Second Amendment Needs Amending

When the first ten amendments, or Bill of Rights, was added to the U.S. Constitution in 1791, there were more slaves in the United States of America than there were white male voters (most states required men to own a substantial amount of property to qualify for the franchise).

The Second (II) Amendment stated: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of the State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed."

In 1791 arms were all muzzle-loaded. Pistols, rifles, and cannon required a lengthy procedure to reload and fire. Troops often fired by thirds, so that two-thirds could be reloading and preparing to fire at any one time. Massacres were a team effort: a single man could not reload fast enough to overcome a determined group of defenders.

Much has been made over the centuries of the combining of the phrase about militia with the strong phrase "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed." Remembering the Revolutionary War, men who emphasized the importance of freedom and democracy worried that a central government controlling centrally-stored militia weapons might more easily establish a tyranny. If citizens held their own weapons, they would be better able to respond to an attempt to establish a monarchy or other dictatorship. A militia itself might be used to establish a dictatorship, as had happened with Cromwell in England only a bit over a century before our own revolution.

I believe "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms," was about personal protection and economic security, not just trying to ensure a republican form of government. A muzzle-loading firearm was a family treasure, especially in rural and frontier areas.

Times have changed. Every adult citizen has had the right to vote since the mid 1960s. We have 220 years of continuous operation of our democratic-republic. It has been 150 years since our only full-scale Civil War. The 4 million inhabitants of 1790 have become 330 million. Guns and rifles are mass produced in factories and even semi-automatic weapons can fire many rounds in a single minute. Automatic weapons can mow down crowds in less than a minute.

We need to ask ourselves, what do we really need out of the 2nd Amendment? And we need to write a new one.

I don't buy the hunting argument against gun control. While a tiny minority of Americans still hunt for food, most hunting is a sport. A game, in which any food production is secondary. I see no reason that hunters should not go back to muzzle-loading rifles and even bows and arrows. I don't see how blasting a squirrel, deer, or wolf with a semi-automatic weapon is much sport. Load your muzzle, tramp throught the wild, try aiming instead of pointing, and if you miss your shot, you have an opportunity to do more hiking.

The same for target practice. Shoot once and reload should be fine.

People have a right to self-defense, but even if you carry a concealed semi-automatic weapon someone can put a bullet in your head before you can pull it out. With semi-automatic weapons eliminated, each of us has a far better chance of surviving an attack. Carrying a one-shot pistol should be adequate for almost all self-defense needs. Having a well-trained, effective police force is a better idea.

That leaves the police, the National Guard, and the federal military forces. They will have modern weapons. That means they will be in a position to abuse their power. But the real power to oppose corrupt police has never been in shooting back. It has always been political. Corrupt police cannot exist without corrupt politicians.

When we say "the security of the State" we mean not just its physical security, but that the government functions in the interest of the people. Preserving the rights of minorities while promoting the general welfare no longer relies on winning a revolutionary war or a civil war. Citizen participation in government is the key to good governance in our modern world.

My candidate for a replacement for the Second Amendment is simple: "The right of the people to self-defense shall not be infringed. The right of the people to democratic control of police, militia, and other armed forces shall not be infringed."

Conservatives, who are more likely to be pro-gun than Moderns, in many other cases have argued for the Original Constitution. They argue that the powers of government should be limited to what was written in the Constitution in 1789. Moderns typically believe the phrases of the Constitution should flex to deal with the real situation on the ground. In this case watch the arguments go into reverse.

I believe it is fair to use the Original Constitution style argument to conclude that the Second Amendment only gives the people the right to keep and bear arms that were available when the amendment was passed in 1791. That should be the standard of the Supreme Court and state courts while we are in the amendment process.

Conservatives will argue the contrary, thereby undercutting their whole bundle of doctrines based on refusing to see that times have simply changed. Technology has changed, commerce has changed, knowledge has changed, culture has changed, and people themselves have changed. So too must government change and the Constitution interpreted in light of developments.

