Why the Swiss love their GUNS more than they love Americans

You will get it... I promise

Sometimes, when I have tons of time, I like to sit around and watch YouTube videos. I will watch almost anything, from Dude Perfect trick shots to videos about math and science to music videos.

One genre I find very interesting is the Europeans React to <insert normal American thing>. You can find them looking at NFL plays, gun reviews, college football life, or even just the different accents in the US (there are a lot).

But the most misunderstood thing I find in these videos is the foreign view of gun culture in this country. One video is from Johnny Harris (whose videos I have used before), where he looks at Swiss gun culture and contrasts it with American gun culture. Another is made by one of those animation guys who can be so helpful—and sometimes quite wrong.

It was this last one that made me write this article, for it uncovered (for me) a fundamental flaw with people’s understanding of the 2nd Amendment. In this article, I will investigate that flaw, and then highlight what I think American gun culture really is and how it reflects the true views of this country.

Property

During the founding of this country, there was a conflict of philosophies. This conflict led to the creation of the Federalist and Anti-Federalist parties and went on to define party lines today.

But it started simply enough, with the changing of a word.

You may have read the Declaration of Independence. If not, I can almost guarantee you have heard of this particular line in that declaration:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

What if I told you that that was not how it was written in the first drafts?

Now, if you follow

Matthew Ehret

(which a lot of you do, I know), you will know already what I am talking about.

Thomas Jefferson was a follower of one John Locke, an English philosopher who had greatly influenced the thinking at the time. His deal was property: we could basically derive morality from the idea that people had ownership of things. Locke thought that nature (property in general) had little value till labor was expended on it, giving it value.

When Jefferson initially drafted the Declaration of Independence, he wrote that “… among these are Life, Liberty, and Property”. But Ben Franklin changed it to “Pursuit of Happiness”. Why?

Because “property” was not what the Revolution was necessarily about. It was not a land dispute over colonies across the sea. It was the idea that, in the face of tyranny, it was incumbent on those under tyranny to set up a new nation where man can be free.

The most basic thing a man desires is happiness. For me, personally, I found this something that was hard to take at first, since happiness is often confused with pleasure, which is not necessarily a good thing to seek. However, we get a different perspective on happiness from Plato’s Symposium:

Diotima: If he who loves good, what is it then that he loves? 
Socrates: The possession of the good,
Diotima: And what does he gain who possesses the good?
Socrates: Happiness, there is less difficulty in answering that question. 
Diotima: Yes, the happy are made happy by the acquisition of good things. Nor is there any need to ask why a man desires happiness; the answer is already final.

(edited from original for easier reading)

Lest you think that “good things” refers to material property, the whole dialogue is about ascending from the material to the ideal, from beautiful bodies to the concept of beauty itself—all good things.

So, the long and short of it is that Ben Franklin, who was more of the Platonic School, changed the Lockean “Property” to the Platonic “Pursuit of Happiness”.

Notice, he did not say that man had a fundamental right to “happiness”, rather, he had a right to pursue that happiness.

Okay, now let’s relate this to guns…

Guns

The 2nd Amendment states that:

“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.”

For ease, I will be referring to “guns”, but “Arms” can encompass many other types of weapons.

Now, for one thing, I do not see anything about hunting in this amendment. D.C. v Heller, the Supreme Court case that gave the definitive interpretation of the 2nd Amendment, had to clear up this point, and say that “…the Second Amendment right is exercised individually and belongs to all Americans”.

What this Amendment is articulating is that it is up to the citizens to keep this free State secure. What does this mean? Is that not the role of Congress: to raise a standing army if need be?

In a sense, the word “free” is probably the most important. If it was the job of a militia to secure a State, then that would imply some sort of army to secure borders, fight off invasions, and generally keep us all safe.

However, the word “free” implies that there might be some time when the State is not “free” and has to be “freed”. In other words, while it is the job of the State to keep the country safe, it is the job of the people to keep the State free.

This is very important, since it implies that the people have guns to protect themselves from the government.

But that is not what YouTube thinks… at least this YouTuber…

This video traces the origins of American gun culture, beginning with the Spanish, who claimed a large amount of America before and after the Revolutionary War, and ending with the British.

According to this story, the Spanish forbid the ownership of guns for the regular citizens, and instead depended on their armies to keep their people safe. He goes on to reference the British view on guns at the time, where they encouraged people to go to the New World and settle in the land they took from the Indians. The British, however, allowed guns.

