You cannot have my gun: The Supreme Court’s ruling

The passing of the gun law by the Supreme Court seems strangely anachronistic in 2010. Guns were red-state talismans when the free republic first divided — redivided — into red and blue. Back around the mid-1970s. There were two teams then, and those of us who worked in D.C. fondly recall their anthems displayed on bumper stickers. The one would say: “I’d rather be sailing” and for those in the higher church: “I’d rather be reading Jane Austin.” The other team’s, the gun team’s, would read: “I’d rather be killing commies.” Or the hardcore’s simple yet elegant: “Russia sucks.”

You can have my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers, they said. But guns in this situation seemed mostly intended as a symbol, a manifestation of the generalized urge to be kicking hippies' asses and raising hell. Team blue would fight back with gay marriage. Not only would it grant fuller freedom to gay people, but as was apparent in the upper north when Jean Chrétien first proposed it in Canada, it would really annoy them in Texas.

Then Massachusetts’ Barney Frank suggested publicly that gay marriage be a states’-rights thing. It was an idea more suited to the times and an idea that was coming and Frank was then among the first to bring it. But that way it would lose the effect of telling Texans who we are and who we are not. Because they don’t care what we do in New England so long as they don’t have to do it as well, but inherent in the “You can have my gun . . .” manifesto was the blue states seeking a constitutional tactic in taking it from them.

Since the bumper sticker wars of the ‘80s and ‘90s, the Second Amendment as a red-state theme has lost its effect. The language seems pretty clear in the Second Amendment. The Supreme Court decision shouldn’t come as a surprise. But in our times, the 10th Amendment has become the more relevant approach to needs and responsibilities. If Chicago doesn’t like the ruling and if Mike Bloomberg in New York doesn’t like it, they should not try to skirt it with secondary trick legislation. They should move to have the Second Amendment stricken from the Constitution as Tea Party favorites Tim Bridgewater and Mike Lee in Utah have been calling for the repeal of the 17th Amendment.

Then gun ownership would become a 10th Amendment issue. With no specific constitutional directive to oppose or allow gun ownership, it would be up to the states.

Like Ron Paul, Sarah Palin, “Eclipse,” Friedrich Hayek and Taylor Swift, the states’-rights approach is an idea whose time has come and whose generation is upon us. Better yet, to sort it out, Bloomberg and Chicago’s Daley boys should man up and get behind the movement for a Constitutional Convention, which 20 states have now signed on to, to make for a more perfect union and one more suited to the needs and necessities of our times.

Visit Mr. Quigley's website at http://quigleyblog.blogspot.com.

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