Watching what’s been happening in New Zealand since the shooting in Christchurch has been interesting.  And in many  ways, predictable.  The government is doing what it thinks it can do to prevent another such shooting.  What was shocking to me was to hear members of the United States Congress applaud and point to the New Zealand Prime Minister’s actions as examples for what we should do in this country.

I have several English friends with whom I have long-running and very good-natured dialogues where we give each other shit about the inferiority of the other’s country and/or people.  They refer to us as “the colonists,” and I am quick to remind them that I am a citizen of my country, whereas they are lowly subjects of Her Majesty Elizabeth Regina.  They tend to struggle at this point in our discourse.

As I see it, the difference between a subject and a citizen is contained in the First and Second Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.

The First Amendment guarantees me the right to say whatever the hell (short of libel, slander, or direct threats or calls to violence, of course) I want about any member of any level of our government, from the president all the way down to the local code enforcer.  I can compose invective, horrendously insulting critiques, I can mock them in published cartoons and lampoon them viciously on late night TV.  And they can’t do a damn thing about it because regardless of what office they may hold, they are all citizens just like me.  But the Queen is royalty.  She is superior to my friend Nigel, who is and shall forever be her subject.  At any time, I can run for any office in the land.  If I or any other citizen gets the required number of signatures and has enough money to pay various fees, we can run for whatever office we want, including the presidency.  There is nothing Nigel can ever do to become royalty.  And thus, his speech regarding the Queen Mother is quite limited, and though in present-day England speech is in practice relatively free, in other royal-ruled countries, speaking out against or even insulting the king or any member of the royal family can and will result in arrest and prosecution of crimes against the crown, with the punishments being long and difficult prison sentences and in many countries, death.

The Second Amendment guarantees me the right to defend my First Amendment rights if anything happens to the government and they go rogue.  For example, say there is a military coups, the military suddenly controls the federal government and all commercial media outlets.  They impose martial law, declare a suspension to the Constitution, clamp down on free speech, and begin violating other Amendments and provisions of the Constitution:  with the Constitution “suspended ” (so their “logic” would go), the Second Amendment is no more, and soldiers will be coming around and confiscating all weapons.  And with the Third Amendment also gone in this scenario, when the soldiers in your neighborhood need sleep after a long day of confiscating weapons, they can just come into your house, kick you out, and turn your home into a temporary barracks.  All of this, of course, would be completely illegal and unconstitutional, but it could happen, and it is for that scenario that the Second Amendment exists: most of the amendments are clear limits on governmental power, and with the system of checks and balances the Founders put into place, the various branches of government are pretty effectively set up to police each other and prevent such a scenario from ever unfolding.  But because it could happen, the Second Amendment says that citizens have not only the right but the duty (“necessary to the security of a free State”) to keep and bear arms.  Weapons.  What kind?  Whatever kind it would take to take on and defeat the United States military when they show up on your block arrest you for speaking out against the illegal coups, to seize your weapons, and to take over your house.  There would be no one to call…you’re going to have to handle this yourself.  And those fuckers have state of the art body armor, fully automatic assault weapons.  They have  tanks. Helicopters.  The Second Amendment says nothing about hunting.  It has nothing to do with recreation or obtaining food.  It specifies a “well regulated militia.”  I’ll assume you know what a militia is, but many seem to be confused by the modifier “well regulated.”  It does not mean regulated by the government.  Well regulated means trained and proficient.  Ready to mobilize at any moment.

So the government of New Zealand banned assault weapons.  Which they can do, according to their constitution, which noticeably lacks any provisions for free speech or right to keep and bear.  Why?  I would argue that they are subjects of the crown as well, though that legally ended in 1948 when they were reclassified as citizens.  But to quote Tyler Durden, sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken, and reclassifying someone as a citizen does not necessarily give them any additional rights.  The real test, for me, anyway, is to see who is on the money: if the Queen is on your money, you’re a fucking subject.  If you weren’t, you would have taken her old ass off your money.  You know, like we did.  But no…there’s the Queen on your money, so no right to keep and bear for you.

And though you may be thinking that you have free speech in your country, if your country has a Chief Censor, I dare say your speech is not at all free.

So this week, New Zealand’s Chief Censor, who had banned the live-streamed footage of the attack and the manifesto Brenton Tarrant cobbled together (quite poorly), had six people arrested for distributing the video, with each now facing 14 years in prison.  Fourteen years.  My goodness.

But they can do that.  Because they have a very different constitution than ours.  Which is fine.

What gets me about this, again, is that there are sitting politicians here in the U.S. advocating the actions of the New Zealand government as appropriate here, when in fact those very actions would be cause for our well regulated militias to maybe convene and begin discussing tactics.

N.P.: “Dance Hall Days – Orchestral Version” – Wang Chung