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Friday, March 23, 2012

The Right to Bare Arms

So recently a high profile court case has concluded with a Maori activist and his mates getting into bother around firearms, their use of them and possession of them. This seems principally because they were running around in the bush playing at being soldiers. This as we know has been a popular game for little boys for as long as I can remember and the real problem seemed to be that these men were using real guns instead of sticks.


Given that they have an avowed aim of separate sovereignty that gave the government cause to worry that after they had gotten bored with their bush game they might decide to use the guns on the government or its representatives.

Fair enough I hear you cry, which does seem to be the majority view. And I agree that we don’t want nutters with guns in our society, however....... is it as simple as that ?

The Right to Bear Arms is famously enshrined in the American Constitution as the 2nd amendment and it is also closely linked to the National Rifle Association or the NRA who are the visible lobby group for the right to own guns. Charlton Heston was a long time president and by extension spokes person for the NRA and gave a speech concerning the protection of freedoms and finished that speech in a dramatic fashion by holding aloft a vintage rifle and said “from my cold dead hands” an exert from a the longer version of “I’ll give you my gun when you take it from my cold dead hands”. This has become the slogan and battle cry of the “gun nuts” as most non NRA folk see them.

All this has rather polarised and obscured the original debate about ones rights to protect one self, from other people but the often overlooked point is it allows you a measure of protection from the government itself.

If you cast your mind back to the time of the founding fathers of America you will recall that they had just spent some time sending King George and his merry soldiers packing from the land of the free. This was accomplished by a bunch of farmers forming militia with the rifles they had previously used for hunting. (Ok so they had some help from the French and others but back to the story). So the right to protect yourself from an oppressive government would have been fresh in their mind.

What is more given that most of them were very near term immigrants to the US (no native American involved in the establishment of the “new” country) they brought with them their ideas from back home. This would have included the British right to bear arms included in the English Bill of Rights of 1689, which again was influenced by the troubles they were having with pesky monarchs who thought they could do whatever they pleased.

So I am a little unconvinced that persecuting the populace for waving guns about is a good idea. As far as I know no one has been shot or even shot at. (In another incident he drew some heat for shooting a flag in the middle of a public gathering)

Tame Iti the activist in question, his basic grip is his tribe didn’t sign up to the Treaty of Waitangi and therefore should be permitted independent sovereignty and self determination and rule. It is probably a fact that they didn’t sign (hard to fake that fact) so he may have a point. The practicalities of such a thing would be another issue. He also may not even represent the majority of Tuhoe (the tribe in question) but he does have some supporters (refer chaps in bush pretending to be soldiers) So it is pretty clear he is involved in a political struggle, regardless what I might think of his case. So it seems to me he might have a “right” to wave his gun around, especially if the government is trying to take it off him cause the don’t like him.

The ANC were not above the odd bit of gun waving before the end of apartheid in South Africa and more recently the west has been helping some Arab citizens over throw some “bad” governments with the use of citizens guns.

But of course those were “good” causes and we (a majority of western politicians, still heavily white middle class males) agreed with those causes. Brown guys in the bush with guns hmmm could that be a “good” and “just” cause? Don’t be silly.

2 comments:

  1. Do I sense a swing to the left for BDT? I am sure Tame Iti would accept some political donations or friends to run around in the bush?

    ReplyDelete
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