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2nd Amendment in the Spotlight
Teddy Davis of ABC tells us that gun control advocates are preparing themsleves to lose the current round of Second Amendment arguments in front of the Supreme Court.
The nation’s leading gun control group filed a “friend of the court” brief back in January defending the gun ban in Washington, D.C. But with the Supreme Court poised to hand down a potentially landmark decision in the case, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence fully expects to lose.
“We’ve lost the battle on what the Second Amendment means,” campaign president Paul Helmke told ABC News. “Seventy-five percent of the public thinks it’s an individual right. Why are we arguing a theory anymore? We are concerned about what we can do practically.”
Far from thinking it’s over, however, Brady Campaign advocates are still hoping to lose the battle but win the longer war.
While the Brady Campaign is waving the white flag in the long-running debate on whether the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to bear arms or merely a state’s right to assemble a militia, it is hoping that losing the “legal battle” will eventually lead to gun control advocates winning the “political war.”
At the heart of this issue are two key questions for our country to decide. The first deals with the language of the Second Amendment and will likely always elicit debate. Did the founders mean that the right to keep and bear arms was an individual right for all Americans? Or were they only referring to the fact that nearly all adult men at the time were subject to be called to service in the state militia at any given moment and, as such, should always be able to arm themselves for battle? Compared to the rest of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution itself, there is relatively little writing by the founders explaining their reasoning. It seems as if they felt the statement was clear and self-explanatory. Had they not included the phrase, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State” it would likely not be an issue at all.
The second question is more complex than the first. Even if we assume (as, for the record, I do) that the Second Amendment refers to an individual right, we are left with questions as to if, where, and when the government can place limitations on that right. None of our constitutionally assured rights are completely free of limitations, but the government is typically very cautious about imposing such limits. Can states or even individual towns and cities revoke those rights for all citizens within their borders? They can not shut down a newspaper, but they can provide for the prosecution of people who publish libelous material.
Can the District of Columbia legally enforce a sweeping ban regarding gun owership for every citizen within its borders, even if they have never been accused of any crime? And if they can not, what limits can they place on gun owners? We may find out the answers to some of these questions as early as today.
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7 Responses to “2nd Amendment in the Spotlight”
[...] the court??? brief back in January defending the gun ban in Washington, DC But with the Supreme …http://themoderatevoice.com/politics/gun-control/20363/2nd-amendment-in-the-spotlight/A pair of new reports describe tale of two cities The Washington ExaminerI tend to toss most [...]
“what limits can they place on gun owners? ” is the question that cuts to the bottom line.
It's been so destructive to argue this on an all-or-nothing basis.
It's just plain disingenious to debate on the basis of 'the Constitution says'. We all know what the words are, What the FF were thinking when they wrote the words is a matter of interpretation and plenty of pure guess work.
Even before takcling the who and where, we need to understand what is meant by 'arms'. Any arms, even arms that didn;t exist at the time and the FF couldn't have imagined? What about nuclear weapons then?
I have no sympathy for the gun lobby because they have perverted legitimate rights to mean anything they demand. There are restrictions on free speech
(yelling 'fire' in a theater) and on the press (libel). Why should guns be exempt?
The sooner we leave extremist argumetns behind and tackle this on a pragmatic, common sense basis, the better it will be for everyone.
I hope fervently that the SC ruling isn't itself so extreme as to blockade reasonable. pragamtic solutions .
