Militarism Aff 1ac – Final

A2 NCs

A2 Constitution NC

Militarism is the historical basis of gun rights.

Nonetheless, there is that troubling language about the "well regulated militia." The Second Amendment does contain a preamble of sorts, and although there seems little enthusiasm for paying attention to the Preamble to the Constitution itself,46 criticism of arguments in favor of a personal right to bear arms always seems to turn on that point. The argument is that because the Second Amendment opens with the words, "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State," it must therefore not protect a right that can be asserted by individuals. Standard Model scholars disagree. Once again, we will look first at the text, then at the historical circumstances surrounding it.

First, as William Van Alstyne points out, the "right of the people" described in the Second Amendment is "to keep and bear arms," not to belong to a militia.

Rather, the Second Amendment adheres to the guarantee of the right of the people to keep and bear arms as the predicate for the other provision to which it speaks, i.e., the provision respecting a militia, as distinct from a standing army separately subject to congressional ... control.... In relating these propositions within one amendment, moreover, it does not disparage, much less does it subordinate, "the right of the people to keep (pg.473) and bear arms." To the contrary, it expressly embraces that right and indeed it erects the very scaffolding of a free state upon that guarantee. It derives its definition of a well-regulated militia in just this way for a "free State": The militia to be well-regulated is a militia to be drawn from just such people (i.e., people with a right to keep and bear arms) rather than from some other source (i.e., from people without rights to keep and bear arms).47

In other words, the right to keep and bear arms is not subordinate to the purpose of having a militia—the notion of a "well regulated militia" is subordinate to the purpose of having an armed citizenry.48 Furthermore, Van Alstyne points out, the reference in the Second Amendment's opening clause is "an express reference to the security of a 'free state.' It is not a reference to the security of THE STATE."49 Thus, the purpose of the Second Amendment is to ensure an armed citizenry, from which can be drawn the kind of militia that is necessary to the survival of a free state.

Their appeal to the Constitution as a protection of basic right ignores the privilege involved – their interpretation of the Constitution is an act of white privilege

Naturally, these interpretations are skewed by a myriad of privileges. Regardless of the officer's own ethnicity or socioeconomic background, it is the role that ultimately represents a virtual arm of white supremacy and class oppression. Regarding the racist dynamics of law enforcement in the US, "It's useful to understand this as an allegory about how white skin privilege works," explains Annalee Newitz. "The police uniform (and) the badge are like white skin, and the person who wears that skin is allowed to enforce laws which he doesn't himself intend to follow." [81] Within their roles as "officers of the law," they become the embodiment of the government-backed suppression they often despise in their private lives. Only the suppression they carry out is against a specific target population (people of color, the poor and disenfranchised, and the working class). And, despite coming from that very working class, they undoubtedly lose any and all sense of class consciousness in their roles as ruling class watchdogs. Within this role, they take ownership of a wide array of hypocritical entitlements - a mindset that wholeheartedly believes the US Constitution protects my rights to own guns, and my rights to protect my privileged status in society, and my rights to protect my property, and so on. However, those rights don't apply to you. And they certainly don't apply to young men of color who happen to be walking home at night. Nor do they apply to striking workers demanding a living wage. Nor do they apply to Occupy protestors collectively sitting in protest of illegal wars, corporate greed, and corrupt banks. Nor do they apply to evicted homeowners who were exploited by deceitful mortgage schemes. Nor do they apply to homeless people who are simply trying to survive on the streets.

A2 Libertarianism NC

Turn – the aff decreases spending on foreign wars and the military

Most taxes go toward the military

Claremont 14 [Robin Claremont (Director of Development and Communications at National Priorities Project), "The Surprising Truth Behind Tax Day: Where Your Taxes Go," Moyers and Company, 4/14/2014] AZ

Across the United States, the average taxpayer paid $11,715 in 2013 federal income taxes. The military received the largest share of that sum, $3,174, followed by health care, which received $2,662 for programs like Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program. Meanwhile, only $238 went to education programs, and just $15.84 and $6.56 went to the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program and National Forest System, respectively.

