American politics have long been rife with deployment of guns, large and small, so much so that this nation arguably was founded, shaped and advanced as much by ordnance as philosophy. So the debate, now current, at the State Capitol in St. Paul over whether legally armed citizens should be allowed in that building's hallowed halls brandishing holstered side arms represents only the latest chapter in our history, not a new one.
Yet take comfort that dueling has fallen out of fashion.
History buffs will recall that on July 11, 1804, the sitting vice president of the United States, Aaron Burr, and the nation's former secretary of the treasury, Alexander Hamilton, resolved their long-running quarrels through the sights of Wogdon dueling pistols. When the air cleared — between them the two had participated in about a dozen previous duels — Hamilton lay mortally wounded, a murder for which Burr was later indicted, but never convicted — an important distinction, as Bill Murray reminded us in the movie "Stripes.''
For perspective, note that Minnesota is one of only about a dozen states that allow handgun packing in their statehouses. Count Texas among these also, though curiously during a recent spat over abortion legislation there, guards at its Capitol confiscated tampons as possible threats to lawmakers' safety, while waving through without worry our old pals Mr. Smith and Mr. Wesson. Go figure.
In Minnesota, where authorized handgun carriers must notify State Capitol security of their intent to carry at the statehouse, the issue is more clear-cut — kind of.
Here, gun advocates rightly make the point that certain among them have been approved by the state to carry handguns in public, and that the people's chambers should not be exclusionary as a destination in which this right can be exercised.
Opponents, meanwhile, counter that firearms, whether concealed or exposed, lugged into the Capitol are intimidating, if not utterly wacky, and therefore undercut, or possibly undercut, the free exchange of competing ideas whose proper resolution is impossible when one side battles with words, while the other fights with words and, if only by their presence, our old friends Mr. Smith and Mr. Wesson.
As the novelist Chuck Palahniuk said, "Everyone smiles with that invisible gun to their head.''