Small Essay, by yours truly

In passing, this “taking land from the Indians” theme is one that I have address before, to the chagrin of some people in the comments. The settling of the New World was not a “Genocide”. One reason for this is that this word was coined to describe the Holocaust in Germany, a specific thing for a specific time. For this to be a genocide, you would have to have colonists coming to the New World for the sole purpose of exterminating the Indians—not occupying new lands. If we are looking to a bad word to describe bad things that were done, “Genocide” is not it. It is a land war in North America.

The interesting part of this video is that it takes the heart of the gun culture in the United States to be rooted in property. It started with the British giving them guns to protect their property and continued with the colonists defense of that property during the Revolutionary War. As he explains:

“The gun culture that developed became tied to property the reason one owned a gun was to protect what was yours or what you had taken from others.”

He goes on to reference this as the cause of the Civil War. Describing it as an “armed insurrection to keep slavery legal” he shows that it was this lack of gun regulation that caused the darkest hours in American history.

Or did it?

The Civil War

The Civil War was a very organized affair. The South had a president, currency, and a real army. They fought, not only to “keep their slaves” but also for their right to not be in the Union.

On the other side, Abraham Lincoln was looking to keep the Union together, since that was what he considered the most important thing in making America succeed.

But do not think that it was just these two powers in contention. After the Civil War ended, the United States filed a international lawsuit against no other than the British Empire. This was because of the aid that the British lent to the Confederates during the war. As an example of this, the Americans pointed to the fact that the British had given the Confederates a ship called the CSS Alabama (Confederate States Ship). Because of this, this lawsuit is called the Alabama Claims.

Why would the British care about an internal conflict in the United States?

You see, the British never dropped their beef over being defeated by a bunch of rubes in the Revolutionary War (in fact they were not rubes, but the British thought they were sooo…). They had used various means of messing up what was going on in America, including all the trouble caused by Aaron Burr, the burning down the White House in 1812, and even later connections with John Wilkes Boothe (through Canada).

This time, they had tried to use the Confederates to split the United States in two, hoping that even if peace was declared, the two factions would spend all their time snarling at each other and not be able to pay attention to what the British were doing abroad.

And the British had a lot to do. They were managing an empire where the sun never set, and they did it not by 100% military occupation, but by controlling trade routes like the Suez Canal and creating Color Revolutions in other countries like the Civil War.

Now that you mention it, also check out my article ABOUT the Suez Canal:

The Empire Strikes Back

The British were so involved in the outcome of this war that the Russians (who were not thrilled with the idea of the Brits being the only guys at the table) sent some of their fleet to prevent the British from meddling in American affairs. They never engaged, just sat there. Now that’s what I call good military aid.

All this to say that the Civil War was NOT an insurrection that rested solely on the fact that the South had guns and were out to protect their property. It was an attempt to break the Union, and Lincoln was not going to let that happen without a fight.

It is interesting, however, that this video harks back to the issue of property in discussion of the 2nd Amendment, bringing us back to our discussion about “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness”.

The man narrating it has a foreign accent of some sort, so he may not have a full grasp of the facts of American gun culture.

But Americans have this same problem—and least the ones with the YouTube channels.

Well Regulated Militias

Johnny Harris recently had a video about American gun culture, where he compared it to Swiss gun culture.

My sister read the title of this video and said, “Why wouldn’t the Swiss love their guns more than they do Americans?”.

He points to the 2nd Amendment being for a “well regulated militia”, and compares it to the Swiss idea of arming their citizens as a potential means of defense.

Harris uses the word “militia” as one would use “citizen army”; one that can be raised to defend the country against potential enemies. He claimed that the United States had this in mind when they wrote the 2nd Amendment, and that it has been skewed to make America a gun-totin’, insurrection-lookin’, boundary pushin’ bunch of cowboys.

But, as we have already reviewed, a militia is not a military. Congress takes care of the military, which is a top-down affair with the President as Commander-and-Chief. A militia is a bottom-up deal, with normal people coming together to defend the freedom of the State, whether that be from the State or from a foreign threat.

The only way the 2nd Amendment works is to have an ambiguous right to own guns. If you give a reason, that gives a reason to take it away. Our right to guns is essential for keeping the State free, because that is the thing that the government fears most in it’s citizens—and therefore the reason we are not in a full-scale dictatorship (e.g. Nazi Germany).

Don’t believe me? Then why do they want your guns?

The fundamental problem (or fallacy) of this video, however, is not the misunderstanding of the 2nd Amendment, it is the mis-interpreting of American gun culture. In Switzerland, guns are heavily regulated, and gun training is very important to every citizen—whether they want to or not. It is, in a sense, “soft-conscription”.

Johnny Harris lives in Virginia, the most posh state in the country. Until this video, he had never shot a gun. However, he feels like he has seen enough news clips to know what gun culture is actually like in the United States.