If we try to enact more gun control without amending the Second Amendment, we bring the very nature of the Constitution itself into question because the wording of the amendment is so clear. Amending the Constitution is difficult, but it is the right way to proceed in a nation that uses a Constitution as the basis of law.

Let's amend the Second Amendment. It should have been done long ago.

[This essay first appeared as a Mendoday editorial]

March 2010 Wrap-up

Barack Obama is opening up offshore America to oil drilling. Except where it would cost the Democratic Party its hold on the gravy train, I mean the government, like California, Oregon, Washington, and politically sensitive areas of the Atlantic and Gulf seaboards.

He's pushing nuclear power plants too. Can we change the definition of environmentalist? Yes We Can!

Meanwhile some poor stupid Christ-crazed slobs were arrested in Michigan for plotting against the government. They are accused of teaching themselves how to make bombs. That is what the U.S. Army and the Internet are for. Not to mention Burn Notice. Bet the FBI is not going to arrest the director or producers or writers of Burn Notice. That would be unamerican.

Apparently the Stone family and friends and the Feds agree on one thing: people are so angry with the government right now, just one incident might set off a violent revolution. It would be a right-wing revolution because leftists in the U.S. are mostly pacifists for gun control. Right-wingers are pretty well armed, from what I have seen. But I guarantee you, except for the Obama fans, who are centrists no matter what the Tea Party folk say, nobody is very fond of the government right now. Prosperity is the friend of incumbents; newly impoverished people are the most dangerous revolutionary element since they still have middle-class skills.

The Stone family arrests are bull, and it would be the same if any leftist were arrested on similar charges. Our Founding Farters were rebels, and they thought a government should be careful about driving people into armed rebellion. They wrote a bit into the U.S. Constitution, Article III, Section 3:

Treason against the United States shall consist only in waging War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.

Which is to say, you can't commit treason by grumbling about the government. You can't even commit treason by talking about committing treason. You have to wage war against the government to commit treason.

Of course weasels will argue that the Stones were not arrested for Treason. But of course they were. They had stockpiled weapons, yes, but 18.3% of Americans are guilty of that.

Maybe the Stones would have gone through with their plans, but 99% of the time people who are not professional criminals find an excuse for chickening out. Which is probably a good thing, unless your government is being run by Nazis. Since the Gestapo, I mean Stasi, I mean FBI had an agent in the ranks of the Stone family, they had plenty of time to see if the twits were really going to wage ware against the United States. All they had to do was say "We are Watching You" and the Stones would have crumbled like badly written iPhone code.

In fact, the militia folk did not have any explosives of their own. Those were going to be provided by a paid informer. Paid by the FBI. The informer's identity has not been released, and the Stone's defense attorney has not been allowed to question him.

Meanwhile, our non-Nazi, pseudo-environmentalist Peace Prize winning President is repeating former President Richard Nixon's Vietnam mistake in Afghanistan exactly. He thinks by sending more U.S. troops there he can pressure the Taliban (here used broadly, meaning everyone in Afghanistan who hates the U.S., which is just about everyone) into peace negotiations. Nixon believed the same thing about the North Vietnamese. The results in Afghanistan are being kept quiet, but apparently on the average day the U.S. nows has two of its gunmen killed by the Enemy, and another eight wounded. It isn't exactly the battle of Stalingrad, but it is sad and it is expensive. Whether the Taliban negotiate or not, they'll be there long after the U.S. is gone.

Supreme Court Rules on Gun Control Laws

Before plunging into a commentary on this week's Supreme Court decision on gun control, note that I added two book reviews to iiipublishing.com, of Memoirs by Harry S. Truman and of How Nonviolence Protects the State by Peter Gelderloos.

I am in agreement with the basic line of reasoning of the United States Supreme Court in their opinion that the 2nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution does recognize the right of an individual citizen to own firearms, within reason. [See full text of DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA ET AL. v. HELLER]

Liberals, and other gun-control advocates, have long argued that the right to be armed only applies to a "well regulated militia." Before examining the issue, here is the full 2nd Amendment (Ratified December 15, 1791":

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.

