce a new assault weapons ban when the newly elected Congress
meets after the holidays. Makes some sense, right? After all, the Supreme Court
expressly stated in Heller v. District
of Columbia that the Second
Amendment only protects “the sorts of weapons … [that were] ‘in common use at
the time’” of its drafting, quoting United States v. Miller, 307 U.S. 174, 179 (1939), and that even after
recognizing a personal right to keep and bear arms, “weapons that are most
useful in military service—M-16 rifles and the like—may be banned.”
But sadly and predictably, the gun-rights pushback
has already begun. Writing
on the Washington Times website,
Tom Mullen engages in exactly the type of dissembling we can expect to see
when the debate over an assault weapons ban heats up:
U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein has
vowed to introduce a bill to ban assault weapons nationwide, similar to
existing legislation in California. In doing so, she will effectively abolish
yet another of the first ten amendments to the Constitution.
To many, Feinstein’s argument might
sound very reasonable. She isn’t looking to ban all guns. “The purpose of this
bill is to get just what Mayor Bloomberg said, weapons of war off the streets
of our cities,” the senator told Meet the
Press.
Having weapons of war on
the streets is the whole point of the 2nd Amendment. The amendment wasn’t
drafted to ensure that Americans could hunt. It wasn’t drafted so that
Americans could protect themselves, although the natural right to defend one’s
life was never as compromised as it is in the modern gun control era.
It’s hyperbolic nonsense, of course, when
conservatives on the Supreme Court have already effectively ruled that assault
weapons – “M-16 rifles and the like” – fall entirely outside the scope of the Second Amendment. But that won’t
stop opponents of reasonable gun control from defending their modern-day tommy
guns to the death, will it?
The
human sacrifice
And
if death comes so cheap
Then the same goes for a
life!
Meanwhile, here’s a breath of rational fresh air
from my Twitter pal Rosanne Cash and
some other folks you might recognize:
When you say, "M16" or "Assault Rifle", Dave, teh gunzloonz go apeshit (a very short trip) and gibber about "The M16 is not the same as the AR-15" and "The AR-15 is NOT and 'Assault Rifle because it's not fully automatic and doesn't have a "fire selector" switch.
ReplyDeleteThey like to ignore that the gun is capable of shooting EXACTLY the same round as the M16 and, even in single pull, single round firing can discharge a magazine of 20-30 rounds in a matter of seconds. To them the distinction seems meaningful. To the relatives and friends of the victims in the Sandy Hook Massacere, the distinction is meaningless.