As a matter of fact, a lot of people seem to be going around the world asking what other countries think of the United States, and then lecturing us on how we need to change—all while not knowing what American culture is actually like.

American gun culture is on a large scale because America is a large country. I have known people personally who own 25-100 acres of land. They were not rich… they just owned a bunch of land and worked it in some way. When you have that much land, shooting a gun on your land is a thing—no one else is there (unlike in England).

In addition, Americans are very safe with their guns. I get tired of the lectures I get all the time on gun safety whenever guns come up—but they are important. Honestly, the gun stores in Switzerland this video shows has guns displayed in ways that I have never seen in an American gun store (and we have guns in our sports stores).

Gun culture in the United States is rooted in the understanding that the 2nd Amendment gives citizens the right to bear arms to secure the freedom of the State—the same state that we fought to free in the Revolutionary War. This was done because these men said they had fundamental rights that shall not be infringed, rights that were given to them by God through natural law. And a tyrant was infringing—consequently, free men must resist the tyrant. It is their duty and their right to protect themselves. The founders knew man’s fundamental desire is to be happy.

In essence, American gun culture is part of the pursuit of happiness.

This is in contrast to the Swiss, who derive their right to bear arms from a sense of duty towards protecting their country, not as a check on their own government. Their rights are given by the government, not as a result of their pursuit of happiness.

Pursuing beauty in America

One book that I quote in almost every article I write is The Napoleon of Notting Hill by G.K. Chesterton. It is a book about how one man changes London for a joke and another man takes him seriously.

This book shows how a city can be changed by loving it, and how it can again fall by looking to change other cities.

Love, beauty, and happiness are all tied together in Plato’s Symposium, as discussed before. Love is the action man uses to pursue beauty and gain happiness. Therefore, the pursuit of happiness (the pursuit of beauty) is love.

Tucker Carlson, in his interview with Chris Cuomo, argues about American and Russian architecture, and whether they are uplifting to the soul.

It is very easy to look around today and see the ugliness in today’s architecture. Texas is known for this since their highways are unlike almost any other state. They have “feeder roads” which are smaller highways that “feed” the large highways. These feeder roads often have businesses along them, since that is the best way to attract customers. This means that driving down a Texas highway is like driving down a pair of strip malls:

Now, a lot of people complain about this and other things, but how do we fix it?

I think Notting Hill provides us a solution to this problem.

In the beginning of the book, Notting Hill is a small borough in London that is not very nice, just average at best. However, when crazy King Auberon declares that every borough needs to act like a medieval kingdom, with an army and gates that close at sunset, Notting Hill and their provost Adam Wayne get invested with blind patriotism for their city. In spite of it’s laws, they love it.

This love of their city means that, when they declare their sovereignty and start to reap the benefits of their labors, they are able to make their city truly beautiful. Why? Because they cared about their city.

What is going to change this country is love for this country and the way it was founded. Not only will it change the politics, leaders, and economy, but it will also change the infrastructure and the culture of the country because we care about the country.

Being proud of Texas, being able to see through it’s roads and love what is behind them. Being able to say “this is mine and I love it because of that fact”, that is what will change this country.

And that is what is being attacked right now: your love of this country.

Soviet Russia was not pretty. The architecture was meant to bring down the soul. But they have gotten out of their mess so that now they have beautiful things again. Say what you will about Putin, he is in it for Russia. He has reignited pride in Russia in the minds of the people, making Russia beautiful again.

America is an amazing country

What these YouTubers do not know (and thus cannot tell you) is that America is the greatest country on earth.

Literally, we are a 1st world country when we go through a recession. The only reason our economy is not going to the moon is that it is being kept back by bad fiscal and monetary policy.

In fact, I think that every person coming into the country should immediately go to Buc-ee’s after they come out of customs. iykyk:

Some of you probably do not know what Buc-ee’s is. Solve this problem immediately. Think of the biggest store you can imagine and then put a cowboy hat on it and make it a gas station.

In conclusion

The pursuit of happiness is still happening in this country. The people (who are the ones who matter) are still doing it. When a person is doing what God calls them to do they are happy.

The 2nd Amendment is just one of those tools that America has with which to pursue happiness. It is for keeping your family safe and your country free.

Love of country will help us ascend that ladder of love up to where it ends: the ultimate Beauty from which all beautiful things stem: God himself.

In reality, the Swiss do not love guns more than Americans because they do not use them as a means of pursuing happiness.

I must remind you that I am just an 19 year old young man who is trying to figure things out. I am not a doctor, lawyer, financial advisor, or theologian. I read the doctors, lawyers, financial advisors, or theologians and try to understand what they are talking about, and then write about it. Don’t listen to me! Listen to the people I listen to.