Over at Salon, liberal columnist Heather Digby Parton has a nice article on how the interpretation of the Second Amendment has morphed from what’s pretty clearly stated in the Constitution as the perquisites of a militia into today’s let-a-gazillion-guns-blossom attitude. Almost every week some disaffected person with a gun kills innocent people. I think this happened three times in the last two weeks. (For an earlier take on the National Rifle Association’s (NRA)—and many Americans’—misinterpretation of the Second Amendment, see Garry Wills’s article in the 2005 New York Review of Books, “To keep and bear arms.”)
Here’s the Second Amendment:
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.
What part of “a well regulated Militia” doesn’t the Supreme Court understand? If James Madison or George Mason, or any of the people who drew up the Bill of Rights could see what it’s led to in this country, could see the school killings and gang violence and “stand your ground” laws, would they agree with the amendment’s current interpretation?
At any rate, I won’t reiterate Parton’s piece except to give two excerpts from it:
Justice John Paul Stephens discussed his long experience with Second Amendment jurisprudence in his book “Six Amendments: How and Why We Should Change the Constitution,” and notes that when he came on the Supreme Court there was literally no debate among the justices, conservative or liberal, over the idea that the Second Amendment constituted a “fundamental right” to bear arms. Precedents going all the way back to the beginning of the republic had held that the state had an interest in regulating weapons and never once in all its years had declared a “fundamental right” in this regard.
So, what happened? Well, the NRA happened. Or more specifically, a change in leadership in the NRA happened. After all, the NRA had long been a benign sportsman’s organization devoted to hunting and gun safety. It wasn’t until 1977, that a group of radicals led by activists from the Second Amendment Foundation and the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms took control and changed the direction of the group to one dedicated to making the Second Amendment into a “fundamental right.”
What had been a fringe ideology was then systematically mainstreamed by the NRA, a program that prompted the retired arch conservative Chief Justice Warren Burger to say that the Second Amendment:
“Has been the subject of one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word ‘fraud,’ on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime”
The results are clear to see. Mass shootings are just the tip of the iceberg. Today we have people brandishing guns in public, daring people to try to stop them in the wake of new laws legalizing open carry law even in churches, bars and schools. People “bearing arms” show up at political events, silently intimidating their opponents, making it a physical risk to express one’s opinion in public. They are shooting people with impunity under loose “stand your ground” and “castle doctrine” legal theories, which essentially allow gun owners to kill people solely on the ground that they “felt threatened.” Gun accidents are epidemic. And this, the gun proliferation activists insist, is “liberty.”
One of the scariest things to me is how NRA members and gun nuts sometimes descend en masse to public venues, demonstrating their right to “open carry” weapons. Here’s one in a Texas Wal-Mart. What you see below is perfectly legal:
Sometimes five or six guys—they’re always men—enter a store together, all with rifles. Only a country that’s deeply screwed up could allow something like this. And open carry, with or without a permit, is legal in 32 of the 50 states.
At any rate, in his book, Stevens, a retired Justice of the Supreme Court, proposes a clarification of the Second Amendment that would fix everything. He first gives the fix (my emphasis) and then analyzes it:
“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms when serving in the Militia shall not be infringed.”
Emotional claims that the right to possess deadly weapons is so important that it is protected by the federal Constitution distort intelligent debate about the wisdom of particular aspects of proposed legislation designed to minimize the slaughter caused by the prevalence of guns in private hands. Those emotional arguments would be nullified by the adoption of my proposed amendment. The amendment certainly would not silence the powerful voice of the gun lobby; it would merely eliminate its ability to advance one mistaken argument.
I still believe that guns should be banned for private ownership, with the possible exception of shooting sports like target shooting (in which case they can be locked up at gun clubs), and perhaps to protect yourself in the wilderness from bears, or to cull animals when it’s absolutely necessary to control their populations. But not for anything else.
This is all a fantasy, of course, for Americans are deeply enamored of their firearms. But things would be a whole lot better if we handled the issue like the British do.
The NRA is evil—pure, unadulterated evil. There is no massacre so horrible that it would make them reconsider their policy. In fact, massacres of innocents only stimulate them to tell us that we need more guns.
If the political environment were such that Stevens’ amendment could pass, then it would be unnecessary. Is that a Catch-22?
Also, I wonder why people feel the need to carry around a gun. Are they so afraid all the time? Or is it the boost in testosterone level that’s addicting?
I think the word you’re looking for is “ammosexuals”.
Ammoral.
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Ammoronic?
Depends on the kind of gun. Those yahoos in Target are probably getting some kind of cheap thrill out of it, at the expense of everyone who has to be around them. People carrying hand guns are likely as not just mistaken about what having a gun will do for them. They are mistaken partly because of a massive misinformation campaign to convince them that people fighting off bad guys is common while becoming a victim of your own gun is rare, which is exactly the opposite of the truth.
“I am surrounded by otherwise intelligent people who imagine that the ability to dial 911 is all the protection against violence a sane person ever needs.” – Sam Harris
Excluded middle.
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Please elucidate.
*Rely on calling 911* and *get a gun* are not the only options.
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Actually, I was asking you to name an effective 3rd option.
Pepper spray. Tazer. Baseball bat. Friends. Bystanders. Car.
But if you do carry a gun, you better carry two, because what if your first gun jams? I am surrounded by otherwise intelligent people who imagine that having one gun is all the protection against violence a sane person ever needs. 😉
The excluded middle is one flaw, but an equally big flaw is the lack of cost-benefit analysis. The only solution to a free-falling airplane may be a parachute but it does not follow that we should all wear parachutes on commercial flights. Will some people die who might have been saved had they had a parachute? Quite possibly. But the risks are so low, and the scenarios where the parachute will help even rarer, that someone wearing a parachute on a commercial flight has crossed over from being prudent into being paranoid.
I don’t know what the crime is like where Sam Harris hangs out, and he is a person with a public profile and unpopular views and so perhaps he has some additional risks from that. Maybe he needs a gun for protection. I can’t say. I am pretty sure that my own personal risks of getting murdered by a non-family member are sufficiently low that, from an insurance perspective, I’d be hard pressed to justify even the purchase price of a decent gun (at an actuarial life value of $6 million, say) even if it would offset all of that risk (which it won’t). Then when I factor in the risk I am adding to my life, that I may shoot someone in rage, that someone in my family may shoot me in a moment of rage, that I might shoot myself in a moment of despair, that my child might find it and shoot herself or someone else by accident, that I might have a false sense of security and get myself into more risky situations, etc., and it seems very unlikely that an ordinary person like me with no extra risk factors would not be foolish to own an gun *for safety*. For fun, perhaps, but not for safety. When I compound that with the risk if everyone around me owns a gun, I think it’s not smart to encourage that either.
In a circle of friends that has since drifted its diverse ways, somebody used to have a novelty miniature baseball bat that we called the “Corey Be Good Stick.” Corey was (is) the archetypal Angry Black Man, for good reason, but always with a genuine (and often biting) sense of humor — and he never let his anger control him, always the other way ’round. Ex-Army, big guy, hunted elk with a longbow, smart as a whip (last I heard he was doing network engineering in Afghanistan as a contractor) with great instincts and faster reflexes; the Corey Be Good Stick would have been about as effective against him in the real world as a soggy baguette.
On the other hand, give Corey the Corey Be Good Stick and pretty much any of these gun fondling freaks any firearm of their choice, and I’d put my money on Corey.
Cheers,
b&
As someone with a rather dark sense of humor once wrote: “Remember–when seconds count, the police are only minutes away!”
