The Second and a Half Amendment

 With all of these weird ideas coming up from the USA about the right to bear arms, I thought it was time to explore the lesser known part of the constitution known as “The Second and a Half Amendment”. For those of you who have never heard of it, it is the right enshrined in law to bear leaf blowers.

Like all of these amendments this right was brought into play nearly 250 years ago. In those days leaf blowing was a fairly simple affair. Children used to pick up the occasional leaf in the Fall and blow on it, becoming amused at the effect.  The idea caught on and soon people were employed using a giant fan which moved two or three leaves off the dirt roads onto the verges. Please note that the work was tiring and only a dozen or so leaves were moved by this intensive method before the worker had to stop for a drink and a rest. There was no way that the leaf blower could sit on his front lawn, flick a switch and blow thousands of leaves into oblivion. No, the constant stopping and reloading meant that often a gust of wind arrived at a timely moment and did his job for him.

Eventually the leaf blower lost his amateur status. Unions arose and specialist leaf blowers were employed. Often they were conscripted for a lengthy period of time and, in the case of a particularly harsh autumn, could find themselves doing longer service than they expected or indeed wanted. Still and all they served their districts and were rewarded with the possibility of higher education after their service. Many of the great professions and seats of higher learning benefitted from those who had profited through the ‘Leaf Blower Bill’.

Of course, leaves require trees so it did seem strange to find leaf blowers in the desert and grassland regions where there were no leaves to be found, but, like all good scouts, leaf blowers were prepared for any eventuality. After all, for that once in a lifetime occasion when a solitary leaf had been carried on the wind into a place where it had no right to be, the leaf blower had to be ‘ready aye ready’. Indeed leaf blowers soon appeared as required equipment in the Coastguard and the Navy. Leaves at sea are difficult to find but all good things should proliferate, should they not?

At some point in history, the amateur leaf blower found herself out of business. Leaf blowers were only made available to professionals. So after a few years of impotent wrangling where they had to resort to the rake as a substitute, they reasserted their rights. In the meantime, the leaf blower had evolved from a child with a healthy set of lungs to a machine which blew with devastating and scattering effect. All was strewn before it with force and carelessness, showing no regard or attempt to single out a particularly errant leaf. It was indiscriminate. Soon leaves were scattered frequently and randomly. They lost all of their individuality. They became simply a number. It was no longer an interesting event when a single leaf was blown. It was as if leaf blowing had lost its raison d’etre.

    But the population began to object that leaf blowers were only available to full time professionals and conscripted youth. Mutterings resurfaced about freedom and rights. Soon they were lobbying for a return to an old fashioned law. Leaf blowers began to be sold on the black market. Soon people who did not blow leaves, people who believed that leaves should have the freedom to lie where they fall, were being pilloried as weak and liberal and lacking in independence. Soon laws were enacted that people must own a leaf blower; that every home should have at least one; that no car should be sold without one. Professionals were given leaf blowers. Lawyers carried them into court, teachers into the classroom and construction workers, inexplicably, were encouraged to blow away leaves prior to excavation.

   Soon all of the leaves had been blown away, there were none left. Yet still certain powerful voices held onto the belief that even though leaf blowers were no longer necessary, the people who owned them could not let them go. They wanted to be prepared when leafageddon came and the world was suddenly engulfed in leaves. Then a voice from the wilderness rose up and said that if only leaves could be left alone, they would return to the soil, nurture the ground and give back to Mother Nature, particularly young leaves which were yet to contribute to society. But that voice was one in the wilderness, it was an idea whose time had not yet come.

OK, Dear Reader, this pathetic attempt at humour is totally inappropriate given the shootings which continue to occur in the United States. But, listening to the people who continue to justify the right to bear arms, I am lost. I simply do not understand their reasoning and logic.  And, yes, I have heard the 2^nd Amendment arguments, the rights of the individuals to bear arms, the ‘truth’ that ‘guns don’t kill, people do’ and so on and so forth. I try to be accepting of other cultures and belief systems. Traditions can be good things but they can also impede progress if taken to an extreme. The Second Amendment may well have been right for its time but we are no longer loading one shot muskets unless, Dear Reader, you know something which I do not.