{"id":62088,"date":"2020-11-24T10:00:41","date_gmt":"2020-11-24T16:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=62088"},"modified":"2020-11-24T10:01:38","modified_gmt":"2020-11-24T16:01:38","slug":"62088","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=62088","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

The Truth About The Distinction Between Military and Civilian Firearms<\/a><\/p>\n

It\u2019s a common trope of American political discourse: a politician will emphatically declare his\u00a0respect for the Second Amendment<\/a>. He will deny that he\u2019s\u00a0\u201ccoming for your guns<\/a>.\u201d After all, he knows that gun-grabbing is\u00a0unpalatable to many Americans.<\/a><\/p>\n

But, in his very next breath, he\u2019ll backpedal a bit \u2014 surely, civilians\u00a0don\u2019t\u00a0need\u00a0<\/em><\/a>and ought not possess \u201cmilitary\u201d firearms, those notorious \u201cweapons of war.\u201d And\u2026well, yes<\/a>, he\u00a0will come for\u00a0those<\/em><\/a>\u00a0<\/em>guns.<\/p>\n

Clearly, the politician beli<\/span>eves that there is a real, categorical distinction between military and civilian firearms. Many American voters do, too. Moreover, they think this distinction somehow matters.<\/p>\n

\n

There are two problems with that perspective.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

First, in all of American history, there has never been any substantial distinction between military and civilian firearms. Rather, there has always been tremendous overlap of guns used by the military and guns used by civilians.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Civilian weapons are routinely adopted by the military and vice-versa. Firearm features and characteristics are neither intrinsically \u201cmilitary\u201d nor \u201ccivilian.\u201d Consider the iconic photograph of Malcolm X with his M1 carbine<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 is that a military firearm or a civilian firearm?<\/p>\n

\"File:Malcolmxm1carbine3gr.gif\"<\/p>\n

Obviously, it\u2019s both, and many of the same characteristics that made the carbine militarily useful also made it useful to civilians.<\/p>\n

Second, of course an\u00a0artificial\u00a0<\/em>distinction can be constructed by legislatively defining certain weapons or particular features\/characteristics as \u201cmilitary.\u201d That\u2019s what \u201cassault weapons\u201d bans and similar laws attempt to do.<\/p>\n

But such a constructed distinction ought not matter anyway: American civilians have a right to own military arms. Existing and proposed laws to the contrary are blatantly unconstitutional \u2014 the Second Amendment\u00a0isn\u2019t about duck hunting or target shooting.<\/a><\/p>\n

Please keep both points in mind whenever you hear a politician speak of this distinction as if it\u2019s real or somehow meaningful. At best, it\u2019s ignorant. At worst, it\u2019s deliberate obfuscation or deception for the sake of political gain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Truth About The Distinction Between Military and Civilian Firearms It\u2019s a common trope of American political discourse: a politician will emphatically declare his\u00a0respect for the Second Amendment. He will deny that he\u2019s\u00a0\u201ccoming for your guns.\u201d After all, he knows that gun-grabbing is\u00a0unpalatable to many Americans. But, in his very next breath, he\u2019ll backpedal a … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-62088","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rkba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62088","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=62088"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62088\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62089,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62088\/revisions\/62089"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=62088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=62088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=62088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}