Or as one author responded with a book about 911 response times…”Dial 911 and Die!”
No need to mention the many cases where the police respond and shoot dead some complete innocent. I’ll just note that when you call 911 about a criminal threat, what do they send? They send men with guns. EVERY SINGLE TIME. I say cut out the middleman. And know that the person with the gun won’t be some poorly-trained, irresponsible hothead with the attitude that his badge makes him immune to investigation, let alone prosecution. (An unfortunately reasonable conclusion, as pretty much every police shooting is ruled a “good shoot.”)
You mentioned earlier you are an NRA member. I assume, based on your other comments, that you also advocate responsible gun ownership. Do you ever make it known to the NRA that their views on being opposed to any all all regulations is completely irrational? What possible argument is there for not ensuring every gun owner is highly trained, mentally stable and willing to accept the responsibility and potential liability of owning guns?
chrisbuckley80:
“You mentioned earlier you are an NRA member.”
I said a “reluctant” NRA member. Read on, but you won’t like it…
“I assume, based on your other comments, that you also advocate responsible gun ownership.”
Fair enough.
“Do you ever make it known to the NRA that their views on being opposed to any all all regulations is completely irrational?”
I no longer communicate with the NRA. I became a Life Member in 1980. But you won’t like the reason I no longer have anything to do with them: the idea that the NRA is opposed to regulations is pure moonbeams and unicorns. Nonsense. The NRA has FAIRLY been called “America’s largest gun-control organization.” I won’t re-invent the wheel here; if you’re interested, read anything by Vin Suprynowicz, or L.Neil Smith’s “Lever Action.” My position is this: there are approximately 20,000 federal and state gun laws in the U.S., and as far as I can tell, almost all of them are unconstitutional. So you want “reasonable” gun regulations? Fine. Tomorrow, let’s revoke 10,000 of those laws. I’m reasonable; I’ll let you choose which ones.
You want to see how a REAL civil-rights organization works? See http://www.jpfo.org.
“What possible argument is there for not ensuring every gun owner is highly trained”
OK…who will be doing this “ensuring”? I hope not the ones who are “ensuring” that the police have such skills!
“mentally stable”
The NRA has supported universal background checks, provided that there is no registry, which is provably a pretext for registration, which is provably a pretext for confiscation. Their efforts at cooperation have been rebuffed.
“and willing to accept the responsibility and potential liability of owning guns?”
I don’t know what this means. Is there a test for this? It’s not a non-falsifiable proposition?
My handguns are all in a safe. Except for the one that’s behind drywall in the bedroom, loaded–a quick punch in the right place, claw down the panel, and out it comes. My shotguns and long guns are not locked up that way, but all of the ammo is in the safe, save for the one loaded shotgun that’s in a concealed ceiling panel.
None of my guns have ever gone rogue and killed anyone. I expect that I will die of old age (or cancer) without ever firing one under duress.
But I have suffered before through insufficient precautions.
“My position is this: there are approximately 20,000 federal and state gun laws in the U.S., and as far as I can tell, almost all of them are unconstitutional.”
You also said earlier you are not religious about the Constitution and that there are ways to change it. Legislation has been established as a way of changing it in addition to the process of adding amendments. Judges continually strike down laws as unconstitutional. It may be your position that these laws are unconstitutional, and some of them may in fact be, but there is a process in place to make that determination. That process is not about an individual picking 20,000 laws and deciding in one fell swoop that they are all unconstitutional.
I am reasonable about guns, I see no reason to worry about the majority of gun owners, but we clearly have a problem with gun violence in the United States, and our murder rate both in total deaths and deaths by firearm far outpaces most of the Western World, not to mention firearm deaths that aren’t murders. If our methods to address these issues are unconstitutional, well let’s find constitutional ways to do it and/or change the Constitution. I would hope you agree that not being religious about the Constitution would include not holding its original intent, or for that matter, its current intent, above the need for rational solutions for today’s problems. We have higher gun ownership than anywhere in Europe, yet our murder rate is several times higher.
“OK…who will be doing this “ensuring”? I hope not the ones who are “ensuring” that the police have such skills!”
Presumably an organization such as the NRA should have enough knowledge to have input into what it would take to demonstrate an appropriate skill level to operate a firearm. Our military isn’t short of such people either. My grandfather served three decades in the Marines starting in WWII and passed on his training and knowledge about guns to his children. I’d appreciate if you could elaborate a bit on what you’re trying to imply with this question. Is it that there’s a shortage of knowledgeable people who could come up with sensible requirements? Or, is it that the requirements wouldn’t be strong enough (I sense perhaps this is the direction you’re going by your comment about police officers)? If it is the latter, a lack of a perfect implementation is not a reason to do nothing. Our standards for licensing drivers should be much better too, but we don’t throw in the towel and say that we just shouldn’t bother having any requirements at all.
“The NRA has supported universal background checks, provided that there is no registry, which is provably a pretext for registration, which is provably a pretext for confiscation. Their efforts at cooperation have been rebuffed.”
Wayne LaPierre and the present day NRA certainly seem to have changed their tune on this. There is nothing here indicating that he isn’t supporting universal background checks because of a registration mandate: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/30/wayne-lapierre-background-checks_n_2582148.html
In fact, he makes several excuses, one of which is lax enforcement. Even granting that there is an enforcement problem, it does not then follow that the loopholes should not be closed and that enforcement should not be increased.
“I don’t know what this means. Is there a test for this? It’s not a non-falsifiable proposition?”
It certainly isn’t non-falsifiable. For the responsibility part, I just outlined how there are more than enough responsible people who are knowledgeable about firearms to train people in responsible use. As for liability, it’s simple. Make people liable for harm that comes about from reckless use or storage of their firearms. You said you store all your handguns in a safe and the one that is loaded is hidden in your wall. You are responsible. The probability that a child or even an adult would ever gain access to your guns and be able to cause harm, whether it is accidental or intentional, is exceedingly low. I would doubt that any of the thousands of deaths among teenagers and young children every year is the result of firearms stored in this manner. We have gone on too long labeling these deaths as “unfortunate accidents.” Yes, they are both unfortunate and accidental, but so are DUIs. The common thread is that they are also preventable and steps can be taken to reduce their occurrence.
“I’ll just note that when you call 911 about a criminal threat, what do they send? They send men with guns. EVERY SINGLE TIME.”
Not in the mainland UK, they don’t.
I live in a society where gun crime is so rare that even the police aren’t routinely armed. If I lived in a society where I felt that a firearm was necessary to ensure my safety, I’d move away.
In this context: I’ve just been reading a recent Ian Rankin novel set in Edinburgh, a decent-sized Scottish city. In the novel someone’s murdered with a gun. The cops are startled: there are so few guns in the city they reckoned they knew where just about all of them were.
That really drove home to me the difference in gun attitudes between the two cultures.
Of course that’s true, jeremyp. But I wasn’t discussing the UK or Denmark or Cambodia for that matter.
I certainly don’t think it’s unreasonable for you to take the position that you’d sooner move than arm yourself. People who don’t want that responsibility shouldn’t have it forced upon them.
I lived for several months in the UK, in the late 1980s. I felt no need to be armed there, although I was once physically attacked. In Birminghamn, IIRC. By skinheads, which I DEFINITELY recall correctly. But then, I don’t generally carry a gun here, either. Mostly laziness, I guess. But I am aware that statistically, there are more chances here than in the UK that I may one day regret that.
In a reasonably civilized society, 9-1-1 really is your best (and far from only) option.
