Obama’s ‘Lincoln moment’?

I keep coming back to the phrase “Lincoln moment.” US President Barack Obama has been saddled with this phrase since 2010, even before his reelection and presumably in regards to some earlier divisive issue tearing apart America.

Today, one of the most divisive issues is gun control. With seven mass shootings in the US last year, culminating in one horrific outburst of violence in Newtown, Connecticut, the pressure mounted to address something that both candidates had tiptoed around during the presidential race — despite a timely reminder in a smoke-filled Colorado movie theater last July that the 600-pound gorilla wasn’t going away soon.

Then Newtown happened. It’s pointless to say “Is this enough?” and keep on raising some imaginary bar and saying such and such massacre is precisely where the straw snapped in two; any public shooting should be appalling to any sane person.

But I think about that Lincoln comparison a lot. It would be comforting to think a president could somehow breach the wide, almost Grand Canyonesque ideological gap between so many Americans on the issue of guns. But first we must remind ourselves: not even Lincoln had a magic formula to do so. That’s why there was a Civil War between those who believed the Union should stay intact, and those who wanted to break away. (Oh, and there were basic disagreements about owning other human beings as well.) So the “Lincoln moment” really amounted to a willingness to go to war with fellow Americans to somehow hold together a nation. A bloody victory, that.

Anyway, beyond the phrase, you can see the real problem lies, not simply in some Americans’ fascination with guns, but in their fear that these guns will be taken away from them. The “right to bear arms” seems an odd thing to enshrine in a constitution, but recall the circumstances: having recently fought an oppressive king’s army at the birth of a new nation, any thought of simply burying those guns or melting them down into horseshoes must have seemed a bit hasty. Downright laughable, even. Add to this: 99 percent of Americans at the time hunted game for their basic sustenance. So, hell yes, we liked our guns!

Back where I grew up, in Groton, Massachusetts, the “pioneer spirit” still lives on. It’s a small town where descendants of the original “Minutemen” from the American Revolution still reside: the Minutemen were a voluntary local militia who would strap on a musket and powder bag and ride off at a moment’s notice to defend the town back in 1775. Some of that same spirit explains why modern Americans still cherish guns for their protection. It’s not simply that they’re “gun nuts”; self-protection is just part of our DNA.

This, however, in no way begins to explain the amped-up fixation on high-powered weapons expressed by gun enthusiasts — who generally spew forth pure molten lava whenever the subject of gun regulation comes up. (Or maybe it does explain it, if you consider that high-powered weapons are simply the modern improvement over muskets. And let’s face it, Americans have always been about improvement and getting the latest and greatest models.)

The amped-up fixation has to do with a familiar refrain: any further gun legislation would restrict “citizens” from their constitutional right to bear arms and defend themselves, and that slippery slope of legislation leads — horrors! — to some kind of imaginary dictator or fascist government stepping in and taking away “good citizens’” weapons. Which then leads the good citizens to invoke the Second Amendment and claim that they will gladly shoot and kill any other “good citizens” who try to pry said weapons out of their sweaty hands.

The other argument of gun enthusiasts is that, if such shootings continue to occur, then clearly it’s better for more “good citizens” to carry guns at all times, as a deterrent. There’s a chilling Cold War logic to this, and it led at least one state to nearly pass legislation that would allow public school officials to carry guns in classrooms. Just in case somebody starts going postal. That legislation died along with the victims at Newtown.

Is it merely principle that propels so many Americans to cling so tenaciously to the Second Amendment? It seems a fairly unusual amendment for a modern democracy to have. You won’t find it, for instance, embedded in British or Japanese or most European constitutions. When you think about it, it’s hard to think of a comparable stretching of the boundaries of personal freedom among any other functioning democracy in the world. I tried to think of a parallel situation, of a citizenry granted an unreasonable request, and the best I could come up with was France and its people’s unshakeable faith in their right to huge social safety nets and pensions, and seven weeks of vacation time. Yet even that seems an idea that will have to bend to high unemployment and economic decline in the near future.

Or perhaps another good example is health care, which some democracies have the gall to insist should be free and paid for by the government (through taxes, of course). But even this, one must admit, does not seem like an “unreasonable” request next to an almost bloody insistence on being able to buy assault weapons without a waiting period, or without lengthy mental health checks.

We must, then, go back to the original language of the amendment in question: “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

The part most eagerly parsed by the overenthusiastic, frothing-at-the-mouth gun owners is “right to keep and bear arms.” These six words have empowered millions in the belief that this right has no limits, and that the Constitution says so. Moreover, the Constitution, they feel, empowers them to personally decide what “the security of a free state” actually means on a daily, case-by-case basis. (Darn you, US Constitution, for being so empowering!) This has led countless Americans to hold dear a belief that said Constitution not only allows them to shoot dead anyone who is leaning against their car when it’s parked on the street or looking at them funny in a Denny’s restaurant; it also leads them to believe they have an enshrined right to take arms against their own government if they feel it is “getting up in yo face.” Name another government that encourages its citizens to take up arms against itself! That, friends, is truly one empowering bill of rights.

Yet the gun enthusiasts, in their almost mantra-like glee over that empowering phrase “right to keep and bear arms,” just as eagerly overlook the other, somewhat restrictive phrase: “A well regulated militia.”

This “militia” made actual, literal sense in the time of Minutemen and small towns that relied on community effort, such as my hometown of Groton where, for instance, there is to this day a volunteer fire brigade made up of trained regular folk who pitch in when there is a barn a-blazing. This is a good example of “well regulated” volunteerism. A “well regulated militia,” as I understand the phrase, should consist of a town armory with weapons locked up, ready to be issued to volunteer citizens in the event of some kind of attack or civil emergency.

Guess what? Gun enthusiasts totally gloss over that “regulated” part. Yet arguably, the word “regulated” should be just as important to any scanning of the Second Amendment as the rest of its 26 words. So why is it that gun enthusiasts see red at the very mention of gun control or “regulation” when it is so clearly enshrined in the US Constitution?

It would take a Lincoln to sort that one out.