The House of Delegates passed Gov. Martin O’Malley’s gun control bill Wednesday. The bill has survived multiple proposed amendments and currently stands to require licensing of handgun purchasers, a complete ban of assault weapons and a 10-bullet magazine size limit.
O’Malley drafted this bill soon after the Newtown, Conn., massacre triggered a widespread, social media-fueled call to arms (no pun intended). It is no secret the governor has his eyes on the White House in 2016, and this issue was the perfect career move for him in a state largely controlled by Democrats.
What bothers me, and many other gun control opponents I’m sure, is the small regard for the constitutionality of this bill.
The fact of the matter is the Second Amendment was not written to protect the rights of hunters or apprehensive homeowners. No, it is written clear as day: “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.”In other words, people don’t have to rely on their government in the event of a foreign invasion and, more importantly, have the right to forcefully remove their oppressors when all legal channels fail. Of course, neither of these events is in the foreseeable future (I hope), but the right needs to exist nevertheless.
In our increasingly Orwellian society, people cannot reasonably be expected to go against a potentially tyrannical government with hunting rifles and handguns limited to 10 bullets. The Founding Fathers weren’t capable of seeing into the future, where the balance of power between the government and the governed is severely lopsided. The muskets that were owned by citizens and public servants alike have been replaced with heavily armored SWAT teams, domestic drones that may be armed with missiles in the future and government agencies that essentially operate above the law.
Now that my political rant is over, I will move to the futility of gun control.
President Obama mentioned a new technology in his most recent State of the Union address: 3-D printing. If you haven’t looked into it yet, I suggest you do. It will literally revolutionize the world, with more affordable household printers coming out every day. For example, in the not-too-distant future, one can wake up and print a coffee mug in minutes instead of driving to the store.
Similarly, it will be entirely possible to print the individual parts of a gun and assemble it in your own home. In fact, a new nonprofit organization called Defense Distributed was able to print the lower end of a soon-to-be-banned AR-15 and fire off 600 rounds. Likewise, it has created 30-round magazines that have been downloaded all over the nation in anticipation of magazine size limits.
This type of technology would pretty much nullify the entire state gun control bill. You can’t get an anonymous downloader’s background information, you can’t successfully censor all gun blueprints and you certainly can’t stop the 3-D printing of larger magazines.
The reason this bill needs to be reevaluated is that it takes guns out of the hands of law-abiding citizens while any clever criminal could potentially print off a whole arsenal. However, I am in no way denouncing this technology. On the contrary, it excites me to think about a future world in which any oppressed people can literally print weapons, regardless of any government bans, and gain their freedom and independence.
Ardalun Kamali is a senior kinesiology major. He can be reached at ardykamali@yahoo.com.
