“Citizenship means standing up for the lives that gun
violence steals from us each day.” Barack
Obama
“It was only a matter of time. With
the escalating gun violence in this country, with people going into eating
establishments and retail shopping establishments openly carrying assault
weapons, with armed anti-government white supremacy groups going to “defend”
people like Cliven Bundy, it was only a matter of time before some lunatic
decided it was time to declare war on the government and call it a revolution.
And that is precisely what happened in Las Vegas this past Sunday.”
“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.”
The wording of the
Second Amendment as adopted differs meaningfully from James Madison's original
proposal: "The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be
infringed; a well-armed and well-regulated militia being the best security of a
free country.” Madison’s original wording clarifies the true intent of what is
now known as the Second Amendment. http://www.volokh.com/posts/1181941233.shtml
The boldfaced
quotation is what we today know as the Second Amendment. It was among the 19
amendments suggested by James Madison and it was included in the 12
subsequently approved by the Senate and sent to the states for consideration by
President Washington in October 1789. Of these 12, ten were ratified
and became the “Bill of Rights” we revere today. An eleventh of the 12 was
ratified as the 27th Amendment in 1992, more than 200 years
after its initial submission.
The syntax of the
Second Amendment has provided fertile soil for contentious discussion over its
exact meaning. Due to this obtuse construction, it has been among the most
controversial aspects of the constitution. Furthermore, the subject matter
inflames passions among gun owners and gun enthusiasts as well as among people
who think private ownership of firearms is fraught with problems and
dangers.
In light of three more
atrocious examples of homicidal gun-powered violence this month – in Seattle,
Las Vegas, and Troutdale, Oregon – let us consider the language of the Second
Amendment in order to clarify its intent and import. A purpose is implied in
the language, which is often overlooked by those arguing for and against “the
right of the people to keep and bear arms.” The perplexing word
order of the Second Amendment makes this purpose difficult to discern, but the
Second Amendment is a sentence and therefore conveys a complete thought. This
thought is formed from three parts. First, there is the “well-regulated
militia.” Second, there is “the security of a free State”. Finally, there is
the “right of the people to keep and bear arms”. Although they are not set
forth in a manifest way, these three parts are hierarchical. The right of the
people serves the need for a well-regulated militia that is necessary “to the
security of a free State.” The real
purpose of the Second Amendment is buried in the middle of its wording. Keeping
and bearing arms is a means to equip a militia: “a body of citizens enrolled
for military service, and called out periodically for drill but serving full
time only in emergencies.” The sense that the militia was a “citizen army” in
contrast to a professional standing army emerged at the end of the 1600s and
was commonly understood by the close of the 1700s. The popularity of the idea
of a citizen army reflected the success of the Minutemen during the
Revolutionary War as a salutary alternative to a standing army. Even
before the Revolutionary fighting began, Americans had come to loathe the
British use of their standing army to enforce Acts of Parliament in the colonies.
The militia system required all free, adult males to own arms and ammunition
and muster periodically for periodically for drill. The ties between the militia members and the
localities lessened the probability that they would oppress their neighbors.
Therefore, the Second
Amendment was intended to solve three problems facing the Framers. First, it
addressed the need for military capability without raising and maintaining a
professional, standing army. Second, it lessened the concerns about a centralized
government that could turn against and oppress the citizenry, Due to the
combination of the first and second achievements, it ensured that America in
its infancy would be able to maintain order domestically and sustain
independence internationally.
A correct reading
reveals the actual objective of the Second Amendment both in Madison’s original
formulation and in the ratified version. Madison refers to a “free country”.
The ratified Second Amendment refers to a “free state.” This might cause some
to think that the ratified version shifted the concern from the American nation
to the individual states, but this would be a misreading of the language as it
was understood in the last decade of the 18th century. The term "free State" was used
often in in the 18th century on through the era of the
Constitution’s Framing. Blackstone’s Commentaries, Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Laws. Hume’s essays and
other writings of the Scottish Enlightenment powerfully influenced the Framers.
These writings and works by many of the other European authors give us a clear
sense of what the phrase "free state" meant at the time. In 18th
century political discourse, "free state" was a well-understood
political term of art, meaning "free country," which today we would
call a “free nation.”
The Second Amendment
was not primarily seeking to ensure widespread private ownership of weaponry or
simply the organization and operation of militias. Despite the confusing order
of the words, militias clearly are not advanced as an end in themselves.
Additionally, the right to keep and bear arms is not unequivocally asserted as
an end in its own right. It seems to be a means of ensuring proper equipment
for the well-regulated militias, rather than private arsenals for individuals. Both
the militias and the private ownership of arms seem to be means to the end of
achieving “the security of a free State,” and the State secured is the Nation
state, that is America as an entirety.