This section of the Constitution, like the rest of it, was not handed down by some God, but was created by a committee of men (in this case, white, prosperous, male men). I think guns are a problem for our society. I find some of the arguments for gun-control to be strong. The problem for the gun-control advocates is that they want the 2nd Amendment to have a meaning different than what it actually has. Even in law books I have noted arguments that simply ignore history and contextual clues to the meaning of this important section of our Constitution.

If you don't like the 2nd Amendment, you should try to amend the Constitution. Misreading the Amendment just shows people how dishonest you are.

Think back to the general context of the writing of the Constitution and the subsequent ratification of the Bill of Rights. Each state had its own government, and they were united under the Articles of Confederation during the Revolutionary War. Most people were content for the States to merely be confederated, but some wanted a stronger central government, in particular the wealthiest, most powerful and most conservative families. In the late 1780's in many States debtors and creditors were practically at war with each other; the economy was limping along; and the debts of most States and the national government that had accumulated in the Revolutionary War were mostly unpaid. In Pennsylvania the legislature had been taken over by small farmers, to the discomfort of its previous controllers, the merchants of Philadelphia. Then Shays' Rebellion took place in Massachusetts. Rebellion against England was one thing; rebellion against the ruling classes of the States was intolerable to them.

A convention to amend the Articles of Confederation had been called to take place in Annapolis [Annapolis Convention], with the sole purpose of the agenda being to facilitate trade and commerce. But a quorum did not show up. Panicked by Shays Rebellion, the representatives of the most powerful men in the Americas then met in secret and decided that to insure their rule and the security of their private property, the Articles would have to be thoroughly re-written, with much power taken away from the States and invested in the national government. Yet there were many conflicts of interest among these ruling men, and in some cases they did look to the good of the entire nation. The result was the proposed U.S. Constitution.

A majority of citizens did not like the proposed Constitution, if only because it was new and strange. When allowed to vote on it, a majority voted against it. However, by combining the use of some pretty dishonest tactics with a promise to add a Bill of Rights to the document as soon as possible, eventually all the states chose to join the new national government [and all states believed they could voluntarily leave a government that they voluntarily joined].

So when you look at the first ten amendments to the Constitution, what you are seeing is a manifestation of the concerns of those who opposed a strong central government. They wanted individual rights protected, and one of the most sacred individual rights is to have a say in decisions that are going to be applied to you. Just as citizens did not want decisions made for them in London, they did not want very many decisions made for them by a distant national government.

In particular, they remembered that the London government had sought to disarm them at the beginning of the Revolutionary War. To be disarmed is to be defeated. To be disarmed when another party is armed is to be the slave of that other party.

People feared a strong central government. They did not want the Army of the United States of America to be the sole possessor of armaments. They wanted the states to have militias. And within the states they did not want one political faction disarming another political faction. The best way to insure that is to allow individuals to own weapons or to store the weapons owned by the militias in their own homes. As people had learned in the Revolutionary War, if all the arms were in one place, they were easily seized.

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State ..." Note it does not say "being necessary to the security of a free Nation," or "being necessary to the security of an individual." A free state is one that cannot have its rights, or the rights of its citizens, trampled on by the national government, or a foreign power, or the national government in league with a foreign power.

I am frankly surprised that the Supreme Court does not want to disarm all Americans. It seems like the very model of an unelected, dictatorial government. But note that 4 members of the Supreme Court did vote to disarm the citizens.

Guns are dangerous. People get killed by accident every year, and many are killed in anger by people who regret such actions later. But intelligence is dangerous, and electing people to govern for us is dangerous; danger lurks even in things we create for our own safety.

If we want to minimize people's desire to own hand guns for self defense, we must first make them feel secure. If we want to minimize crime, we need to minimize economic injustice and maximize education and opportunity. People may have forgotten about the dangers of government, but they cannot forget about the dangers posed by criminals. There are other ways to limit the dangers of weapons besides the draconian gun laws of cities like the District of Columbia.

I am a critic of the Supreme Court as an institution, but in this particular case five people who are actually part of the court made the right decision.