Where Does the Danger Lie?

From July 1989 until July 1999 I lived in an apartment on 16th Street NW in Washington DC. But for the break-ins (3) and the mugging (1, but germane to this discussion as it was at gunpoint), my first 43 months in that apartment were a tranquil oasis. Then William Jefferson Clinton was sworn in as the 42nd President of the United States. Unlike ostentatiously Christian first families before them and since, the Clinton’s faith required of them regular attendance at Sunday services. The church they attended, Foundry United Methodist, was directly across the street from my apartment.


And thus commenced my intimate acquaintance with the quirks and foibles of the United States Secret Service. At first, the progress from the White House would lead to rolling intersection closures and closure of the street in front of the church just before the motorcade pulled up. The street and sidewalk between my building (a single family home long broken into three apartments) and the church would remain closed to automotive and pedestrian traffic until shortly after the family’s departure. This seemed reasonable.


That reason was not to prevail became clear as I was sitting on my porch reading one spring Sunday morning. A Secret Servitrix strode onto my front walk and told me that I would have to go inside. This memory is among those that bring me down firmly on the side of the 2nd Amendment wingnuts who prompted such hysterics by displaying their legal firearms in the vicinity of rallies featuring President Obama. These were pathetic, juvenile acts of provocation, and boy were they effective.


My next encounter with a Secret Servitrix came a few months later. My apartment did not have central air, so in the warmer months I preferred to keep front and rear windows open to provide cross-ventilation. This particular Sunday morning, I heard “Excuse me,” bellowed in a tone suggesting that she didn't really care if she was excused or not. This one was off the walk and in the middle of the lawn. Evidently the Secret Service field manual doesn’t have a chapter on trespassing. With a dismissive flick of the wrist she commanded, “You’re going to have to close those.”


I grew up in the Washington area, so I knew that expressing my initial thought, “What? You think I can’t shoot through glass?” would not have been in my own best interest. But 15 or so years later I remain disappointed that I couldn’t let myself ask “Why?” I was so sure that seeking a simple explanation would get me arrested that I was as meekly compliant as any gulag fearing Soviet. I felt far more threatened that morning that I have ever felt by the antics of the most lunatic tea baggers.


By the time I moved in 1999, the Clintons’ attendance at Sunday services included marksmen and sharpshooters on the roofs of buildings up and down the block. I found myself thinking, “Holy shit. That’s a lot of firepower to keep a pudgy middle-aged homosexual from opening a window.”


Without question, the murder of a president, any president traumatizes the entire nation and shatters our collective sense of well being. It is emotionally devastating and it profoundly undermines public order. It would not be possible to overstate its impact.


I would, however, argue that the presence of individuals carrying legal firearms at a significant remove from the President presents no danger what-so-ever to the President and that to suggest otherwise is shrill fear-mongering with an agenda no more related to protecting the President’s well-being than parading firearms so comically has to do with threatening it.


New Hampshire: I maintain that the President could not possibly be threatened by a man standing at a church several blocks from the town hall in which he was speaking no matter what the type or caliber of the man's legally permitted weapon. The only way that man could pose a threat to the President would be if his objection proved the tipping point in the national debate on health care/insurance/flapdoodle reform.


Arizona: Around a dozen people carried guns outside the convention center where the President was speaking. Yes one even carried an assault rifle. And he could not have been more pleased to claim it as a publicity stunt. A very, very, very successful publicity stunt. Be that as it may, unless construction of the Phoenix convention center is of unprecedented shoddiness, no amount of angry protesters, with any sort of weapons that could be legal, even in Arizona, would have had the firepower to be a threat to the President from outside the convention center. Big thick walls and all.


Now you may think, and I may think (and I do) that most, if not all, forms of firearms should be illegal or licensed or subject to strict regulation, but we do nothing other than reinforce our sense of our own moral superiority and virtue, while simultaneously diminishing our own credibility, to hyperventilate over threats where none exist or to suggest that Americans are in some way remiss to exercise their legal rights. The law is the ultimate arbiter of rights at any given point in time, but all legal rights are precious.


If you believe less, you might consider taking the Secret Service exam.