In 1789, the United
States was a fledgling nation in a world abounding with hostile powers. Based
on their colonial experience, many Americans had an abhorrence of “standing
armies.” Nonetheless, they knew Great Britain, Spain, and eventually, France
looked upon their nation as a potential conquest. Furthermore, they shared the
continent with various Indian [aka Native American] nations that were greater
or lesser threats depending on the time and circumstances. Furthermore, much of
the country was sparsely settled and police power was feeble. Civil unrest and
outright rebellions were a possibility.
Consequently, there was a need to raise and equip a military force that
did not in itself pose a threat to the Republic the Framers just ordained and
established via the Constitution.
The Father of the Constitution devised and
his contemporaries later ratified the well-regulated militia approach in which
the people took responsibility for their arms and ammunition so militias could
be equipped in order to ensure “the security of a free State.” This solution
did not enshrine a private right; it entrenched a civic obligation. Note that
the Second Amendment speaks of the “right of the people” not the right of people or of persons. This wording
echoes the Preamble’s “We the people
of the United States.” This is a collective reference, not an
individualistic one; it is a civic reference, not a personal
one.
Some use the
well-known suspicion to standing armies in the Framing era to argue that the
Second Amendment was concerned with the individual States, not the United States.
They then assert it was intended to provide a basis for armed resistance to the
Republic ordained and established by the Constitution. Until one thinks about it, this seems
plausible.
James Madison was a
nationalist and he was the most effective proponent of the Constitution. He was
also the author of the Second Amendment and the rest of the Bill of Rights. It
is highly dubious that he planted the seeds of insurgency in Constitution he
had worked so successfully to create. Madison was a profound political thinker
and his perception of the need and prescription of the means for “the security
of a free State” reflects this profundity. He gauged the temper of
his times and wrote a guarantee of the means to deal with the extant threats in
a manner acceptable to his contemporaries. Given this achievement and
having an historically accurate apprehension of and appreciation for Madison it
is certain the Second Amendment was in no way intended to ensure some paranoid
white supremacist with the historical knowledge of a neonate had the firepower
to kill people just because he has some lunatic fantasy about a tyrannical the
Federal government and the necessity of revolution.
If, as is contended
here, the Second Amendment is aimed at ensuring the security of the Republic
launched in 1789, one can be confident that he would not feel the mission has
been accomplished when a gun violence epidemic kills 86 people, eight of whom
are children or teenagers, every day in our country, and the U.S. gun homicide
rate is about 20 times higher than the average of other high-income nations.
Neither Madison nor his contemporaries intended to allow private individuals to
build personal arsenals with no official oversight or safeguards. This is
confirmed by the Amendment’s use of the term, well-regulated, as a modifier of
militia. Madison clearly was not advocating rogue bands of armed individuals as
the guarantors of “the security of a free State.” He championed the
rigorous organization and responsible operation well-regulated
militias.
Madison believed the
right and the responsibility for “the security of a free State” rested with
“the people.” Consequently, he wanted “the people” to have an unfettered and
uncompromised right “to keep and bear arms” so that they could fulfill this
crucial responsibility. He was not extolling guns as the playthings of hunters,
target shooters, or other enthusiasts. He did not believe in some
frenzied warring states dystopia where political power came from the barrels of
guns wielded by private armies. He thought and asserted that the people, that
is, the citizenry had the right and the duty to arm themselves and serve well-regulated militia corps for the
defense of the free country - the
Constitutional Republic.
Since Madison was
concerned with the practicalities of assuring “the security of a free State,”
when he proposed the Second Amendment, the State he intended to secure was the
recently ordained and established Constitutional Republic. Undoubtedly, Madison
likewise wanted to advance the express purposes of the Republic he did so much
to originate. He wanted to enhance unity, establish justice, ensure
tranquility, provide for a common defense, promote the general welfare, and
secure the blessings of liberty to the Republic and its citizens.
Well-regulated militia units could do all of these things, but heavily armed
lone wolves or rampaging private armies on their compatriots would do none of
them.
If “the people” have a
right to keep and bear arms, individual people must do the keeping and the
bearing. This is inarguable. The pressing question is “Keeping and
bearing for what purpose and under what conditions?” The Second Amendment
stipulates to achieve “the security of a free State” by service in “a well-regulated
militia.” Today, the well-regulated militia takes the form National Guard that
traces its history back 375 years to the earliest English colonies in North
America. In its current incarnation, the National Guard is a dual state-federal
organization For example, following the September 11, 2001, attacks, more than
50,000 Guard members were called up by both their States and the Federal
government to provide security at home and combat terrorism abroad. As the
foregoing makes evident, the well-regulated militia mentioned in the Second
Amendment is a long-established military organization under the provisional
control of the state governments and under the ultimate authority of the
federal government. People who are members of the National Guard
bear arms, but do not keep them, as part of their service.
Private individuals
and so-called militias who own one or many guns do not, in that these roles,
performing service in any well-regulated corps. One has to ask, “Why
should any private person or group own firearms designed essentially for
rapidly killing human beings from close range?” The contribution of
such private groups or lone wolves who own numerous weapons to “the security of
a free State” is as dubious as the contribution made by National Guard members
is obvious.
