As noted last week, the major fear of the framers of the
Constitution was the kind of big government against which the Colonies had revolted;
a regime dominated by the English King and his standing army. The Articles of
Confederation had gone to the opposite extreme establishing not only a small
Federal government, but also a weak one. There remained the matter of
protecting the rights of the States and the people, and the anti-Federalists
continued calling for a Bill of Rights to be added to the Constitution. While
Madison and the Federalists opposed such a move, believing it would lead people
to think the Constitution itself was terribly insufficient, to keep peace with
the opposition they finally relented. With the promise of corrective action, 11
of the 13 States finally agreed that there needed to be an effective national
body, and the Constitution was ratified.
Twenty-three amendments were suggested, and finally ten were
adopted. But for the next century few paid much attention to them. Subsequently,
it was believed that the Federal government began to compromise individual
rights, and several of the ten began to be taken more seriously.
The first amendment dealing with press, speech and religious
freedoms has generated the most court cases. But in recent years it has been
the second amendment, which has produced the sharp controversy. It reads:
A well regulated militia
being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to
keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
The wording was adopted from
English common law, which held that citizens must be prepared to defend the
state in times of national emergency, and thus needed to band together in
militias. It was the alternative to a large standing army. Everybody carrying anything
from a hand gun to a military assault weapon may not have been what the English
or our framers had in mind. Whatever the Supreme Court has sanctioned today, it
does not sound like a “well ordered militia.” Nor do I believe our founders
intended for an armed populace to kill off tens of thousands of our citizens
each year. But the NRA, which controls the Congress and probably five members
of the Supreme Court, think otherwise.
Last
year there were 58 murders by firearms in Britain and the yearly number has continued
to decline. In the United States last year there were 8775 murders by firearms.
If the 2nd Amendment follows British law, which mandates tight
restrictions on civilian possession of guns, somewhere along the line something
must have been missed.
Or
perhaps five members of the Supreme Court were guided more by a conservative
political prejudice than by what the 2nd Amendment really intended.
These days there is a hard core of “patriots” who believe
that the real enemy of the American people is their own government, and who
insist on arming themselves lest Federal troops swoop down on them. But that is
what the Bill of Rights seeks to prohibit.
Perhaps the real question is not how the 2nd
Amendment has been interpreted, but what kind of society we want. Is it a
retreat to the wild west where everybody is armed and on the street, and has
the right to shoot anyone they believe threatens them? Is it the right to stand
your ground anywhere at any time, even when you have stalked the person you end
up shooting? The people, not the courts, must finally answer that question.
But back to the larger question: Is our nation living up to
the promises guaranteed in the Bill of Rights, or are there efforts to so water
it down in the name of national security that we are in danger of losing personal
freedoms promised? But that’s for
next week.
Charles Bayer
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