Again, it’s a cost / benefit thing. Will there be situations in which being armed to the teeth will save your life when even the police couldn’t? Yes, of course. But there will be far more situations in which the guns will cause lethal trouble where it wouldn’t otherwise exist.
Also, even in situations police don’t arrive in time to save you, if they’re remotely effective, they will capture, prosecute, convict, and incarcerate your assailant. That protects everybody in society, not just you. In contrast, trying to play Dirty Harry yourself, even if successful, creates a violent vigilante society, and that endangers everybody else.
But as has already been pointed out and demonstrated just this past week, firearms and 9-1-1 are far from your only options. Pepper spray was just again demonstrated effective against a firearm. Indeed, in the real world, pepper spray is likely going to be far more effective in the hands of an untrained civilian. You don’t need great aim, you can see just where it’s going, it disables the target faster than a bullet, and the recoil isn’t going to knock you back or mess up your aim.
Between 9-1-1, non-lethal defense tools, and the simple conflict resolution techniques that any sane person should already know practically instinctively, there’s really no reason in today’s society why anybody outside of law enforcement needs a firearm for “personal protection.”
Remember, there are no absolute guarantees. Your gun not only isn’t a guarantee of safety, it’s a significant hazard to you in and of itself. If you want to load the dice as much in your favor as possible, you’ll leave the gun at the range, keep your cellphone charged, carry pepper spray or the like if you’re the scaredy type, and, as the bus says, stop worrying and enjoy your life.
Cheers,
b&
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This, exactly.
Ben Goren, this is an especially puzzling post. You’re certainly what one of the most intelligent and articulate writers on this site, but this post is one of the silliest I’ve seen–even worse than your “Corey” post above, which could fairly be assessed as “semantic content = zero.”
Let’s look at just this one sentence:
Between 9-1-1, non-lethal defense tools, and the simple conflict resolution techniques that any sane person should already know practically instinctively, there’s really no reason in today’s society why anybody outside of law enforcement needs a firearm for “personal protection.”
What “simple conflict conflict resolution techniques” do you imagine would have been of value at Sandy Hook, Columbine, the Colorado movie theater, Santa Barbara, Seattle, or ANY of the similar events that have this crew so exercised? Please try to be specific in your answer.
And “outside of law enforcement”? I know that you’re absolutely no candidate for the sobriquet of boot-licking sycophant, so what POSSIBLE facts do you cite for trusting law enforcement with weapons that you would deny to concealed-carry permit holders?
First, I never claimed the gun-free solution is perfect; quite the contrary. The point that I’m trying to make is that it maximizes your odds, while your proposition minimizes them. But neither position, even in an idealized setting, would eliminate all risk.
Second, in none of your examples was the rampage ended by a Good Rambo with a gun. Whether they could have been might be cause for speculation, but they’re most emphatically not evidence in favor of your proposition.
Third, in each of your examples, freakin’ guns were used to freakin’ kill freakin’ lots of freakin’ people.
And, last, just this past Thursday, yet another nutjob started shooting and killing people…and was it a Good Rambo with a gun who stopped him?
No.
It was a random schmuck with pepper spray.
Cops at least are required to frequently spend time on the range. CCW requirements are nowhere near as stringent. Would you even be willing to be downrange of yourself in a crisis situation, such as in a crowded restaurant or movie theater?
Cops are also required to be trained in conflict resolution and to carry effective non-lethal forms of force. How many Good Rambos are going to shoot first and ask questions later simply because they’ve never even had any reason to think things through ahead of time, let alone had any actual experience or real training in real conflict situations?
And cops are at least ostensibly accountable to elected officials and the public. And departments that get excessively corrupt wind up on the news and as targets of Federal investigations. (And, yes, the FBI is notorious in that they investigate their own and have yet to find fault ever in any agent’s use of a firearm. But they aren’t active at local scales and, when the need arises, they have a not-miserable record of policing the police.)
Are there bad cops out there? Undoubtedly, and too many. Even one is too many.
Are the cops, as fallible as they are, still to be trusted over random Rambos?
Unquestionably.
Stop making the perfect the enemy of the good, and you might be able to realize that you’re actually endorsing the worst over the not that bad.
Cheers,
b&
Nicely said, Ben. And I sure am thankful I don’t live in Cori’s neighborhood (or his imagined neighborhood). His posts clearly demonstrate how inept most humans are at assessing risk.
Keith, I assume that by “Cori” you’re referring to me…
So, “”his”? Really? Now tell me about my neighborhood and the risk factors there.
Another aspect of the cost-benefit analysis is the arms race induced by widespread gun ownership. If burglars expect that a home owner will be armed they will be more likely to arm themselves, greatly raising the likelihood that someone will die or be seriously injured in the course of the crime.
I don’t have statistics to prove it but I certainly do not have the impression that the presumed deterrent effect of ‘armed response’ (or capital punishment for that matter)results in lower crime rates in the US compared to countries that regulate gun ownership.
Under all the bluster and bravado is an intolerable fear: fear of government, fear of minorities, fear of somehow losing control and becoming a victim. Gun nuts see the world as a terribly threatening place.
A friend of mine posted a picture of 5 black men holding pistols and assault rifles.
If the first thought of NRA members isn’t “American Patriots”, then they are hypocrites.
Their first thought would be “Race war”.
Well, Mr. Esres…that seems a little gratuitous, doesn’t it? If you were serious, I’d take personal offense–I’m VERY clear, as are the vast majority of NRA members I’ve discussed this with (I’m guessing far more than you have), that American gun control was born in Jim Crow, and has been used to oppress minorities, particularly blacks, ever since.
After you do a little reading on the Black Panthers, go to the roots…the Deacons for Defense and beyond. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deacons_for_Defense_and_Justice)
The racist nature of gun control continues today, part of the racist drug war. If guns are the problem, why do they never conduct these ridiculous gun buy-backs where gun ownership is highest–rural, white communities? (Ever see an inventory of one of these gun buy-backs? Assault weapons–zero. Functioning semi-auto handguns–very few.)
What most people overlook is that Article I, Section 8 of the constitution defines “the militia” as a body that is under the authority of congress. Here are the relevant passages:
This clearly states that this is a trained and regulated body, and the term “well-regulated militia” is in the same context.
Oh, and the second amendment was originally the fourth of twelve in the original Bill of Rights. The original Amendment II was finally ratified as Amendment XXVII in 1992; the original Amendment I has never been ratified and is still pending 225 years after its proposal.
However, I think people also overlook the Second Militia Act of 1792 (passed a year after the Bill of Rights was adopted and, I would assume, reflecting the concept at the time of how the militia ought to work). It begins:
“I. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, That each and every free able-bodied white male citizen of the respective States, resident therein, who is or shall be of age of eighteen years, and under the age of forty-five years (except as is herein after excepted) shall severally and respectively be enrolled in the militia, by the Captain or Commanding Officer of the company, within whose bounds such citizen shall reside, and that within twelve months after the passing of this Act. And it shall at all time hereafter be the duty of every such Captain or Commanding Officer of a company, to enroll every such citizen as aforesaid, and also those who shall, from time to time, arrive at the age of 18 years, or being at the age of 18 years, and under the age of 45 years (except as before excepted) shall come to reside within his bounds; and shall without delay notify such citizen of the said enrollment, by the proper non-commissioned Officer of the company, by whom such notice may be proved. That every citizen, so enrolled and notified, shall, within six months thereafter, provide himself with a good musket or firelock, a sufficient bayonet and belt, two spare flints, and a knapsack, a pouch, with a box therein, to contain not less than twenty four cartridges, suited to the bore of his musket or firelock, each cartridge to contain a proper quantity of powder and ball; or with a good rifle, knapsack, shot-pouch, and powder-horn, twenty balls suited to the bore of his rifle, and a quarter of a pound of powder; and shall appear so armed, accoutred and provided, when called out to exercise or into service, except, that when called out on company days to exercise only, he may appear without a knapsack. That the commissioned Officers shall severally be armed with a sword or hanger, and espontoon; and that from and after five years from the passing of this Act, all muskets from arming the militia as is herein required, shall be of bores sufficient for balls of the eighteenth part of a pound; and every citizen so enrolled, and providing himself with the arms, ammunition and accoutrements, required as aforesaid, shall hold the same exempted from all suits, distresses, executions or sales, for debt or for the payment of taxes.”