The regulation of
private gun ownership is meager as these three recent episodes once again
demonstrate. None of the weapons used were illegally acquired. Now, more than a
dozen guns are legally sold every minute of every day. As ABC News reports,
“There are almost 300 million privately-owned firearms in this country - that's
almost enough to arm every man, woman and child.” While the national murder
rate is at a 47 year low, the gun murder rate in the United States is 19.5% or
almost 20 times that of the next 22 richest nations combined.
As reported on
Bloomberg.com, Record U.S. Gun
Production as Obama ‘Demonized’ on Issue:
“Almost as many guns
-- 26.1 million -- were produced during Democrat Barack Obama’s first term as
president as during the entire eight-year presidency of his Republican
predecessor, George W. Bush, the ATF data show.
Brian Malte, senior
policy director of the Washington-based Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence,
said gun-rights groups “demonized” Obama during the 2008 and 2012 presidential
campaigns, leading many gun owners to buy more firearms.
Barack
Obama is the stimulus package for the firearms industry,” said Dave Workman,
senior editor of Gun Mag, a print and online publication of the 2nd Amendment
Foundation, a gun-ownership rights group. “The greatest irony of the Obama
administration is that the one industry that he may not have really liked to
see healthy has become the healthiest industry in the United States.”
We see the percentage of households owning guns
declining,” he said, “and that indicates that those who already own guns
are buying more of them.”
The current mindset
among too many Americans is shown by the following cartoon:
tribaltheocrat.com
No matter how they try
to evade and deny it, reactionaries such as the Tea Party groups and Alex Jones
spread an anti-government ideology the Millers bought. We must lay blame for
the increasing domestic terrorism on these pseudo-patriots and expose the
funding by Koch Brothers. This will not in and of itself won’t solve the
problem, but It will facilitate the house cleaning of fascists and those willingly
collaborating with them. Taking arms against the government or advocating that
this be done by others is either treason or incitement to it and we must no
longer ignore the traitors within our midst.
The United States has
much more civilian gun ownership in comparison with all other industrialized
countries. For every 100 Americans there are approximately 88.8 firearms. In
the past 14 years, 2006 had the greatest number of homicides by firearm. 10,225
people were killed with a gun in 2006. Annual firearm suicides within the
United States are high as well. In 2005, 17,002 suicides were committed using a
firearm.
The United States far
surpasses other countries in terms of gun prevalence and gun related violence
and death. Statistics seem to indicate that fewer gun-related homicides are a
direct result of stricter gun control laws. While all supporters of the
Constitutional Republic strive to secure the blessings of liberty, sound
statistics strongly suggest that the security of citizens in this free State is
greatly impaired by lax gun regulation laws.
Whatever the definitive
assessment of the situation is, it is ludicrous to purport that it is
well-regulated or that it enhances the security of our free State. It is more
candid to admit that it is virtually unregulated and our citizenry is imperiled.
Be that as it may, on a worldwide basis, the majority of massacres have been
committed with legally obtained firearms.
Thus, there are no quick fixes or simple solutions. If we follow the true North
Star of the Second Amendment’s genuine purpose – the security of a free State –
we may finally act to make better arrangements than we have implemented thus
far.
The furious debate
which has raged and continues to rage concerning the Second Amendment seems to
be missing the vital point of the purpose for which the amendment was crafted,
proposed, and ratified. This pertains to Supreme Court decisions on this issue
as well. The Supreme Court has the power to interpret the Constitution and its
Amendments. Power, like right, however does not make right. As in the Scott v
Sanford, Plessy v Ferguson decisions and Citizens United decisions, the Supreme
Court’s Second Amendment decisions are wrong.
It is apparent that
“the security of” the free State known as the American Republic is neither
advanced nor enhanced by the prevailing circumstances and conditions regarding
private acquisition and use of firearms and ammunition in contemporary America.
The Framers were educated, thoughtful people, but they did foresee what the
later arriving Industrial Revolution, would do to the technology of creating
lethal weaponry, nor what persistent, persuasive marketing would do to gun
ownership. Nor could they have predicted the rise of populations and societal
changes engendered by massive urbanization would do to America’s circumstances.
The Second Amendment has not grown with civilization; it is locked in the 18th
century while we struggle to apply it to the 21st.
Based on a proper
understanding of the Second Amendment’s true purpose, we can make progress.
People can own firearms and carry them. They cannot, however, claim a right to
the unregulated use of firearms at the detriment of “the security of a free
State”.
As things now stand,
our current practice has produced wholly unintended and profoundly
unsatisfactory outcomes as shown in the illustration below from politicalgates.blogspot.com
The Constitution properly understood and effectively
implemented will ensure a representative, responsible, responsible government;
it will ensure a Republic. As the illustration shows, however, too many people
have lost their liberty along with their life, not to tyranny, but to rampant
violence in a country that is anything but secure. This is not irreversible,
and the course of authentic patriotism is to take effective action that once
again prioritizes “the security of a free State.”
