More dead children, just now in Nashville, continuing shattered families, shooting in the streets, massacrers in elementary schools, twenty state legislatures now passing laws allowing open carry of guns, including the Florida House now passing permitless carry? WTF. I have a carry permit. I had to be fingerprinted and pass an elementary course to be sure I knew how to handle a gun. Just like driving a car.
The second amendment currently 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.” This is a collective right.
A proposed second amendment should read:
“Citizens shall have the right to bear arms in the common defense of the United States, or as members of an authorized military organization or, as subject to regulation, designated by the several states or by the United States. Congress shall have the authority to enforce said rights and privileges by the appropriate legislation.”
This is still a collective right, but much clearer. The courts will not have to continue a Kabuki dance regulating sales of guns because of a constitutional straight jacket imposed upon them by the original second amendment, written in 1787 and as interpreted by Antonin Scalia, also born in 1787.
This new 21st century version will still allow people to bear arms and will give the states continued concurrent authority to regulate sale and carry. It’s not as strong as it should be, but it will clarify the constitutionality of the states and Federal government being able to regulate guns and do away with Antonin Scala’s disastrous ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller. This decision created a constitutional Frankenstein.
Heller, by one vote, turned a previously meaningful constitutional amendment on its head, by stating the right was individual, not collective.
Heller egregiously said It had nothing to do with militias, intended by the framers to protect the states, recently former independent colonies, against the tyranny of the crown or of the central government; it had to do with individual rights to carry guns, not a well-regulated militia. John Paul Stevens was correct in his dissent. It was all about militias.
Since then, the courts, legislatures and politicians have used the misguided decision written by a conservative ideologue to intellectually masturbate over the meaning of the comma in the second amendment. Enough already. Children, students and worshippers, cry out for help from their blood-soaked graves and their families, traumatized forever, ask “why?” to their deaf-eared lawmakers.
Law abiding citizens owning guns will still be able to keep them for self-defense. I own a gun. I enjoy going to the range from time to time. And several times, late at night, when someone knocked on my door and would not identify themselves, I felt secure that I had an effective defense if, heaven forbid, necessary.
But the current Second Amendment prevents meaningful gun legislation. My new version still gives states power to regulate gun sales. It should be less subject to challenges that have filled volumes of law books.
Other democracies have meaningful gun laws. We no longer live in the wild west. People must be educated to understand that their rights are not being sacrificed to a totalitarian state. That is not what the framers intended. The preamble to the constitution says “…to provide for the common defense…”. That was what they meant when they talked about militias. Since Antonin Scalia’s majority 5-4 decision in Heller v. D.C. stating that there is an individual right to possess guns, rather than a collective right, there has been a Mount Everest of gun litigation often financed by the gun lobby, to ensure that everyone, including lunatics who want a gun, can get one.
This revised amendment would help clarify and lessen the mountain of litigation challenging the constitutionality of the second amendment, still allow gun ownership, but also allow meaningful gun regulation by the states and by Congress. King George III is not coming to get us.
Never mind lip service paid by legislators receiving large campaign donations from the NRA or its distraction of a “mental health issue.” Or providing “thoughts and prayers,” to those poor family members who have seen their children and loved ones slaughtered in a bullet-riddled storm of blood-spattered classrooms, college campuses, places of worship and rock concerts. And pay no heed to highly salaried NRA Gucci-loafered consultants who sail the Aegean Sea on private yachts fleecing their membership for donations to finance their cynical voyages.
David,
ReplyDeleteThere is nothing wrong with the "Second Amendment," except that it no longer exists. As you rightly point out, it is about militias. The expressed (in Federalist Paper #29) purpose of militias is to confront over-reach by the federal government, or to join the federal government in confronting outside invaders. Either purpose of militias requires them to be armed as the federal government, or outside invaders, are armed. The arms currently needed for that purpose are illegal for civilians (potential militia members) to possess. End of "Second Amendment." Your modern reworking of the language does nothing to solve that problem.
As for Heller and Scalia, Stevens, as you point out, was right. It states clearly and explicitly in the "Second Amendment" that this is about militias, and that is in no way an individual right. Scalia and the majority for which he wrote made this up. They weren't honest.
The states always had the power to regulate gun sales/ownership/registration. This has nothing to do with the "Second Amendment."
Other democracies, and whether or not we live in the wild west, are irrelevant. We had a "Second Amendment," for the framers' reasons, and we don't have one any more. Nor do we want one. No one wants civilians driving around in tanks, or flying armed fighter jets, or having nuclear weapons. And that's what we would need if we had the "Second Amendment" the early Congress passed.
Fred
By the way, David, I sign various petitions, if I agree with them. Occasionally, I get a boilerplate response. Just yesterday, I got a response from Marco Rubio. It said "The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states 'the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.'" Rubio starts his quote with a lower case letter, making clear it was not the first word of the Amendment. He couldn't be honest enough even simply to quote what the Amendment said. It's a dramatically and wholly different Amendment if you have to deal with what it actually says. Not what some dimwits try to torture it into pretending to mean. But what it actually, plainly, clearly, explicitly says.
ReplyDeleteThe other thing about Heller is that no one told him he couldn't have a gun. Or even that he had to register it. All the DC law said was that he had to dismantle it when he was at home. And the minute he's ready to go to work the next day (he was a federal guard, and he needed that gun to do his job!), he could put it back together. That wouldn't have prevented him from joining a militia, or from exercising what he wanted to claim was an individual right.
Fred