No, Guns Do Kill People: Read
June 20th, 2007 by Progressive Wednesday
Read:
When I decided to tackle the ever-sensitive issue of gun control, I called a close friend of our family who owns many guns. He goes on hunting trips but does not shoot his rifle. He shoots his handguns at a range, and he keeps them safely secured when not in use. In other words, he is as responsible a gun owner as there is, though I’m pretty sure he only has them so that he can consider himself a “good conservative.”
We had the usual conversation about the meaning of the second amendment and the role guns play in the safe-keeping of our society and others, though I imagine our conversation was much more civil than many about this topic. I didn’t change his mind, and he didn’t change mine. Before we hung up the phone, I asked him if he knew what the second amendment was. His answer was straight out of the National Rifle Association’s talking points booklet: “It gives us the right to keep and bear arms.”
That’s true, but it’s true in the way that President Clinton didn’t have “sexual relations.” In other words, it’s a half-truth. Here it is, the second amendment, straight from the brainpower of George Mason and James Madison themselves:
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.
Let’s parse this statement. We’ll start at the end and work backwards. If left alone, “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed” could be reasonably interpreted as, “anyone can have any weapon at anytime.” But when you include, “being necessary to the security of a free State,” it gets a bit fogged by the gun smoke. The key word here is “security.” Those charged with keeping citizens safe were small groups of civilians overseen by the state. Today we call them the police and members of the National Guard.
And so we arrive at the beginning of the second amendment. There is a great debate about the definition of the term “militia.” It’s hard to know what the founders meant when they used it in this case. It could mean anything from any person of age not enlisted in the military to only those in the service of the United States. The Constitution gives us an idea of what they were thinking. Congress shall have the power to:
Article 1.8.15 - Provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions.
Article 1.8.16 - Provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress.
By not mentioning any branch of the military, Article 1.8.15 seems to refer to National Guard while 1.8.16, “reserving to the States,” almost certainly refers to local law enforcement.
Yes, I’ve heard the argument that “calling forth the Militia” could reference a military draft. But in the 1918 Supreme Court case, Arver v. United States, when it was ruled that the WWI draft was constitutional, Supreme Court Chief Justice Edward Douglass White stated in the Court Opinion:
The fallacy of the argument results from confounding the constitutional provisions concerning the militia with that conferring upon Congress the power to raise armies. It treats them as one while they are different.
So private citizens are clearly not considered to be part of the militia by the United States Constitution. When you add “well-regulated” to the equation, the argument that the second amendment guarantees everyone the right to keep and bear arms goes out the bulletproof window. The government has the right to keep certain people from getting guns and the right to ban certain guns from everybody. As progressives we applaud the genius of the Bill of Rights to grant us freedoms, but also to recognize that it is necessary for some freedoms to have limitations.
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