So some time ago I wrote a piece for the Guardian about how Obama's proposed gun control policies on change.gov might rattle his newly won Western support, and this was one of the comments:
Rustic, outdoorsy Montanans and moose-hunting Alaskans love their guns.
Urban areas blighted by drugs and gangs are, in the main, keener on a measure of gun control.
It's always seemed bizarre to me that the same (usually Republican) political forces in the US which prefer no government to big government, and when they have to have it, prefer local government to state, and state to Federal, should nevertheless battle to the political death to impose universal, Constitutionally-guaranteed, Federal diktats on two big issues: the protection of gun ownership, and the outlawing of non-traditional forms of marriage.
Seems to me these are two issues just crying out for the application of a little federalism....The US is a huge and geographically diverse country, made up of densely-populated urban areas that tend to be more liberal, and a vast, often untamed rural hinterland where more conservative values hold sway.
[snip]
Red and Blue State America are not going to agree on these issues anytime soon. But why is the US trying to decide them Federally? There's no real need for Big Government to get involved - unlike for example broad economic policy, or military expenditure. Gun control (or lack of it) and gay marriage (or lack of it) are the States' business. So why not let the state governments decide the right policy for their own (very diverse) circumstances?
The commenter suggests that the Second Amendment be rewritten to support states setting their own gun control laws, which isn't necessary, because it's already happening. Just ask any gun owner, and they'll tell you the difference between, say, California and Montana law when it comes to storing guns, say. And the SCOTUS' Heller decision, which affirmed that the Constitution protects the rights of individuals to bear arms but left the degree and kind of controls up to future rulings, essentially makes gun control not just a states' rights issue, but a local issue, as municipal and county bodies create their own rules for gun use and ownership.
Still, the comment did lay bare the hypocracy of conservatives' states' rights rhetoric. Not that the conservative movement natually came to states' rights; it was picked up and thrown onto the GOP wagon by Nixon (yes, I just read Nixonland!) to woo Southern Democrats to his side by promising, in code, that his administration wouldn't do much to speed along desegregation in Dixie.
But then states' rights has always been less an ideology and more a useful tool to preserve traditional power structures or to hurry along reforms. In the antebellum South, states' rights was an ideological pretext to preserve slavery. After all, it was the Southern states that wrote and supported the Fugitive Slave Act, which gave the federal government the broadest and most intrusive powers over states up to that date. And today, progressives clamor for states' rights -- grumbling that the federal government is standing in the way of, say, California's strict emissions standards. After all, it's easier to institute reforms in a state that's more inclined toward your ideology than at the federal level, where government is banally corrupt, pro-corporate, and gutless.
Whatever. Back to gun control. Obama's awkward gun control proclamation on change.gov seemed to belie his election promises, in which he tried to explain his views on gun control in context of a states' rights issue. During the election, Obama defended his draconian gun control proposals made in the Illinois state house by saying that the problems of inner-city Chicago are vastly different than Montana's, and that he wouldn't propose any law that would strip Montanans of their guns.
But then, who cares? Any talk of gun control from the Obama administration has to be just that: talk. There's no way he gets it done. As I wrote in the Guardian piece, Obama "would have to spend enormous political capital to get the gun control laws passed - capital he needs for healthcare reform, a new energy policy and economic stimulus packages."
'Nuff ced.
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