Technology isn't value-neutral – the existence of guns produces militarism and reduces others to potential targets

Selinger 12 [Evan Selinger (an associate professor of philosophy at Rochester Institute of Technology), "I Grip the Gun and the Gun Grips Me," Wired Magazine, 12/21/2012] AZ

Taking on the instrumentalist conception of technology, Don Ihde, a leading philosopher of technology, claims that “the human-gun relation transforms the situation from any similar situation of a human without a gun.” By focusing on what it is like for a flesh-and-blood human to actually be in possession of a gun, Ihde describes “lived experience” in a manner that reveals the NRA position to be but a partial grasp of a more complex situation. By equating firearm responsibility exclusively with human choice, the NRA claim abstracts away relevant considerations about how gun possession can affect one’s sense of self and agency. In order to appreciate this point, it helps to consider the fundamental materiality of guns. In principle, guns, like every technology, can be used in different ways to accomplish different goals. Guns can be tossed around like Frisbees. They can be used to dig through dirt like shovels, or mounted on top of a fireplace mantel, as aesthetic objects. They can even be integrated into cooking practices; gangster pancakes might make a tasty Sunday morning treat. But while all of these options remain physical possibilities, they are not likely to occur, at least not in a widespread manner with regularity. Such options are not practically viable because gun design itself embodies behavior-shaping values; its material composition indicates the preferred ends to which it “should” be used. Put in Ihde’s parlance, while a gun’s structure is “multistable” with respect to its possible uses across a myriad of contexts, a partially determined trajectory nevertheless constrains which possibilities are easy to pursue and which of the intermediate and difficult options are worth investing time and labor into. A gun’s excellence simply lies in its capacity to quickly fire bullets that can reliably pierce targets. With respect to the trajectory at issue, guns were designed for the sole purpose of accomplishing radical and life-altering action at a distance with minimal physical exertion on the part of the shooter. Since a gun’s mechanisms were built for the purpose of releasing deadly projectiles outwards, it is difficult to imagine how one could realistically find utility in using a gun to pursue ends that do not require shooting bullets. For the most part, a gun’s excellence simply lies in its capacity to quickly fire bullets that can reliably pierce targets. Using the butt of a gun to hammer the nail into a “Wanted” post–a common act in the old cowboy movies–is an exceptional use. What the NRA position fails to convey, therefore, are the perceptual affordances offered by gun possession and the transformative consequences of yielding to these affordances. To someone with a gun, the world readily takes on a distinct shape. It not only offers people, animals, and things to interact with, but also potential targets. Furthermore, gun possession makes it easy to be bold, even hotheaded. Physically weak, emotionally passive, and psychologically introverted people will all be inclined to experience shifts in demeanor. Like many other technologies, Ihde argues, guns mediate the human relation to the world through a dialectic in which aspects of experience are both “amplified” and “reduced”. In this case, there is a reduction in the amount and intensity of environmental features that are perceived as dangerous, and a concomitant amplification in the amount and intensity of environmental features that are perceived as calling for the subject to respond with violence. French philosopher Bruno Latour goes far as to depict the experience of possessing a gun as one that produces a different subject: “You are different with a gun in your hand; the gun is different with you holding it. You are another subject because you hold the gun; the gun is another object because it has entered into a relationship with you.” While the idea that a gun-human combination can produce a new subject may seem extreme, it is actually an experience that people (with appropriate background assumptions) typically attest to, when responding to strong architectural configurations. When walking around such prestigious colleges as Harvard and the University of Chicago, it is easy to feel that one has suddenly become smarter. Likewise, museums and sites of religious worship can induce more than a momentary inclination towards reflection; they can allow one to view artistic and spiritual matters as a contemplative being.

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