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.
As the revulsion surrounding our latest mass murder begins to fade, inevitably the conversation will devolve to the tried and true “but the 2nd amendment” defense:
- The 2nd amendment gives me the right!
- What part of “shall not be infringed” do you not understand?
- That’s why it’s in the Constitution!
- If you can’t tell me the difference between an M-16 and an AR-15 you are obviously unqualified to participate in this discussion.
There are some people of good will on this site who are progressive in every other respect but will balk at the very idea of any gun ownership restriction and will wave the 2nd amendment as defense: the all-purpose fig leaf that covers every egregious and horrific outburst of gunfire that shreds innocent bodies and destroys multitudes of lives.
It’s become such a pattern we can time it just about to the hour when the NRA will orchestrate their full-throated cry to uparm every citizen beyond the crawl-and-cruise phase of development. And our politicians will cower, and dissemble, and offer prayers to the victims, and the wind will blow all those prayers away. And it will all subside. Until next time.
Since (most of) our politicians are too vulnerable — and kudos to the courageous few who stand up in opposition to the NRA and its minions — and since the Supreme Court discarded two centuries of precedent as well as an understanding of grammar and the history of linguistic usage, can we not amend the second amendment, bringing it back to a version more in line with its original intent?
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State
is an appositive phrase. It’s an elegant way of saying “Because a well regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state”… We can discuss the entire history of how this phrase came about and its role in keep slave-hunting posses active in the South before 1861, but discussion will not change the fact that the words “well regulated militia” occur in the amendment.
That’s actually an advantage: “a well regulated militia” is a phrase no one can get around.
Somewhat more obscure is the “right to keep and bear arms” phrase.
In 1789, when the amendment was drafted, “bearing arms” had one definition: it meant to serve in the army in a time of war. Since the new United States had no standing army, no budget for a standing army and no budget to buy guns to supply an army in a time of war, this entire amendment is the “hey, bring your guns to the fight if we get invaded” amendment. It has morphed over time so as to be practically meaningless today.
The very words of the 2nd amendment undo all the arguments of the “we can’t possibly regulate firearms—we have the Constitution on our side!” The only way supporters of the current interpretation can justify their argument is if every word in that amendment has been twisted into a form the framers would never have recognized. And it has.
Bearing in mind what I’ve outlined above, it should be possible to draft a referendum and get it on the ballot—and, yes, I know. That’s a heavy lift, so heavy it hasn’t been done since the 1970s. Right now the forced-birth crowd is planning for a Constitutional amendment outlaw the right to abortion; they’re planning to push it even though they know most people oppose them. We have public opinion on our side--overwhelmingly. Much of the damage wrought by the Heller decision can be undone by an amendment, something like:
The Second Amendment shall apply to citizens and residents of the United States insofar as such citizens belong to militia units registered with and regulated by the State (or Federal) government, and such units can be called to service in times of national crisis.
This is what the framers had in mind. They did not envision an arms race between police and civilian populations.
This will not solve the problem of gun violence. But what it may do is strip away the frail legal cover that proponents of the “an armed society is a polite society” (a bullshit phrase if ever there was one) use as a battering ram against easily-spooked politicians and an increasingly outraged population who just don’t want to be shot at random. Taking away that legal cover makes it possible for us to explore ways to reduce gun violence without being derailed by the proponents of “the 2nd amendment protects my right to my .50 cal.”