A Small Piece of Force

“And remember that: Any rights that you give up, you’re never gonna get them back.”

That’s Christian Craighead, the former British special forces soldier who went into the 2019 terrorist attack in Nairobi and brought people out. He was talking about the liberties Americans still have that the UK gave up.

I thought about that at the gun shop.

I was building out a short-barreled AR — suppressor, optic. The approval had come through, and I still half-expected them to say no. And standing there at the counter, handling this thing, I got a feeling I hadn’t had in a while. Reverence, I guess. The sense that I was taking on something powerful, and that the power came with weight.

The process is part of it. I handed over my license. They rang me up for the transfer fees, and then I waited. They worked through the forms, checking each one, making sure it was all by the book. It took a while, and you could tell they took it seriously. Then I filled out the last form and signed it — the one where you attest that you’re not a maniac, no felonies, nothing that should keep a gun out of your hands.

The guys behind the counter were bearded, tatted up, gun belts on, openly carrying, looking about the way you’d picture. They’re there to make money. But they’re also the checkpoint where this power changes hands.

It didn’t feel like buying something. It felt like being let into something, and it didn’t feel like something I’d earned. That kind of thing should feel formal. This didn’t, quite. It was a shop, a register, some small talk. But underneath the ordinariness, something real was being handed over.

What was being handed over was force. That’s what a gun is. It’s also what the government ultimately rests on. The founders didn’t want the government to hold all of it, so the Second Amendment says the governed should keep some too. Standing at that counter, I was taking my small piece of it.

That’s the part I’m least sure about. An armed people as a check on a government gone tyrannical — it’s the original argument, and it’s real, but it’s big and speculative. I’ve never lived under that kind of state and I hope I never do. I can believe in the principle without knowing what I’d do if it were ever actually tested.

And there are moments you can point to. Tennessee, 1946 — WWII veterans took up arms against a sheriff’s machine that was rigging their elections, and won. The Jim Crow South — Black communities armed themselves against the Klan when the law wouldn’t, or the law was the Klan.

But what did they actually change? Did they keep the government honest in some lasting way, or were they just isolated flare-ups? Maybe they’re exactly the small corrections the founders had in mind — the governed reminding the state where the line is. Or maybe they’re footnotes. The trouble is there’s no way to know. There’s no other America to compare against, no version of this country without the Second Amendment sitting next to it on the shelf. We can’t see what it prevented, only what it didn’t.

Then there’s Nevada, 2014. Armed supporters of Cliven Bundy faced down federal agents over twenty years of unpaid grazing fees, and the agents backed off. But the government wasn’t being unreasonable there. Bundy just didn’t want to pay. That’s the trouble with the idea: everyone who picks up a rifle against the government believes they’re the veterans in Tennessee.

What I’m settled on is closer to the ground. The guns are already out there. Millions of them. I’m not choosing between an armed society and an unarmed one — that choice is long gone. And in the world we’ve actually got, I want to be able to respond when some lunatic starts shooting. That’s a real thing that happens, and when it does, you’re the first responder. The police come after. And legally, they don’t have to come at all. Courts have ruled, more than once, that police have no constitutional duty to protect any one person. After Parkland, a federal judge said that held for the students in that school too. In those minutes, the only thing between a shooter and a room full of people is whoever’s already there and able.

Here’s the part that doesn’t sit right. The same events that are the strongest argument against all of it — the school shootings — are part of why I want to be armed in the first place. I can’t wave that away. Kids die, and no position I hold makes them theoretical. But that same reality is exactly what makes me want to be capable when it counts.

So I don’t walk out of that shop with a clean verdict. On the big question — the state, the check on power — I’m honestly unsure. On the closer one — the world as it is, and wanting to meet it prepared — I’m not.