With the exception of the age restriction (18 to 45) the definition of who is in the militia is, so far as I can tell, identical in scope to that segment of the population that had the full rights of citizenship at the time. This makes a clear separation between a right to bear arms for only members of the militia and a right to to bear arms for all citizens rather murkier than is generally acknowledged. That the second amendment as adopted does not distinguish the two (it asserts a right of “the people”, with their service in the militia as a justification for this right), and that several of the draft versions of it very clearly stated that “the militia” and “the people” were the same entity (several of the early versions included the wording “A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people”) makes this distinction murkier still. In my opinion, it is difficult to make a compelling argument that politicians of the time regarded “the people” and “the militia” as separate things.
Note also that the language assumed that all citizens would have no trouble arming themselves with the necessary rifles.
Why?
Because nobody – including the Founding Fathers – ever even countenanced the idea that firearms would ever be unavailable. Just about everybody owned guns. I have never heard any information that would suggest that there was any talk at all about banning guns at that time.
The idea that the 2nd amendment was meant to ONLY secure the freedom to possess a gun for use in a militia makes no sense whatsoever in this light.
If you are correct, I do not know what alternate interpretation of the Second Amendment is plausible. Establishing a “right to bear arms” (for whatever group of people and whatever purpose!) is, IMO, unintelligible unless restrictions on armament are envisioned and avoidance of such restrictions is intended.
But the amendment did not “establish” the right to bear arms. Rather, the amendment recognized that existing right (which shall not be infringed) as already established. The right, clearly, was pre-existing.
And the reference to “a well-regulated militia” merely represents the framers’ view of what was then the main reason to preserve the right. The right to keep and bear arms, was not contingent on the need to maintain a militia. The reference to militias is simply a *justification,* not a condition.
Yeah, that’s why the first amendment starts “free speech being necessary for publishing comic books” and the fourth says “unreasonable search and seizure being inconvenient for cocktail parties”.
The US constitution and its amendments don’t usually start with spurious examples of how tights may be relevant. If the amendment starts with a reference to militia it’s because militia is the only relevant justification for the following amendment. Keep your guns for all I care (within reason, after you have demonstrated ability to handle it safely and with full liability for whatever happens with it) but don’t torture logic, the English language or common decency to derive some quasi-divine right.
No torturing required. I’m saying only that the amendment, as it’s constructed, acknowledges the pre-existing right to bear arms and that, further, it cites the most prominent and important reason for not infringing on that existing right. It’s a matter of syntax, and it’s extremely unfortunate, but there we are.
Well, if you are going to be pedantic about conditions that existed at the time, you should recognise that the weapons to which the amendment referred were single-shot and muzzle loaded.
And here is where the constitution turns into a religion. This is precisely the kind of discussion held by religious people everywhere as they turn to proof texts out of the Bible for their various interpretations of “God’s will”. The only difference here is the substitution of “the founders” for “God”. In both cases it is taken as given that God/the founders are all wise and knowing and that whatever they intended was, almost by definition, good. Our role is only to discover the intent of these infinitely wise authorities. There is no room in such authoritarian views of right and wrong for a discussion of the merits of what is written in the texts, only an unending appeal to authority.
For what it’s worth, my own position is that if we’re to understand what the various bits of the Constitution mean, we must consider context. The meaning of a sentence cannot be separated from the context in which that sentence was written and the intent of the person, or people, who wrote it. So, IMO, if we wish to understand what the Constitution says, we have to worry about the context in which it was written and the intent of those who wrote it.
However, this does not entail any assumption that the writers were wise and all-knowing! Of course, they may have written something that we now have good reason to believe is simply wrong, or something that was reasonable and well-justified at the time, but is no longer so. I think the view of the composition and purpose of the militia held by American politicians around the time the Bill of Rights was ratified falls into the second category. The idea that national and/or state security depends upon or is best preserved by a militia composed of the armed citizenry was, so far as I can tell, a reasonable idea at the time. However, that view is, at minimum, no longer consistent with how American society works and how we provide national / state defense. We do not rely on citizen-owned and citizen-provided weaponry for national / state defense. We do not consider nearly universal conscription into national / state defense forces reasonable. Instead we have moved to an army / national guard system in which national / state defense is provided by relatively small, specialized, paid forces using government-supplied arms. The view of national / state defense held by Constitution-era politicians is antiquated and, IMO, no longer terribly relevant. However, we haven’t changed the Constitution to reflect this! The Second Amendment has not changed as our society has changed. IMO, it still means what it meant then. We should address the incompatibility of the Second Amendment with modern American society not by reinterpreting that amendment in ahistorical / acontextual ways, but by further amendment. A law doesn’t cease to apply simply because it is no longer a good idea, but because we change it.
Indeed, I wouldn’t argue for ignorance of their intent, and that of course requires contextual knowledge. Unfortunately, in the US the constitution is effectively immutable as a text. While it is in principle possible to change it, it is so near to impossible that the text itself becomes the unalterable reality and all that is left for the rest of us is to argue over it’s “meaning”. If you believe the actual meaning of the text is a gross mistake, you can only try to come up with strained arguments to interpret it differently because the text isn’t going to budge. I didn’t mean to imply that you personally had crossed over from this reality everyone has to live with into a worship of the text and the founders as infallible authorities, but as a practical matter this transformation into a religion is well under way and is a practical fact for many people.
Having grown up in a fundamentalist family, it is nauseatingly familiar state of affairs perfectly constructed to be hermetically sealed against rational thought about the world we actually live in.
There are different levels at work. The current activities of the NSA and CIA are so far over the line of what the Bill of Rights prohibits that it’s not even funny, yet the text remains unchanged.
b&
Agreed! I think you’re right that some people do view the Constitution in a religious light, as a perfect and immutable document–and that this is a severe problem. I just wanted to make my own position clear. 🙂
“A law doesn’t cease to apply simply because it is no longer a good idea, but because we change it.”
Just curious, how would you propose such an amendment should read, and would it pass omniscient and benevolent NRA scrutiny?
This whole post centers about the original intent of the Founders in regard to the 2nd amendment and why they spoke about militias. Interpretation of original intent of the Founders is a large part of the role of the Supreme Court, but not the only role.
I have not read the Federal Papers on the topic, but I have never heard of the idea that the Founders contemplated restricting firearms outside of the use in militias. If they did, I think it would be relevant.
This is spot on. As I said in a prior post about guns, “Who cares what the Founding Fathers’ intent was?” I don’t mean this to say we should ignore the law as established, only that the intent of men two and a quarter centuries ago when the most powerful weapon was a musket should have no bearing on creating reasonable legislation, or amending the Constitution today. Moreover, nothing written by those men can be construed as elevating their opinions at the time to dogmatic proclamations that should last through eternity. They created checks and balances and the ability to amend the law for a reason.
