McMaken: You Can't Be Both "Pro Military" And "Pro Second Amendment"
zerohedge.com
uthored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,
The phrase "pro-gun, pro-military" is used by some conservatives to describe themselves, as if the two go together seamlessly. For example, activist and political candidate Erin Cruz states she is both "Pro Second Amendment" and "Pro Military" in her promotional materials.
Another Republican candidate, Gregory Duckworth, advertises that he advances "pro-gun and pro-military initiatives."
And last year, Donald Trump, Jr. - as part of a controversy over Keurig coffee pulling its advertising from Sean Hannity's show — denounced Keurig and endorsed Black Rifle Coffee, which is advertised as a company with a "pro-gun and pro-military stance."
And yet, there is an inherent conflict between the two positions. This becomes evident when we consider the words of US Senator Tom Coburn in 2013:
The Second Amendment wasn't written so you can go hunting, it was to create a force to balance a tyrannical force here.
Given that the US military is one of the primary means by which the US government can exert its own coercive force, it seems a bit odd to think that one can simultaneously be "pro-military" while also being for gun rights designed to "balance a tyrannical force here."
Even the left, which is prone to an especially high level of confusion when it comes to the gun issue, has identified the conflict with memes such as this:
After all, we hear constantly from "pro-military" advocates that the military suffers greatly from too little spending on its needs, that Barack Obama cut back military spending to the bone, and that, in general, the military is underfunded. Never mind, of course, that US military spending is larger than the next seven biggest spenders combined, or that
The US Navy is about ten times bigger than the next largest navy, which happen to be its close ally, the Royal Navy. The United States has four air forces, one for each service, and all very capable … the US Army has dozens of powerful brigade combat teams and dominates potential rivals in any form of conventional warfare. The US Marine Corps is much bigger than any comparable force. And US special operations forces are about the same size as all elements of the Canadian military.
If one is concerned about providing "balance" against abuse of government power, it would seem that pushing for a few more AR-15s in private hands isn't really going to make a critical difference.
The Authors of the Second Amendment Were Anti-Militarists
The fact that many Americans today think it is possible to be both pro-Second Amendment and pro-military at the same time would have struck many Americans of the Revolutionary period as exceptionally odd.
After all, at the time of the ratification of the new Constitution — and the writing of the Second Amendment — Americans were notable for their opposition to a permanent and powerful military force — especially in the form of a so-called "standing army."
Greatly distrustful of putting military power in the hands of the federal government, the authors of the Second Amendment advocated instead for a far larger decentralized and locally controlled militia. Thus, in the nineteenth century, both state and local militias greatly outweighed federal military power, and it was assumed that any large standing force would have to be composed of state units supplied by state governments. In practice — until the late twentieth century — state governments could veto these deployments. Even statemilitia power was suspect, if it was full-time and professionalized. Thus, the concept of the "unorganized" militiaretained significant support even into the early twentieth century. Today, however, these checks on federal power have been abolished, thus that which is "pro-military" is now necessary pro federal military.
Nor was this opposition to a national army unique to the Americans. The concept had already been well-established in English politics going back at least to the English civil war. At the time, opponents of unchecked monarchical power supported and obtained a decentralized non-professional militia system designed to partially supplant a standing army under the control of the king.
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