Great 2nd Amendment Debate

the right to bear arms. this very american of debates is about to be rekindled in a big way. i hazard the prediction that even congress will have a go at this one.

in the wake of the new orleans flood we see many residents brandishing firearms, and refusing to leave their homes. in fact the general pervasiveness of guns is precisely what made this disaster so difficult to manage. police and other "authorities" were fired upon by armed gangs.

it is not difficult to imagine lawmakers raising a fuss. however it is equally difficult imagining anything being done about it. particularly with the republican majority in power.

as this country slides into lawlessness we will be caught in a paradox of our own making. on the one hand, we have an armed population suspicious of government intentions. on the other is a process of economic and social dissolution of our own making. people will be displaced in many different ways, and we will see the governmental authorities fail, from the top down.

it is apparent the federal government can no longer provide reasonable security in a disaster situation. each state may be temporarily able to provide for itself if the scale of the need is not too great. yet with much of the national guard in iraq, they are currently not available to help with their historical role of domestic crisis mitigation. the task of security quickly falls onto local authorities and communities. this raises the old question of posse comitatus. will young men willingly be conscripted into policing their own communities. in many cases the answer is no. we must assume that people will have a community they care about enough to defend.

in american cities chaos will reign. disaffected blacks will claim their territories. various cohesive ethnic communities will try to protect their homes and business. whites will probably flee to the hinterlands and suburbs. the cities could easily devolve into quasi feudal type situations.

as for the suburbs these places are doomed as well. with the breakdown of security in the cities, commuting suburbanites will be out of work with no place to go. as the price of energy continues to spiral upward the burbs will become simply untenable. they will probably be looted as well. these places are so sprawling that securing them would be impossible. not to mention that few people who live their care about them anyway. they will probably be stripped and abandoned.

so here we have it. we are falling on our own sword. great irony is apparent to us. we certainly not be under the thumb of some federal tyrant. instead it could be more of a local warlord. this is the reality as it is playing out.