Second amendment rights come with limits, including discipline and regulation.
When I was child, playing war in the woods with my friends, I wanted a gun of my own. I had toy guns, and sticks that resembled guns, but a real gun (chambers empty, of course) would have added a dangerous element to our make-believe. Boys often dream of adventure and glory, and shoot at each other in the forest with imaginary weapons, but when they awake from these dreams, they can still go home for supper. When I finally had the chance to hold a real gun in my hand, and feel its weight and power, I realized it had no place in my childhood fantasies. It represented too much reality.
The inherent purpose of a gun is to wound or kill, or threaten to wound or kill. Collecting guns, and sports shooting, are only secondary uses. A police officer might shout, “Stop, or I’ll shoot,” while a militiaman might declare, “Take away my freedom, and face my rifle.” A father might wound a burglar in order to protect his family, while a burglar might kill a father in order to return to his. And sometimes, a well-armed and unbalanced individual might fire upon a gathering of unsuspecting people, and send many to their graves.
Some would say that we need [guns] in order to preserve our freedoms, and to counter the tyrannical tendencies of government. Perhaps, but if so, where is the ‘disciplined’ and ‘regulated’ aspect of our armed society?
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A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed —The Second Amendment of the United States Constitution
Thomas Jefferson, a staunch supporter of gun rights, and a man distrustful of the corrupting nature of power, said, “None but an armed nation can dispense with a standing army. To keep ours armed and disciplined is therefore at all times important.” According to the Small Arms Survey of 2007, America ranks number one in gun ownership, far surpassing number two, Yemen, yet surprisingly the United States is only 28th in gun related deaths. Considering the unrivaled prowess of our standing military, and the fact that we are by no means the most violent society on earth, why do we need so many guns? Some would say that we need them in order to preserve our freedoms, and to counter the tyrannical tendencies of government. Perhaps, but if so, where is the ‘disciplined’ and ‘regulated’ aspect of our armed society? Private militias and citizens alike maintain large stockpiles of weapons, yet many subscribe to a variety of different political agendas, prejudices and religious beliefs. If they were to all come out at once, fighting for their own personal cause, the nation could easily degenerate into a dystopia of chaos and violence. There is nothing ‘regulated’ about that.
The Founding Fathers understood the power of an armed society to keep the government in check, and yet they included the phrase ‘well-regulated’ in the Second Amendment. I believe they worded the amendment in such a manner as to strike a balance between a basic distrust in a fallible leadership, and empowering the people to act if needed, but not to such an extent that private citizens could set up miniature fiefdoms of their own, ruled by fear and firearms. If you doubt the latter could occur, spend some time in the forests of North Idaho among the militias and survivalists.
Just as the right to free speech does not give someone the permission to yell “fire” in a crowed theater, the right to bear arms does not mean a man can mount a heavy machine gun to the bed of his pickup truck and drive around town. That would infringe on the rights of others not to be blasted out of existence, which would abruptly end their right to the pursuit of happiness. Rights, it seems, come with limits.
Sadly, no one can guarantee your safety at all times, no matter where you live, or who you are. Norway, a country with strict firearm controls, learned that painful lesson when one man massacred 77 people in a single day. And yet a society armed to the teeth, or conversely calling for a ban on all firearms, is demonstrating an ‘all or nothing’ argument befitting of a small child, full of fear, clinging to simple explanations as to the nature of government, society and violence. Americans should not live in fear of guns, or complex arguments for or against gun control. This issue is, and has been for a long time, a political nonstarter in the United States. The debate flares up, and then dies down. People die needlessly, and yet the paralysis of our elected officials to deal with gun control in a meaningful way remains intact.
It has been suggested by some that if everyone were well armed, then a Good Samaritan could always stop a would-be killer, before murder turned into massacre. For this to be true, society would have to trust that every single citizen would be armed at all times, could remain calm under fire, know how to accurately target and shoot his or her weapon in moments of stress, and be able to distinguish bad guys (who could never wear body armor) from bystanders. If this were the case, such a trusting populace would have no need of guns in the first place. Americans, it seems, are not so trusting.
According to the Violence Policy Center, the states with the lowest per capita gun death rates, like Massachusetts and Hawaii, also have the strongest gun regulations (state laws above and beyond the federal regulations), while conversely, the states with the weakest regulations, like Louisiana and Wyoming, have the highest rates of gun related deaths. The lesson here is simple. While regulations won’t bring an end to gun violence, they will lessen it. For pacifists, and gun lovers alike, that is a goal worth striving for.
The men who penned the American Constitution were sophisticated thinkers, who understood the nuances of power and governance. They trusted that future generations would be able to deal with unforeseen problems as they arose in a rational, and reasonable way. In order to form a more perfect union, and insure tranquility across the land, we can, and have to do better. Guns have a reason for being, of course, but they should never be our reason for being. When arms, in the hands of the people or the state, rule over us, we cease to be free.
Read more Root Down, a new column by Carl Pettit on The Good Life.
