Is gun control written in the Second Amendment? | GARY COSBY JR.
“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.”
So reads the amendment that has throughout our nation’s history guaranteed the right of American citizens to keep and bear arms. In today’s America, we have a tendency to honor the second part of the amendment while disregarding the qualifying statement that gives the amendment its context.
Only a few days have passed since another horrible school shooting, this one in Texas. More children are dead because someone exercised his right to keep and bear arms, but refused his responsibility. But does the responsibility for this act not go deeper than the act of a single individual? Does not the Second Amendment give Congress the authority to regulate firearms within a specific framework? When it is our children who are paying the butcher’s bill, one must call into question the wisdom of continually supporting unfettered access to firearms.
Clearly, violent acts committed with firearms have become an extraordinary problem in America. Exhibit A: Since the horror of school shootings burst upon the national consciousness in 1999 with the Columbine High School killings, there have been 169 killed in school shooting events wherein at least four persons have died, excluding the shooter. More have been killed in school shootings, but in those shootings, less than four died.
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So how many children in school have to be murdered before we, as a nation, take action to curtail this mess? How many shoppers in supermarkets, or worshippers in churches, synagogues or mosques have to lay dying before we as a nation say 'Enough is enough?'
Will innocent people ever be able to shed enough blood for those who advocate unrestricted gun rights to take a second look at the results of their stance?
The problem is not that we definitely need regulation on the ownership and use of firearms, the question is what can actually be done in a nation where there are far more guns in circulation than there are people to fire them? And one cannot gloss over the point that the overwhelming majority of gun owners are not out there murdering people. How then, do you place restrictions upon gun ownership in a method that does not infringe upon the rights of those who abide by the law?
The most obvious answer is that the Second Amendment does not provide the completely unrestricted right to keep and bear arms. There is the mostly ignored phrase that begins the amendment, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State …"
There was no way in heaven or hell that the framers of the Constitution could foresee a culture such as we live in now. There is no way they could conceive of a time or place wherein a person would walk into a school and slaughter children.
In the late 1700s, folks used muskets that fired a single ball, which had to be manually recharged with powder, wadding and shot before the gun could be fired again. It would have been impossible for a single person with a gun to do much damage before he would have been swarmed by a mob and taken down.
They could not in any way envision a day where a person could walk into a public venue — school, church or place of business — and randomly open fire with a high-capacity firearm that shoots as rapidly as one can pull the trigger. Moreover, in their worst nightmares, they could not have foreseen a culture wherein there would be people capable of walking into a school and murdering children.
Nevertheless, they framed the amendment in such a way that it is obvious that they felt the ownership of firearms was to be a part of a well-regulated militia. In their day, the United States had no standing military. The volunteers who made up George Washington’s army were farmers and shop-keepers and everyday people who were expected to come to the defense of their nation should the need arise.
They had to have firearms to do that. Had the framers of the Constitution ever considered that the Second Amendment would be used to enable mass murderers, they would have never written it in such an open-ended manner. No rational person would have done so. No one of those men could have imagined a day when a gun rights lobby would buy off congressmen and congresswomen who, for fear of losing an office, would do everything possible to gloss over the violence, taking what amounts to blood money to maintain the status quo.
There is a literal mandate within the Second Amendment itself that gun ownership would be a protected right within the scope of a well-regulated militia. There is no guarantee of gun ownership apart from such a condition. Congress has both a moral and a constitutional mandate to come up with reasonable laws and regulations to put the brakes on the accelerating violence because turning a blind eye to the situation is clearly costing lives.
Gary Cosby Jr. is photo editor of The Tuscaloosa News. Readers can email him at gary.cosby@tuscaloosanews.com.
This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: Is gun control written in the Second Amendment? | GARY COSBY JR.