For years I have claimed that every one with a gun(s) be forced to join a militia, march, commit time to drilling etc etc, bivouac, if they are 2nd amendment fans. Now at last, the idea is spreading, in a sense. Let’s have some common sense – if there is any left
It is the Supreme Court that has done the most damage to this country over the course of US history. Al most every celebrated Supreme Court case is a correction of its’ earlier misdeeds. The courts were viewed by the founders as the least dangerous of the three branches of government by the founders. Unfortunately, they did not foresee the power of strong judicial review and the courts becoming a super legislature. From Dred Scott to Plessy v. Ferguson, from Lochner to Citizens United, the Supreme Court is more often a reactionary institution protecting vested entrenched interests and guided by American exceptionalism. Thom Hartmann is correct in his many writings that strong judicial review should be ended. This will never happen as the cult of “constitutionalism” has become an American religion the legitimacy of the Court can never be questioned, even when it installs its’ own preferred person in the office of the president.
“cult of ‘constitutionalism’ has become an American religion”
This is very true. And the courts are it’s priesthood, with all the vested interest that entails. It is disturbing to me how people talk about the constitution and “the founders” so similarly to how they talk about the Bible and god. The constitution is the revelation of the will of “the founders”. Our role, as lesser beings, is merely to try to discern the message that our gods have revealed to us. All of that human impulse to have a tribal authority figure tell you what to do gets transferred to “the founders” in the same way that people abdicate thinking to their gods.
Not to mention that ‘the founders’ were traitors, rebels and terrorists.
From a British perspective, that is. 🙂
Okay, back to reality… they did, on the whole, a pretty good job – for their time. Times change. Language changes. Assuming their wording is unchangeably perfect and infallible is surely almost as absurd as claiming infallibility for the Bible. (Not quite as absurd: we know who wrote the Constitution and it’s a much better pedigree than the Bibble)
“Unfortunately, they did not foresee the power of strong judicial review and the courts becoming a super legislature.”
What??? You do understand who the “Madison” was in ‘Marbury vs.Madison’? You have read The Federalist #78?
Uh, in federalist #78 we find: “Whoever attentively considers the different departments of power must perceive, that, in a government in which they are separated from each other, the judiciary, from the nature of its functions, will always be the least dangerous to the political rights of the Constitution; because it will be least in a capacity to annoy or injure them.” Yeah, right.
sub
I have no problem with people owning guns as long as they are combat trained with them, like a police officer would need to be. Naturally this would include a background check and mental health evaluation.
I know so many people with handguns, that outside of a target range, would have absolutely no idea how to use it in an actual situation where you might need a gun. Or, more importantly, when NOT to use it. “But the 2nd amendment” is the only reason they think they are justified in having one. Weak sauce.
“…like a police officer would need to be.”
Are you describing your understanding of the current state of affairs, or is this just wishful thinking?
This is the “only ones” argument, as to which I continually ask: “what is your factual basis for trusting police with guns?”
FBI stats show that concealed-carry permit holders are better trained than police, or at least have fewer gun “accidents” than police, and commit fewer crimes with them. They certainly kill fewer people.
My mom has her concealed carry license. I agree completely that she is exceedingly unlikely to commit a crime with her gun or to shoot anyone for any reason. The question I keep asking myself, though, is WTF? Why does my mom want a concealed handgun?
Now when she was about 25 she worked a night shift at a factory and bought a truly cute little gun to keep in her glove compartment. She felt very vulnerable driving alone late at night and parking in the company’s vast dark parking lot out in the middle of nowhere. While I sort of doubt the gun would keep her safe I at least understand why she felt vulnerable in that situation and why having a gun in the car made her feel better. Once she went back to working day shift, though, she ditched the gun. She lived without a gun for the next thirty years. Now, however, she might carry a gun to the grocery store in broad daylight (though concealed, not terrorizing the other patrons like the yahoos in the picture above). What happened? Crime has gone down. She is much less likely to get mugged or raped now than she was back when she ditched her glove compartment gun and went thirty crime-free years without one. I think what has happened is that she has absorbed a steady stream of propaganda that pushes fear and paranoia and that carrying a gun is the only way to be safe in a world come unhinged. This stream of propaganda comes from people like the yahoos in the photo above, from the contemporary NRA, and from a wide range of right wing groups she has, by dent of her sympathy with their religious posturing, come to surround herself with.
You are right that many gun control efforts are misguided, if not actually comic (gun buybacks? at below market value? You’re joking, right?). It bothers me much less that the NRA and others oppose a wide range of regulations than it does that so many push an anti-social culture of fear and paranoia with the snake oil cure of “more guns”. Arming my mom to go to the grocery store is not progress.
gluonspring:
I think that you pose fair questions; I have little quarrel with what you have written, and I certainly agree: “Arming my mom to go to the grocery store is not progress.” And certainly, you are correct that: “…carrying a gun is the only way to be safe in a world come unhinged” is untrue. There are LOTS of things that we can do to fight violence.
That being said, I think it unfair to call “more guns” “snake oil.” Think of it more as unpleasant medicine. Most of the critiques of John Lott’s work have boiled down to “I don’t like his conclusions.” And like it or not, a guy widely regarded as America’s leading criminologist, FSU Professor Gary Kleck, reached essentially the same conclusions. And states that have moved from restrictive-carry to shall-issue have not experienced rises in gun crime. (I’m not implying causation; just pointing out that the data to support the contrary view is non-existent.)
Agreed that people who don’t want the level of responsibility that carrying a gun necessarily involves should not be brow-beaten into doing so.
Planned on publishing this one tomorrow, but it’s timely to this thread.
http://pictoraltheology.blogspot.com/2014/06/there-are-many-comics-like-it-but-this.html
If you’ve never been to a gun show you should. It’s an eye opener.
Love the pictorialtheology statement. Confronting gun ownership rights advocates with their philosophy carried to its logical absurdity would likely producte the same results, unfortunately, as confronting FOX vierwership with the fact that WMD never turned up in Iraq.
The scenario The Daily Show posits, on the other hand, where Open Carry Meets Stand Your Ground, has an excellent chance of coming true:
http://thedailyshow.cc.com/videos/mplvs5/keep-gun-and-carry-on
A 1959 Gallup poll revealed that 60% of Americans favored banning handguns. What changed? Crime is down, violence is waning so what has caused the general public to change and favor gun ownership?
The number of people owning guns seems to be declining in the U.S. but a contingent of the population has been buying additional firarms hence an increase in gun sales. What do these folks fear so much that they have to always have a gun at hand and an arsenal at home? Why are they so insecure?
I have never been in a situation here or abroad, and I’ve even been stuck in the middle of a revolution a time or two, where I thought if only I had a Glock 17 or Beretta M9 with me.
Most of these fearful gun purchasers are buying them to hoard them because they believe the left will triumph and try to take them away.
I daresay nearly all gun owners who are right-wing believe the same to some extent. These people vote. They elect right-wing politicians for this one single issue.
Every time someone in the popular left-wing media writes an article demanding it is time to ban guns, Karl Rove squeals with delight.
Yep.
I don’t see the logic of hoarding guns out of fear they will eventually be taken away. If “the left” can take one gun away, they can take all of them away.
The UK has strict gun control but we have had our share of massacres: Hungerford 1987, 16 dead; Dunblane 1996, 17 dead,; Cumbria 2010, 12 dead. If anyone is determined to ‘bear arms’ they can and will do so.
