The Only Power Left

The debate over the meaning of the second amendment often focuses on two issues: hunting and self-defense. Hunters fear having their guns taken away by liberals and self-defense advocates argue that personal weapons are the last defense against tyranny by government. In reality, these two issues are not the sources of motivation to uphold the second amendment. They are simply symptoms of a greater need: that need is personal power. A gun provides an instant source of power to the individual who bears it. Suddenly, with gun in hand or armed with the thought of access to a gun, the individual feels instantly empowered. He has at least the illusion of power over life and death. He can choose to kill, or he can choose not to kill. That notion is about as powerful as an individual can obtain under any circumstances, but particularly in modern America in the 21st Century.
America was built on rugged individualism, or so we have taught ourselves to believe. The self-made man is our generic mythical hero, as are specific iterations such as Natty Bumppo, the Lone Ranger, Rambo, and The Terminator, depending on personal taste and generation. We believe in the power of the individual and his Emersonian self-reliance.
Today, powerful, impersonal corporations dominate commerce, agriculture, industry, retail, and finance. When you call a private or public agency, a person, a doctor, a merchant, or your mother, most often you get a voicemail with all kinds of options that leave you unable to speak to an actual person. You have your job at the will of people far removed from your personal world. If something goes wrong, you have to hire a lawyer to intervene on your behalf, but often the cost of the lawyer is greater than the benefit you will receive from having the wrong righted. The average American is powerless over most aspects of his or her life. It is tempting, therefore, to listen to the advice of the NRA and purchase a weapon. After all, it is a one-time purchase, you may never need it, but it instills an instant feeling of power that you never had before.
Yes, you have to buy ammunition, and it costs a bit to maintain a supply, especially if you target practice regularly. But most gun owners never shoot their guns after a few rounds at the target range, if ever. So keeping a gun is rather inexpensive after the initial purchase. It certainly is cheaper than Viagra, which costs about $14 per round and makes you feel powerful for only an hour or so.
The self-defense and hunting arguments are mere surface issues that mask the underlying need for personal power in an increasingly complex, regulated, overwhelming world. Today the powerless American wants a piece of tradition that exudes power: the gun that won the West. The vote seems impotent by comparison. It really doesn’t count for much. By itself it is a drop of oil in a supertanker. The prairie schooner was a personal, human-scale vessel, a self-contained microcosm carrying a family to a new life. The ship of state today is a supertanker that shifts direction a degree or two over seemingly endless spans of time while talking heads shout of egregious tacks in wrong directions as if they were discussing a toy sailboat on a pond.
The gun, after all, is seen by its advocates as a talisman of future triumph, of individual virility in a world that is run by forces far removed from the personal habitat of the individual American who seeks a sense of selfhood against the perceived armada of multinational corporate and government indifference.