The Euphemism of “The Modern Rifle”

The Euphemism of “The Modern Rifle”

By Thomas Coffin

For over 200 years our Nation has lived with an interpretation of the Second Amendment to its Constitution that was relatively non-controversial and sane, permitting reasonable regulations and eligibility of those in the private sector to own firearms and categorizing the types of firearms they could lawfully possess. Thus felons, the mentally ill, and certain other categories were ineligible, and in general military weaponry (such as machine guns, grenades, etc.) were excluded from public consumption.

Two centuries of tradition only age with grace for so long, however, and the arms industry desired to enter the private sector market by introducing military grade weaponry where it had not previously ventured. Thus the former version of the Second Amendment underwent a make-over with seminars and articles promoting a new theory that the amendment conferred a right upon private citizens to possess firearms in order to rebel against their own government.

This re-casting of the Second Amendment necessitates a critical analysis, and I have visited this subject previously, which I will reference through links in this article as well as other sources for background information.

To give the reader a simplified overview of what is in reality the effect of this re-casting, it is a fair observation to conclude that it is incrementally resulting in a license to kill the very people that the rest of the Constitution was intended to protect and, even worse, their children: the posterity to whom life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness was bequeathed for generation after generation by our Founders.

A pivotal case to my analysis is the 2008 Supreme Court decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, along with a recent case decided by a District Court judge in the Southern District of California, Judge Roger Benitez, who largely based his ruling on Heller. In the Heller decision, the Supreme Court ruled that private citizens are allowed to keep handguns in their own homes, overturning the District of Columbia’s thirty-year ban on private gun ownership.

Let me begin with a recent article published by NPR, California’s Assault Weapons Ban ‘Disrespects’ Freedom, Federal Judge Writes (6/5/2021). The article concerns the ruling by Judge Benitez in which he overturned California’s assault weapons ban as unconstitutional, opining that the law’s three decades long prohibition on such weapons violated the Second Amendment’s “freedom to protect oneself, family, home, and homeland.” The NPR article goes on to quote Josh Blackman, a law professor at South Texas College of Law Houston, stating that the “Second Amendment has a couple touchstones: one is self-defense. The other is protection from the government itself.”

I will circle back to Judge Benitez’ ruling and his interpretation of Heller, as well as Blackman’s comments. But it is important to note at the outset that no court has found that a purpose of the Second Amendment was “protection from the government itself.” In the body of the Constitution, the same authors of the Second Amendment defined Treason as levying war against the United States. Simple logic and common sense demonstrate the fallacy of outlawing Treason in Article III, Section I, only to simultaneously create a “right” to bear arms to do exactly that. Unquestionably, this egregious contortion of the Second Amendment is directly contributing to the insurrection movement and threats of violence being targeted at politicians and government officials today—the so-called “Second Amendment Solutions” cry heard from AR-15 toting terrorists as they plotted to storm a state Capitol to kidnap and murder a governor.

“Self-Defense” is another malleable concept that is easily manipulated to cast the victim as the aggressor and the aggressor as the victim. We see that being done in Georgia in the fatal shooting of a Black man, Ahmaud Arbery, by an armed self-appointed vigilante who is claiming self-defense because his quarry, while jogging through a white neighborhood, tried to protect himself from the vigilante’s shotgun, and in the two fatal shootings of unarmed protestors and the infliction of serious injuries to a third by Kyle Rittenhouse with his AR-15 in Kenosha, Wisconsin, who is likewise claiming self-defense. The slaying of Trayvon Martin, another unarmed African-American walking in a gated white community, by an armed vigilante who was acquitted after asserting self-defense and many other instances all too numerous to list in this article make my point: None of these killings would have occurred but for the killer bringing his firearm and instigating the confrontation.

The Heller case, which is the foundation of the NPR article and the Benitez decision, dealt with a factual context in which a homeowner possessed a handgun within the confines of his own home. That setting was critical to the Supreme Court’s majority decision. (Opinion, p. 56). One’s home is a sanctuary which may be defended against intruders, and the firearm at issue, a handgun, was of the type of arms “in common use at the time” of the enactment of the Second Amendment. The Court further noted that a handgun was overwhelmingly chosen by American society for that lawful purpose of home protection, but importantly also expressly recognized an ”…important limitation on the right to bear arms…in the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of dangerous and unusual weapons.”

These are vital distinctions which the arms industry and assault weapons aficionados ignore in their rush to bury all efforts to ban such military grade firearms. The NPR article thus casually describes the Heller test as straightforward: “Is the firearm commonly owned by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes?” The article also quotes Professor Blackman stating, “When a weapon is in common use, it’s protected by the Second Amendment.” Similarly, Judge Benitez in his take on Heller characterizes AR-15s as Modern Rifles whose “popularity” among consumers alone confers them with untouchable status under the Second Amendment today. To all that, my response is “not so fast”!

In the first place, who in our society gets to participate in the referendum of the “popularity” of what Judge Benitez christens as “Modern Rifles”? The assumption is that only gun owners’ opinions should count, as measured by the revenue intake by the arms industry and a census of the guns out there. But how about the victims of mass shootings? Moms and dads for safe schools? Students who suffer PTSD from being targets in school shootings or having to undergo realistic “active shooter” drills at school? How about shoppers at malls, worshippers at churches, mosques, temples, etc.? According to Judge Benitez, none of those so impacted by these Modern Rifles have any say. The weapons’ popularity among gun owners is the beginning and end of judicial review under the Heller test.

And this leads me to a recent article published in Popular Mechanics—The Navy’s Next Laser Weapon is Basically a Real-Life Ray Gun. (Kyle Mizokami, 10/8/2021).

This weapon, referenced as a High Energy Laser Weapon System, moves at the speed of light, doesn’t need to be “led” to its target, is unaffected by gravity (unlike bullets), and can’t run out of ammunition. And developing technology will ultimately result in a “handheld laser blaster.” A focused beam of light from such a laser weapon quickly heats up the target, causing structural damage to metal objects.

Please understand that the AR-15 and other assault weapons began their journey into the public domain by being developed by the arms industry for the military per contracts with the Department of Defense. They were specifically designed to be lightweight hand held combat weapons capable of inflicting mass casualties on the enemy in the field of battle. With high velocity ammunition and large capacity magazines they allow individual soldiers to achieve maximum lethality against the enemy, more than did predecessor small arms weaponry. In other words, what was designed for military use in combat has quickly become the euphemistic “Modern Rifle” of choice for today’s private sector use. It is more than likely that down the road a bit, assuming that popular demand among gun owners is the automatic trigger of Second Amendment protection, a handheld laser blaster would easily join the list of “Modern Rifles" preferred by consumers.

What we also need to keep in mind is that it is simply impossible to keep such firearms out of the hands of those who would use them to inflict havoc and carnage on ever more victims of their hatred, prejudice, bigotry, and violence. It is a fairy tale to pretend that only law-abiding owners will obtain them for only lawful purposes. The massacres of the innocent will only increase proportionally with the lethality of the weaponry.

I doubt that the Founders would have approved of an interpretation of their Second Amendment that would open the gates to facilitate access to weaponry that would slaughter children in schools and perhaps even melt them as they hide under their desks.

Stop the insanity. It has already opened the gates.

To Keep and Bear Arms, Garry Wills, 1995

A Night of Horror, Thomas Coffin, 2021

posted 10/27/2021