Sunday, June 30, 2008 Rama: Lessons from a gun class By Karlon N. Rama Stage Five
SOME 24 people, many of whom don’t even own firearms yet, took the basic firearm safety seminar my shooting instructor-friend Rey Abad gave last Saturday.
I lectured during the seminar and helped oversee safety during the live-fire exercise that followed at the Kamagong Gun Club Firing Range. It was a learning experience for me; and I can only hope that the participants learned from me as much as I had learned from them in the day’s affair.
Interacting with new shooters, many of whom had not even fired a gun before, gave me leads on how to approach subjects like body mechanics in shooting better.
And an off-class conversation I had with one of the participants also rekindled my drive (which I have to admit wane sometimes) in doing what I do.
I do not have permission to use her name. Suffice to say, she is a businesswoman living somewhere north of Cebu City and that she was shot at while inside her car by a dismissed employee.
She survived. The perpetrator’s bullet merely pulverized the vehicle’s windshield. But the experience scarred her only daughter, possibly for life. She reported the matter to the police, like any God-fearing, law abiding tax-payer would. More than that, she was able to present a witness who saw the shooting and could give a description of the malefactor. But no complaint was ever filed.
The police, she said, hinted the need for money to fuel their drive. So much so that the witness, feeling exposed by the police’s inaction, went back to whatever province he came from and now probably lives inside a hole.
She resisted the urge to buy a gun until her husband got ill. The situation has now forced her to single-handedly run the business, which includes having to go out on trips—trips reminiscent of the one she was returning from that day she was shot at.
Now, she realizes the need to be armed. And, after taking the seminar, armed—in both equipment and preparedness—she now will be.
More importantly, interacting with the participants made me realize now much the psyche of the armed citizen has changed. There were, as already pointed out, 24 participants to the seminar. Many of them did not yet own guns. But they took the seminar anyway.
Not so many years back, an instructor could not get that number of students even if he served buffet lunch and free beer. People would rather pay than attend the class
that was, and it still is, a requirement for firearm purchase.
It wasn’t so much the difficulty of sparing the time than having to psychologically admit that they knew squat about guns and have to take instruction.
People are wiser now. Machismo simply flies out the window when one begins to notice the searing and unimaginable pain of a shot-out left toe.
TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS. The lecture I gave emphasized how gun ownership in the Philippines is a privilege, not a right. And being a mere privilege, it can be taken away as easily as it is given.
The lecture discusses how while the Philippines practically copied its constitution from the Americans, we do not exercise the American second amendment right to keep and bear arms.
That second amendment right—“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.”—has recently been upheld by the American Supreme Court, in its ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller.
Dick Anthony Heller, a security guard, wants to keep a pistol at home. Saying he lived in a bad neighborhood, he tried to register his gun with the city government but the city has a standing total gun ban. He questioned the ban, saying it infringed on his second amendment rights and won.
A portion of the American Supreme Court’s ruling deserves space.
“[T]he history that the founding generation knew … showed that the way tyrants had eliminated a militia consisting of all the able-bodied men was not by banning the militia but simply by taking away the people’s arms, enabling a select militia or standing army to suppress political opponents.”
A country that does not truly trust is citizens enough to keep and bear arms is a country that is not really free. It is subject to the tyranny of its leaders, whether kings, generals, premiers or presidents. (knrama@gmail.com)