I agree that all of our rights have limits; but please observe the examples that you gave. “Yelling fire in a theater” as a limit on speech, and “libel” as a limit on the press both take place AFTER the harm has been done. They tend to try and hedge the externalities caused by the misuse of the right after the misuse has occured. I can speak as long as I don't whip people into a mad panic-frenzy causing a stampede. I can print and distribute my material as long as I'm not knowingly printing /distributing false information. It should logically follow that I can “bear arms” as long as I am not threatening/shooting people. Bans on 'classes' of guns, such as the so-called “assault weapon”, which is functionally the same as many common target and hunting rifles, is a bogus ploy by the anti-gun crowd to eventually ban all guns. “Arms” as it was used in the time of the founding fathers meant basically any weapon that could be carried by the footsolider (swords, pistols, rifles etc..). Cannons and other explosives were generally catergorized as ordinance. Which blows away the “I have a right to own a nuke” crowds arguments. True arms/ordinance can be used interchangeably, but were generally not at the time…. Interestingly, Ben Franklin did lend some of his personal cannons to the cause… So do I think we should keep guns away from criminals? yes – background cheks? yes – Bans on carrying a gun while intoxicated? yes – Bans on “assault weapons” ? no – Bans on fully-automatic guns? no.
COW,
I was agreeing with most of your comment – until you came to defining what ''arms'' means.
You just make an assertion, without following through on your thought.. If it is true, that, at the time, the FF meant 'all available arms, then it is also true tthat, at the time, they were referring to all availble arms at the time.
The more I learn about how the Constitution came to be, the more I'm convinced that their primary focus was not to set down irrefutable rules and specific details. They were constructing a framework within which we could debate and decide the specifics accoording to our own times and needs.
The outside bars of the framework are rigid, as for example, the three branches of government and the means to ammend the Consitution. The middle between the bars is far less rigid, however. To assume that they could even imagine arms in terms of automatic weapons and how that would impact modern life is assuming far too much.
Given: a right to bear arms is guarranteed. What kind of arms are included in that right and the terms for exercising that right we now have to debate and decide.
The most important thing to keep in mind about the FF is that they disagreed with one another widely and vigorously It's for that reason that I came to my 'framework' view of this debate. Their genius was to foresee future pitfalls and strengths, without claiming to have the ability to foresee the specific details of the future.
One final thought: we should all admit that rights conflict. One person's rights can impinge on another's One state's right's can impact another's, especially in these days of easy travel and communications.
This cannot be resolved except by compromise and pragmatism.
Wow. Well said, CCW.
It frustrates me to no end when people defend the abridgement of civil liberties on the basis that all rights come with certain restrictions or limitation. To that, I argue that such rights should only be limited in such cases that they are being used to infringe upon the rights, person, or property of others.
Yes, my right to own a gun does not mean I have a right to point my gun at you and threaten to kill you if you don't do what I case. However, in that case, it is not my right to keep and bear arms that is being limited. It is the action of coercing someone through the threat of deadly force that is being restricted.
I don't see what's so difficult to understand about the second amendment. It's written in plain English just like every other amendment to the Constitution. It reads:
Notice that the amendment does not make any distinction with regards to type of arms. It does not, for example, say “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, so long as such arms are being used for hunting purposes.”
Nor does it say “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed unless such arms are semi-automatic weapons, in which case the government reserves the right to restrict such arms.”
Good people can have an honest disagreement over what types of guns should be banned and which should not. But if one disagrees with the literal meaning of the Second Amendment, that person should work to change that Amendment through the Amendment Process rather than simply ignoring it.
This is a topic that I've addressed numerous times in the past. I'm a natural skeptic of government power and the tendency for politicians to pass laws without thinking about the unforeseen consequences of those laws. My perspective on gun control, which differs from the traditional left versus right debate, can be found over at TheCentrist Coalition.
Nicrivera.
It frustrates me to no end that people get so stuck in their own perceptions that they can't so much as conceive that a different understanding could be possible.
When people are beyond understanding that there could be more than one choice, they are not realy making a choice at all, They are adhering to what is nothing short of a religious conviction,
Some of us are still reality based enough to notice that people of many religions and convictions have to share the same country. We are looking for pragmatic solutions., while others preach to their respective, separate choirs.
runasim,
Is it pragmatic to restrict basic civil liberties? Do we go ahead and restrict civil liberties spelled out in the Constitution because a portion of the population believes it is pragmatic to do so? And if so, shouldn't the advocates of such policies at least offer up evidence backing up their claims?