Court fails to disarm gun myth

Go ahead and do what you've been doing.

That's what the Supreme Court said in its ruling Thursday on gun rights.

The court knocked down the District of Columbia's ban on handguns and for the first time said directly the Second Amendment protects individual gun ownership.

Most of the country has been operating under that assumption for the past two centuries anyway.

Aren't guns part of what makes America America? You wouldn't throw John Wayne out over a question of linguistics.

The Second Amendment to the Constitution says, "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."

It's about having a militia to protect the state, but I think five members of the court read it through a haze of gun lore.

Guns are iconic.

The self-sufficient man with a gun is embedded deeply in our national mythology.

We idealize the minuteman, the frontiersman, the cowboy with a six-shooter at his side.

"Mister, you ever seen what a Henry rifle can do in the hands of somebody who knows how to use it?"

That was spoken by Danny Glover's character in the movie "Silverado." It's total mythology, but one of my favorite films and part of my culture.

I was reared in Eastern New Mexico thinking everybody owned a gun or two.

I don't hate guns. I don't think "ew" when I see one. But I don't think they play a constructive role in a modern urban society.

It's not guns in the closet that make us strong, it's our adaptability.

America has changed since the first set of amendments to the Constitution were sent to the states for ratification in 1789. We need to look at gun ownership and regulation in a modern context.

Two centuries ago, America was a rural society. Guns were still primitive — shoot and reload. People couldn't call on a police department, and the country didn't have much of a military.

There are still circumstances in which a gun might come in handy. But how often and at what cost?

In King County, most gun deaths are suicides, not murders, not citizens defending themselves from bad guys.

I'd have more confidence in whatever decisions we made about guns if the decisions weren't so tied to mythology and ideology.

But we can disentangle mythology from policy. Look, the Scandinavians aren't still trying to live like Vikings.

This Supreme Court hasn't done anything to help us get real about guns.

As in most of the country, nothing much will change in Washington state as a result of the court's ruling.

There are something like a million gun owners in the state. Just about everybody who wants a gun has one already.

Legal experts say this ruling is going to start a bunch of battles because the justices also said reasonable restrictions are OK but didn't define reasonable.

It leaves questions that'll be settled not with pistols but with court briefs, the modern American way.

Jerry Large's column appears Monday and Thursday. Reach him at 206-464-3346 or jlarge@seattletimes.com.