Image, Ready for the battle, courtesy of Shutterstock
See Carl, you have already deferred to “crime.” The 2nd is in NO WAY about stopping crime. Have you EVER EVER read the balance of the bill of rights, or just the 1st, 2nd and 4th? Read the whole bloody thing. There’s a common theme that ought to be clear to you. That is, the entire bill of rights was drafted and ratified in order to maintain or freedom from ANY and ALL governments who over-step. The first government being OUR OWN. But now this reality no longer applies? Any reality ignored WILL come back and f you over so… Read more »
Only in this liberal-emo nation will “Danger” be discussed as a requisite ingredient to maintaining Liberty as our constitution intended. We have Liberty as a result of the Entire Bill of Rights. The Bill Of RIghts was not created as an enabler of trade-off for crime. This country is fully lost. “The beauty of the second amendment is that it will not be needed until they try to take it.” -Thomas Jefferson And I’m STILL waiting for someone to come up with ONE realistic suggestion on how to protect school children other than “hope” that banning certain guns of outrageous… Read more »
Here’s one idea. Have schools practice shooting drills instead of fire drills. I read an article recently (not sure where) that stated there hasn’t been a single death due to a fire in a school over the last 50 years largely due to the fireproof building materials that are used in schools. So, how about bulletproof doors on classrooms and/or turning closets into fortified locations. An expensive option, to be sure, but given that school shootings are a reality the cost would be well worth it. That would buy some time for first responders to arrive and would save lives… Read more »
What I like about this idea is that it is at least more than the simple dichotomy I keep hearing between “armed” and “helpless” — Either you have a gun or you are a powerless victim. Either you’re in a safe school with guns or a helpless target in a school without guns. That’s not a view I subscribe to. It’s actually quite Maoist: “all power flows from the barrel of a gun.” There are multiple forms of power and multiple forms of safety. If ALL of one’s individual safety is invested in whether or not he/she owns a gun,… Read more »
At the risk of offending people on both sides, I suggest that maybe the pre-existing laws are working as well as they can. Maybe the best policy is to not extend them NOR roll them back but to imagine new approaches. Hard as it is to imagine right now, schools are still by far the safest places for children to be. Compare time at school to time they spend anywhere else, including AT HOME, and kids are statistically far safer at school than anywhere else. Bullying at school is still a major issue in our schools, but it pales in… Read more »
So, what precisely did the Newtown shooter do that was wrong? Based on what some people have said here, I get the impression that the Newtown shooter didn’t really do anything wrong, not until he pulled the trigger. Before that moment he was totally within his rights and not doing anything we need to worry about. Carrying firearms onto school grounds wasn’t wrong, that was just a private citizen exercising his constitutional rights. Is that what I’m hearing? If we take this argument to its logical conclusion, perhaps he didn’t do anything wrong even when he shot all those people.… Read more »
Clearly, you are using absurd extremes to illustrate absurd extensions of logic. I get that and appreciate it in who things would work in reality. But I really don’t think such Quentin Tarantino scenarios will ever exist. Ok…to be honest here…WICKID Funny story here…There was this one mobbed-up bar in South Boston that was popular with President Reagan’s team. He wanted to go there on an impromptu basis, and bang a Bushmills. So, the SS, lacking proper and adequate advance-time and work, had to just go on in, including agents in very plain street clothes. They went into the bar… Read more »
He did plenty wrong. CT has strong gun laws in place and he and his mother broke many of them. In CT, schools are gun-free zones or as I call them Victim zones. States that have guns in schools don’t have these shootings and the rare occasion that they do, the death toll is drastically reduced because they’re stopped sooner. He was mentally unstable. He tried himself to buy a gun and was denied. Shocker, the laws working. His mother’s disregard for safety and having firearms in the house with something that is unable to use one lawfully was the… Read more »
“States that have guns in schools don’t have these shootings and the rare occasion that they do, the death toll is drastically reduced because they’re stopped sooner.” I admit some ignorance about this. Are there states that do allow guns in schools? In what sense do they allow guns in schools – security officers get to have guns, school staff, students, visitors? I have the sense that some schools try harder than other schools to keep guns off campus, but I wasn’t aware of any schools that *welcomed* guns. So, I think I have two responders so far that disagree… Read more »
The legacy of the American Revolution is actually pretty complicated, especially when you look at it in terms of the use of force. It’s kind of slippery, violent, and dangerous if you really think about it. Ultimately, the lesson from the war of independence is “it’s not treason if you win.” Or: “it’s good to shoot at the authorities if you feel the government is unjust.” That’s essentially the message of the Declaration of Independence – sometimes armed acts of treason are justified by other values. That’s a pretty radical, violent, scary promise to base a society on. The militia… Read more »
Karl. You have a point?
Well, there ARE benefits to the rest of the world thinking that you’re crazy. It helps with the credibility of the threat to use force….
On behalf of the rest of the developed world, the United States’ obsession with guns is the primary reason why we think you are crazy.