Three massacres in 27 years – too many but a lot less frequent than in the US. If guns are freely available its a whole lot easier to perpetrate such a crime.
And two of the quoted massacres pre-dated the current controls.
All of those massacres were committed with legally owned guns.
I’m still a fan of regulating the manufacture and sale of brass (and equivalent) casings, whether or not there’s a bullet inside them.
b&
The anti-gun interpretations of the 2nd are just as wacky as the ultra-pro-gun ones. Yes, the right to keep and bear arms needs to be regulated by law just like all the other Constitutional rights. None of them are absolute. But it is also an *individual* right. That’s why it says “the right of the people”, not “the right of the States”.
Oh, and in the 18th century “well-regulated” meant *trained”, not “controlled by law”.
As for repealing the 2nd, disarming the civilian population…complete non-starters as far as I’m concerned. Giving the government a legal monopoly on ownership of weapons is a very bad idea. I’m constantly amazed that the same ideological factions that complain endlessly about abuse of government power, social inequality, etc. also somehow think disarming the population is going to help.
Finally, no, I don’t think incidents like the UCLA, however tragic, warrant eliminating civilian gun ownership. The facts of the matter are that cheeseburgers are a far bigger threat to public health than guns — and the number one American mass murderer didn’t use a gun. He used fertilizer.
‘Oh, and in the 18th century “well-regulated” meant *trained”, not “controlled by law”.’
When did the definition of “regulated” change? Some time in the 19th century?
I suppose that that is reasonable, in principle. After all, laws, statues, ordinances, regulations, rules can be construed as training so as to keep the populace in line. “Potty training” results in a well-regulated state of affairs.
I think that the evidence shows that “trained,” by itself, might be a bit narrow. More like “trained and equipped.”
“and the number one American mass murderer didn’t use a gun. He used fertilizer.”
That’s an absurd, misleading and irrelevant statement. Also a massive red herring. McVeigh didn’t just pick up a sack of quick-grow from his local plant shop. He used THREE TONS of ammonium nitrate fertilizer mixed with nitromethane (crummy ol’ Anfo wasn’t good enough for him) and 7 crates of Tovex blasting explosive. This is just a hell of a lot of physical work. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklahoma_City_bombing).
Equally, the perpetrators of the most deadly attack on US soil used Boeings or pocket knives, depending which way you look at it.
Either of those is absolutely irrelevant to the gun-control debate.
(Unless somebody wants to argue that airline passengers should also be allowed to concealed-carry guns at will. That would be entirely consistent with the NRA’s good-Rambo theory. It would make for an interesting debate 😉
Also a lot of fun when some Rambo-wannbe puts a couple rounds through the airframe at 30,000 feet!
abeastwood: again with the Rambo insults? I thought that we were supposed to be discussing ideas here, not disrepecting others…
That being said, have you seriously never heard of “frangible ammunition”? Everyone who has spent two minutes looking at this subject knows about it…EXCEPT THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, which is arming the air marshals. Just another case of armed civilians being a far safer bet than law enforcement: http://www.studentnewsdaily.com/daily-news-article/air_marshals_warn_their_bullets_are_too_powerful/.
Giving the government a legal monopoly on ownership of weapons is a very bad idea. Such as in the UK?
Just a question: If one of these NRA flashmobs showed up and aimed a gun at someone (ya’know, just carelessly shifting it around, not necessarily deliberately aiming it at them) – could they be criminally charged?
Because if you are wandering around in a crowd with an unholstered gun in your hands, it is bound to be aimed at someone sometime, thereby breaking the #1 rule of gun safety.
The disparity between the power of the government’s weapons and those of the citizenry is so great that arguing it is dangerous to eliminate private gun ownership makes little sense to me and I don’t even oppose gun ownership.
There is definitely something blinkered about thinking it’s OK to regulate the ownership of hand grenades and TOW missiles but not handguns on the theory that citizens need guns as the ultimate backstop against government tyranny. It’s a little bit comic, actually.
Still, it is true that ordinary rifles can cause a lot of headache for much better equipped troops, as invaders and anti-revolutionary armies the world over have found out. So it’s not nothing to have rifles to resist tyranny. Handguns? Not so much.
Having read 1984 and been disturbed by it and Orwell’s observation, “If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.”, I do feel some sympathy for the desire to have some kind of backstop against that future. OTOH, the yahoos who are so fond of guns seem as likely to be the source of the boot as the resistance to it, so I can’t say that I have a lot of confidence in the solution of just arming the mobs. A better backstop is probably just to make sure everyone reads 1984 and has an appropriate amount of fear and loathing for the totalitarian future it describes.
I grew up around a lot of guns, there was a big gun cabinet in the living room full of rifles and shotguns, and my parents always had a handgun in their nightstand. I never took an interest in them and came to regard their nightstand gun as utterly foolish when my dad confronted me one night with it thinking I was a burglar rather than a hungry midnight snacking teen. No real burglars have ever seen the gun, of course, so it’s obvious that if anyone is ever going to be shot by the thing it’s almost certainly going to be a family member.
Anyway, all of those guns seem relatively benign to me in a way that the yahoos invading Wal Mart or gang members with handguns tucked in their pants do not. I have not given gun regulation much serious thought, so I won’t proffer any solutions, but it does seem that it has gotten a bit out of hand.
What’s often missing from the debate is a cost / benefit analysis. And, when you perform one, you find that, yes, there are a few incidents in which an armed citizen used a gun to good effect in bringing a crisis situation to an end. There are, however, practically innumerably more incidents in which people die from gunshot wounds in cases where death was in no way necessary or unavoidable. There’re the rampages, the too-young-to-understand kids playing with guns and killing each other, the inner-city drive-by shootings, the “suicides by cop,” and all the rest.
In times past, the dangers may well have tipped gun ownership in the other direction. But, especially with the availability of pepper spray and similar (typically) non-lethal self-defense alternatives, there’s just no way to empirically justify gun ownership as a way of improving the safety of our society.
b&
Not forgetting the student with pepper spray who recently took down an armed shooter in a Seattle university, no doubt saving many lives.
Well, I hadn’t …
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Good grief.
Pepper spray? Against a gun?
The ‘innumerable’ ways a gun might be used to kill an innocent person is nothing but speculation on your part.
If a person doesn’t have a history of violence, drug use, mental illness, etc., then the likelihood of said person becoming a victim of his own weapon is probably quite remote.
Have you been living in a cave the past few days?
http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/06/us/seattle-shooting-hero/
Then kindly speculate about CDC statistics:
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/FIREARM_DEATHS_AND_DEATH_RATES.pdf
30,000 people per year excluding legal intervention, and enough children that they had to break those statistics out separately. How many of those dead people would you say were and weren’t innocent? How many of those guns were used responsibly?
Cheers,
b&
Hey Ben, do you realize that quoting one! example of pepper spray being used effectively doesn’t make a small dent in the argument that pepper spray might just make a perpetrator even more pissed off!!?
And Ben, did you fail to notice that every chart in that link you provided showed that gun deaths from every scenario were DECREASING!!
Come on Ben, try paying attention.
Oh, and Ben, what we’re discussing is the issue of a gun in the hands of a competent, non violent, non suicidal American possibly being used to kill an innocent person verses being used in self defense and none of the information that you linked to added anything remotely useful to this discussion.
So, again Ben, trying paying attention. Your arguments on this subject are about as lucid as Sara Palin’s.
Let’s knock off the comparisons to Sarah Palin, okay? My rule is to talk about ideas, not diss another person’s character.
