David Trinh

Andrew Sullivan has been doing great work this week at the Atlantic blogging about the elections in Iran and their ensuing aftermath.  Part of this coverage consists of Youtube videos, which Sullivan entitles “This Is What Fascism Looks Like, Ctd,” that show government operative doing horribly things to protestors and unarmed civilians.  These clips are all appalling and I’m glad Sullivan is posting them so the public knows what atrocities the Iranian regime is committing against its own people.

Unfortunately, yesterday following a video in which a group of police appear to break into a yard and beat a person unconscious, Sullivan added a note which said, “[y]ou begin to understand the Second Amendment a little better seeing this.”  This may be beside the point, certainly the actions of the Iranian regime are brutal, but I’m hardly convinced that this clip offers evidence that widespread gun ownership in the United States should be a constitutionally protected right.

Most obviously, Iran and the United States are different countries with radically different forms of government.  For instance, the United States has a long history of respecting the democratic process and the rule of law-Iran’s track record is shakier.  While these two forces haven’t always played out smoothly in America, there have been few times in American history when the government has turned deadly force on its own people.  The Battle of Blair Mountain and the shootings at Kent State make up the handful of occasions when I think deadly force has been unjustly used by United States against its citizens.  On the other hand, in a nation like Iran, which actually has something approaching a tyranny, there might be good reasons to worry about government power run amok.

More generally, I am extremely uncomfortable with grounding a defense of the 2^nd Amendment in a fear that the government will need to be resisted or overthrown through the use of deadly force.  While rhetoric is routinely tossed around by right-wing extremists (the sort who assassinate doctors and attack Holocaust museums), I think more level headed thinkers should careful not to suggest that violence should be used to resolve political disputes or even resist what one might deem to be abusive government action.  We’re fortunate that we have institutions in our country that allow us to mediate our political differences peacefully.  Pointing at Iran and saying, ‘it happened there, it could happen here too,’ is not an intellectually rigorous argument for an unfettered right to gun ownership.