And I wonder how many billions of international tourist dollars Americans are missing out on because of this. A lot of Germans still won’t go to Florida on vacation. (And Germans get a LOT of vacation time….)
Peter. Couple of problems. Almost without exception, people killed with guns are killed by illegal guns. See the war on drugs for the success of banning that which people want. As to standing up to the government. Wrong. It was the local government, not the Brits that the Noble Second was considering. The Brits, in 1775, were the legitimate government and had been since 1620 in New England and earlier in the Tidewater. For a hundred and fifty years, as it happens. That would be the same period as from the Declaration to the middle of the Roaring Twenties. Second,… Read more »
Well said. Thomas Jefferson was writing in a time when a well trained militia could reasonably expect to stand up to a professional standing army of the time using privately owned equipment. Especially one fighting over an atlantic ocean. In this context small arms ownership made sense. Today the rifle and the horse are not the kings of the battlefield they once were. Unless the US government is going to start allowing private citizens to buy tanks and surface to air missile racks the idea of informal local militias handling national defence is a bit of a joke. Times move… Read more »
Unfortunately avoiding the VPC and the NRA is not an option, as these two organizations are some of the most vocal proponents for and against gun control. Many people abide by their very different principles. Like it or not, they are a part of the gun debate, and should be included. I truly wish “More guns, less crime” actually meant less crime nationwide. If this were the case, then the United States would be the safest country on earth. It is not. In fact, it is one of most dangerous democracies on the planet. The reasons for this are complex,… Read more »
You can’t expect nationwide balance when you can’t even get balance in population in a single state. Cities are always more populated than suburbs, and the crime rate is always higher. That’s why the VPC likes to throw out Mass and Hawaii because the populations there are so different. They don’t match the scale. Just look at the 10 deadliest cities and you’ll see the states with the strongest gun control laws. If the theory that stronger gun control worked, Chicago wouldn’t happen. You’d have school shootings in lax gun control states instead of strict states. Even in Aurora, he… Read more »
You forfeited any credibility you may have had when you started quoting the Violence Policy Center.
If you are really interested in a reasonable public discussion about commonsense gun laws, you will avoid VPC and the NRA equally.
afaik, the worst school massacre was pre-planted explosives. I mean in the US. Not counting, say, Beslan. It was in Bath, MI, early 20th century. McVeigh used AMFO and not guns. About twenty years ago, a guy used a buck’s worth of gas and a bottle he found in a dumpster starting a fire and panic in a night club. Dozens killed.. Holmes had rigged his apartment with booby traps. The theory is that he left his radio on loud, expecting the cops to eventually respond to a noise complaint and get blown up. That would attract more cops and… Read more »
Why not ask WHY people are trying to kill each other? A gun can just make it easier, people still get knifed every day but where are the huge restrictions on knives? Hell a baseball bat can kill. Teach people to respect firearms, make laws to ensure guns n ammo are locked away separately so there are no accidental deaths, but to really stop murders I’d say start dealing with poverty, drug addiction, mental health, etc. Get rid of the reasons a person wants to kill others. I’d love to own a few guns and one day I probably will,… Read more »
BUT, didn’t they write ‘in defense of the state’, those words seems to be ignored or more truthfully, twisted to mean everyone no matter what.
copy. I don’t think there is such a thing, but if anybody invents one, I’m glad you’ll defend my right to own one.
Actually, it seems the FFs thought everybody ought to be able to own a weapon roughly equal in capability to the standard Infantry weapon, flint-lock muzzle loading musket or rifle, at the time.
Today, equal capability would be any semi-auto hunting rifle with high-cap magazines.
Worshipers of the Founding Fathers always talk about “original intent.” Fine; I will defend anyone’s right to own a breech-loading musket.
I suppose you regard “freedom of the press” as limited to the hand-cranked printing presses of the 18th century?
No, I regard “original intent” as the joke it is.
So, should the Second Amendment be interpreted and applied by the same ‘modern’ judicial tests as the First Amendment? Or is your rejection of ‘original intent’ just a convenient way to get to certain result, and to hell with judicial standards?
Web-blogs and photocopyers aren’t capable of firing multiple rounds per second.
I think there’s a place for original intent but also a place for seeing the Constitution as an organic, evolving document. I have a lot of respect for what the framers of the U.S. Constitution wanted to achieve, but I don’t believe they should have the last word on everything. At the time they didn’t really intend for women to vote or for slavery to be abolished. (I doubt they intended that the federal government would ever pay farmers not to grow crops or send Marines into Central Asia.) Sometimes the original intent from the late 18th century context becomes… Read more »
Legal gun ownership is about as well-regulated and disciplined as the old-time militia who would show up once a month–except in the winter, to drill on the town green. Max. The drill was to learn to operate as a unit, not to learn how to shoot or to be responsible. You either are or you’re not. The fighting against the Brits on the Battle Road going to Lexington and Concord was self-organized, on the spot, by guys with guns. No organization at all. And that was the start of the Revolution. One might say that it was the ideas motivating… Read more »