” . . . came to regard their nightstand gun as utterly foolish when my dad confronted me one night with it thinking I was a burglar rather than a hungry midnight snacking teen.”
Did your dad assume any culpability in the matter, or did he knee-jerk hold it all your fault and, if so, what did he propose you ought to do vis-a-vis his his itchy finger? OK to get up and go to the bathroom during the night?
We didn’t talk about the gun, per se. He expressed irritation with me for being up and making noise but I think he was rattled a little too. I don’t know when the change happened, I think after my brother was born, but at some point the gun acquired a trigger lock and moved to the top shelf of their bedroom closet (that I knew this tells you how useful it is to try to put a gun, or anything else, where your kids won’t find them). My dad is even a bit of a safety nut and usually insisted we do everything in the most boringly safe way possible, but even he was conned by the idea that he’d be safer with a handy gun than without.
“OK to get up and go to the bathroom during the night?”
Going to the bathroom can be a Very Bad Idea…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_of_Oscar_Pistorius
(Sorry, that was in bad taste. Couldn’t resist it 🙁
I respect your comment, Dr. Coyne.
I intended to bring a touch of humor into a contentious discussion, but it perhaps came off looking rather tacky.
Someone – possibly several – noted that the the NRA’s “self defence” argument has just been refuted by a hall monitor with a pepper spray…
(I’m sorry I can’t now find the article I read this morning.)
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Ant, you see this as a refutation? I see this as a decent argument in favor. That the weapon this time was pepper spray, rather than a projectile firearm…what of it?
I’m pretty sure that campus regs would have prohibited possessing the pepper spray on campus. And when the cops showed up, did they only bring pepper spray?
Now you’re just being obtuse…
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You pose the question: “What part of “a well regulated Militia” doesn’t the Supreme Court understand?”
Answer: All of it.
The NRA, in the manner it currently promotes its program, is a home-grown, terrorist organization. It’s purpose is to spread fear of the government, of our neighbors, of stranger, anyone and anything we might consider “the other.” It estranges us from our fellow citizens, it works to dissolve the ties which holds American society together. That it is doing this isn’t really the question any more; exactly why it’s doing this is the question which should be asked.
Small penises. Oh, and fear of black people, too.
I’m all for Justice Stevens’s addition to the Second Amendment. It’s overdue. Is it likely to get the support it would need? Clearly not, not in the foreseeable future, not as long as corporate money buys elections.
Our problem is that the Second Amendment was poorly written. A careful reading of the amendment confirms that in the Heller decision the US Supreme Court was correct in its interpretation of the amendment’s syntax as it is structured.
The language of the amendment refers to a pre-existing right, a right that the amendment pledges to protect. That is, the amendment does not establish the right; the right exists. The reference to “a well-regulated militia” merely points to the framers’ view of what was then the saient reason to preserve the right. The right to keep and bear arms, however, was not contingent on the need to maintain a militia. The reference to militias is simply a *justification,* not a condition.
In other words, the people’s right to bear arms is expressly acknowledged in the latter portion of the amendment itself, and the amendment explicitly recognizes that existing right. That is what we have to contend with today–it’s a curse inadvertently imposed on us by the framers. They could never have anticipated the weapons technology we’re dealing with today, of course–but we’re stuck, for now, with the framers’ language.
Where I live – Vermont – we have one of the most lax concealed-carry laws in the country. You do need a permit to carry a concealed handgun in the state, and we have one of the lowest rates of gun violence in the country.
But what we absolutely do not allow is carrying loaded long weapons within 500 feet of a domicile or within city limits. Long arms must be unloaded in cars as well. Our laws seem a lot more reasonable than Texas, where these Open Carry nutcases are parading around intimidating people, including people at Town meetings.
The NRA just apologized to these jokers for criticizing their actions. Madness.
I live in Vermont, too, and I appreciate the state’s lack of firearms regulation, and yet our very low crime rate can be fairly attributed to our state’s being both the most rural state in the country (with the highest percentage of its population living outside of urban centers) and among the most culturally and racially homogeneous states. Vermont is also the most educated state and the least religious state, which may have a measure of influence on the crime rate, too.
Sorry, that should be: “… you do NOT need a permit to carry…”
I am still not convinced that a society with zero guns would maximize safety, which is what Sam Harris argues, but it would almost certainly be safer than the society we currently have. I don’t really see much point in that debate though since we’re well past the point of having any reasonable method to create that society.
What we should be doing us intensive training and licensing for gun owners. Make it mandatory for any gun or ammo purchase that the buyer shows an appropriate license/certification for the stuff they are buying. Make laws regarding private sales such that if firearms are exchanged without the proper paperwork, the registered owner is liable for any crimes committed with that firearm (similar to the way exchange of title is required for home and vehicle sales). Extend this even to enforce liability on gun owners for crimes committed with guns they own.
Of course measures like these in our current environment may be just as much of a pipe dream as Jerry’s gunless society. When we’re going the other way and allowing open carry in churches and bars (the NRA’S position that potentially inebriated people walking around with firearms is truly baffling; even the Old West had men put down their weapons before entering saloons), there’s not much hope until we have far reaching changes in the way America conducts Government business, starting with the influence of lobbyists.
JAC wrote: “Sometimes five or six guys—they’re always men—enter a store together, all with rifles. Only a country that’s deeply screwed up could allow something like this. And open carry, with or without a permit, is legal in 32 of the 50 states.”
Actually you can open carry in 45 states. You can conceal and or open carry in 4 states without a license. These states are Vermont, Wyoming, Arizona and Alaska.
Notice also the pictures of women open carrying long guns, contrary to Dr. Coyne’s quote.
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2014/06/05/texas-gun-group-no-more-rifles-in-target/?mod=yahoo_hs
I believe you wrote the children’s book, “My Parents Open Carry,” no? Your previous signatures used to link to it, though I note they don’t here.
The book is about this, according to Amazon:
*****
Come join 13-year-old Brenna Strong along with her mom, Bea, and her dad, Richard, as they spend a typical Saturday running errands and having fun together. What’s not so typical is that Brenna’s parents lawfully open carry handguns for self-defense. The Strongs join a growing number of families that are standing up for their 2nd Amendment rights by open carrying and bringing gun ownership out of the closet and into the mainstream. If you open carry and have a difficult time explaining why to your family and friends, or if you want to learn about the open carry of a handgun, or if you’ve wondered if open carry is right for you, then this book is what you need. My Parents Open Carry was written in the hope of providing a basic overview of the right to keep and bear arms as well as the growing practice of the open carry of a handgun. We fear our children are being raised with a biased view of our constitution and especially in regards to the 2nd Amendment. Before writing this, we looked for pro-gun children’s books and couldn’t find any. Our goal was to provide a wholesome family book that reflects the views of the majority of the American people, i.e., that self-defense is a basic natural right and that firearms provide the most efficient means for that defense. We truly hope you will enjoy this book and read and discuss it with your children over and over again. As you read this book, you will learn about the growing practice of open carry, the 2nd Amendment, and the right and responsibility of self-defense. Home School Teachers: This book is an excellent text to use as a starting point on the discussion of the 2nd Amendment.
****
This is, to my mind, reprehensible. Do you admit writing that book and stand by its message? You should be ashamed of yourself.
In a peaceful community, where the threat of violence is negligible, all that open carry says to ordinary people who know nothing about those civilians who choose to display their guns as if they were fashion accessories, is “I could kill you right now.”
You want to carry? Carry concealed. Don’t imagine your “right” is equivalent to a right to intimidate and dominate others.
At the risk of being the contrarian in what one recent writer referred to as this “echo chamber,” I must note that there is a LOT of vitriol on display here.
