John,
Our Constitution is no more sacred than the Bible. Neither are divinely inspired. But both are nevertheless humanly inspired documents. The problem is not with the Constitution but America’s passionate love affair with ballistics, which runs very deep and is complex. It's not simply a love, it's a whole identity. Think of it, almost, as a kind of portable arms (heraldry). Guns bestow honor, power, independence, and ownership - American values that go back before the republic's founding. Guns displayed and guns carried are badges of honor, escutcheons, if you will, of distinction, even grace. But of a rugged Yankee kind no doubt.
I know the Europeans et al. are impatient with us. Reading the French papers, both right and left, I get the sense that those stupid Americans just don’t get it. But, to be fair, Americans who know better must contend with a huge lobby. It’s the same thing with the idiotic embargo on Cuba for over fifty years. You may not know that most Americans support lifting the embargo. But the Cuban American lobby prevents this from happening. Fareed Zakaria wrote about the anti-democratic nature of lobbies (from left and right). Indeed, the very will of the people can be thwarted by a lobby. Ditto the NRA, which relentlessly bribes our politicians to keep all weapons within easy access. What non-Americans need to understand is that this debate will have to become a titanic struggle to create change. I means, it’s a lot worse than trying to teach Americans the metric system. This is going to be a “bloody” struggle in more ways than one. It will cost a political will and effort that I don’t think the American electorate has. Would love to be proven wrong on that!
|