As an (albeit reluctant) NRA member, I’ve learned that I’m stupid, religious, doctrinaire, racist, testosterone-poisoned…did I miss anything?
Is this really how you want to treat those of us who are atheists, relentlessly pro-science, and in agreement with you on so many subjects, just because we also own guns? Does it occur to ANYONE that there’s something just a bit counter-productive about that?
I won’t address here the many misstatements of law, especially constitutional law. (Especially about the “militia” language.) And as far as “intent” goes, I don’t know how much clearer the founders could have been:
“Whereas civil rulers, not having their duty to the people duly before them, may attempt to tyrannize, and as the military forces which must be occasionally raised to defend our country, might pervert their power to the injury of their fellow citizens, the people are confirmed by the article in their right to keep and bear their private arms.”
–Tench Coxe, “Remarks on the First Part of the Amendments to the Federal Constitution,” under the pseudonym “A Pennsylvanian” in the Philadelphia Federal Gazette, June 18, 1789.
But I’m not “religious” about the founders’ intent; but neither were they. That’s why they provided a way to change it. (I’m also not religious about the Constitution itself–I recommend Spooner’s “Constitution of No Authority.”) But if you want to start chewing chunks out of the Constitution while still pretending to want its protections in other ways, you can’t really complain if the baby gets thrown out with the bathwater, and the First Amendment disappears with the Second.
I am from Texas. I personally know a great number of reasonable gun owners (though I think they are mostly deluded about what owning guns will do for them) and sizable number of crazy gun owners as well. Anyone who makes a show of displaying their guns in Target is definitely a sad member of the latter group. The NRA has recently affirmed their support for this kind of crazy behavior. It is difficult to see how any reasonable gun owner can continue to support the NRA given the tack towards crazy town their mission has taken over the past couple of decades. The many gun owners I know are mostly personally harmless ( even the patently crazy ones are pretty harmless personally) but their advocacy of reckless at-any-cost gun policies makes them harmful to society and greatly diminishes their credibility as reasonable people.
Your last sentence complains of a have-your-cake and eat it too mentality towards the Bill of Rights (it’s a bit of a non sequitur, since obviously you can work to support the 1st while working to weaken the 2nd, but I take your point). The same is true of claiming to be a reasonable person while supporting extremist groups. You can’t support an extremist group and then complain when people think you’re an extremist.
Calm down, Coli. I’m sure you don’t act out like the flash mobs and stalkers we’re talking about. Or itch to use castle or stand-your-ground to the extent of baiting your game. And I’m sure as a supporter of science, free thought, etc., you’ll see that there are quite a few fools with guns… and perhaps that some regulation of gun use [not ownership] would be prosocial.
lkr, I could not agree more. Some regulation of gun use IS prosocial, and smart. For example, I would absolutely be in favor of a law that made it illegal for an armed person to shoot anyone who did not pose an acute threat to that civilian or others. If only we could have laws like that!
How about addressing the fact that the constitution of the USA was written over 200 years ago by the men of the time, and is neither sacred nor without failings. Perhaps a document written when the only power was fire, and the only guns were single shot weapons that took several minutes to reload is not the ideal guide for the 21st century.
That’s understood. The Constitution can certainly be amended, and amendments can be altered, as Justice Stevens has cogently advised. The process, however, is long and complex. In the meantime, as the Court made explicit in Heller, established rights (like speech, for example) may be circumscribed as the people in a given community see fit. That, for now, is the path to take.
This is response to Chrysoprase’s post of June 7, 2014 at 6:57 pm. (There was no “reply” button after that post.)
I’m sorry, Chrysoprase, but when you say “…but don’t torture logic, the English language…,” you’re wrong as a matter of law. Many of the founders were renowned lawyers. Surely they understood what “precatory language” is, and so can you–look it up.
More than that, if you want to insist on the meaning of words, you prove too much. Governments have powers; citizens have rights. The Second Amendment clearly refers to rights and people. If the founders had meant to preserve the power of the government to raise a militia–no way they would have used this language.
Other Amendments are directed at specific temporal conditions which aren’t even mentioned. There was no need to direct the Third Amendment at the British Crown; everyone knew what that Amendment was about. So if the local SWAT team wanted to commandeer your house for a few months to set up a drug bust, would you argue that the 3rd Amendment doesn’t protect you, because they’re not soldiers? (And yes, I’m aware that there is also a Fifth Amendment argument to be made.)
One of the things puzzling me about this (speaking as a Brit resident in France) is I was under the impression that if a citizen feels threatened, then they’re entitled to use “deadly force” against that threat (stand your ground?).
Surely if that citizen was to see a gang of armed fellows striding towards them looking threatening, he or she could legitimately gun them down using their (legally) concealed weapon?
Just like the old movies of the Wild West?
This is in response to Richard Bond’s post of June 8, 2014 at 5:43 am; there was no “reply” button.
“Well, if you are going to be pedantic about conditions that existed at the time, you should recognise that the weapons to which the amendment referred were single-shot and muzzle loaded.”
Exactly, Mr. Bond. As you say–the weapons to which the amendment referred, just as today, were state-of-the-art military weapons. (Exactly the reasoning of the U.S. Supreme Court in U.S. v. Miller, (1939) 307 U.S. 174.)
In fact, one of the few advantages that the “rebel terrorists” had over their better-provisioned, better-fed British adversaries was that the British were mostly equipped with the Brown Bess and other variants on the Land Pattern Musket, a smoothbore unreliable even at fifty yards, and sometimes far less. The colonists, however, in many cases had a weapon far superior (for some purposes–it was slower to reload) to those the military possessed–the Kentucky, or Deckard rifle, which as implied by the name, was rifled, and accurate at far greater distances.
Exactly, Mr. Bond. As you say–the weapons to which the amendment referred, just as today, were state-of-the-art military weapons.
Dammit, you’re right, Coli. What the Founders meant was to create the inalienable right for us all to have state-of-the-art military weapons. Me, I want a few ICBMs and a truckload of CBWs. You?
Very funny, realthog. Before I answer, must I pretend that this is the first time I’ve heard this silly argument?
I wasn’t around in 1939, when the U.S. Supreme Court seemed to back themselves into just the corner you suggest. (Hold on–you’re not saying that that isn’t what Miller says, are you?) But they could back themselves out of it without dismantling the 2nd Amendment, and I predict that that is just what they will do, should the question be presented. The argument is that the right to “personal” arms is protected. I haven’t tried to analyze that argument, but I think that you can see how it might work.
My disquiet is with your apparent acceptance of the government having access to these weapons. Do you really trust them? Look at the carnage that the hegemonists who own our government have wreaked on peasants all over the world, who had no quarrel with us.
you mean that, every time you’ve made the argument that the Founders wanted us to have state-of-the-art weaponry, people have pointed out the fallacy in the argument — that the Founders could have had no idea what “state-of-the-art weaponry” would come to be — and yet you still continue to make it?
My disquiet is with your apparent acceptance of the government having access to these weapons.
I think you must be answering another commenter, because I never said — nor even implied — anything of the sort.
Here’s an analysis of the grammar of the Second Amendment:
http://www.constitution.org/2ll/schol/2amd_grammar.htm
Hoplophobes are desperately trying to twist the clear intent of the Second Amendment, a recognition of the right to defend oneself, because of irrational fear. Even the politically motivated CDC was forced to admit that defensive use of firearms is an “important crime deterrent.”
Look at the numbers, not in fear, and there is no rational reason for disarming peaceful people.
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