Second Amendment

Taking a stab at being a Constitutional lawyer, or even a Supreme Court justice....

The Second Amendment of the Constitution says simply, "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."

Do we see here an errant comma, clumsily inserted after the word "Arms" and then overlooked these many generations ago? Without it that sentence runs smoother, grammatically speaking, but the meaning seems to remain clear enough.

The operative word appears almost at once, a good thing, and it is "Militia." I haven't been in college for many years, but with that as my marker, if I was confronted with this sentence in an English class and asked to say what I think it means, I would consider that to be a soph question. And isn't answering that question precisely what the current discussion in the Supreme Court, about a case involving gun laws in D.C., is all about?

Without any hesitation I would answer that the amendment is concerned solely with militias. And if asked to elaborate, I would add that militias were groups of crusty, rusty Euro men -- the only citizens that counted in those days and therefore the only ones that the amendment's writers had in mind. And to distinguish them from lynch mobs, which were fashionable, their purpose was to be available to be called out whenever there was a need to deal with some sort of local disturbance. That was necessary because whatever there was of the U.S. Army would always be somewhere else on guard or trading cannonballs with the British, French, Mexicans, or others. And as the militias needed weapons to show that they meant business, and as it wasn't much fun to be in a militia anyway if you didn't have a weapon so that you could be legally sanctioned to shoot and hopefully murder somebody, and as it was expensive and a little dangerous to maintain armories because, among other things, they had been known to blow up, causing widespread dismay, it was thought best to operate the militias on the cheap and have those worthies bring along their own muskets, fowling pieces, dueling pistols, or whatever else they happened to have that could reasonably be used to inflict bodily harm. And, as the amendment said, the right to have those implements was not to be infringed, because otherwise you couldn't have a militia report for action empty-handed.

To have these guys armed, assembled, and ready for any other purpose was not covered, and so that was left for the governments of the future.

So, in case they don't already know, there is only one compound question that the Supreme Court needs to confront in this all-important case involving D.C., the city where I was born, raised, and educated but fortunately never shot, and that is in process right now. That question is, "Do we have militias today, and if so, is their right to have weapons ready and waiting at home being infringed?"

If I was an attorney on the good guys' side, the D.C. side, and if I was allowed, and if the justices weren't too short-tempered and impatient -- because of course I would already know the direction in which they would lean and soon enough would flop over completely -- I would adopt the philosophy that the longest way around is sometimes the shortest way home.

I would said, "No."

If challenged I would then go on to point out that militias long ago disappeared from American life, except in the form of illegal gun-toting groups with an intimidation agenda, like the KKK, the Black Panthers, and numerous hate groups. I would say that the organization closest to a legal American militia today is the National Guard, and thanks to the current folks in the White House, that group has essentially become part of the U. S. Army, and a large number of its men are serving alongside the Army and the Marines on the other side of the globe, ironically fighting just the kind of ragtag militias that the Constitution-amenders so fondly had in mind.

As far as the conclusion of the amendment's language goes, I would add that what we have instead in the way of owning and operating firearms and resisting infringements are merely deluded homeowners, obsolete hunters, a bunch of gun nuts with serious collections, and cities full of juveniles running around with usually concealed pieces, bought or stolen and used for robberies and to shoot each other and to terrorize any older people who might dare to try to instruct them. And that last cited group, in particular, will never be called out to face down a band of Cherokees or to quell a whiskey rebellion or to help the Army fend off the British, yet they will account for nearly all the daily homicides and gun cripplings that periodically make people want to do something drastic about owning guns.

In the face of that, the justices could then say, "You're arguing, then, that, as this amendment reads, the right to restrict the rights of gun ownership rests in the hands of present day governments as affected by their needs and not those of post-Revolution days. Therefore, if a government on any level thinks it might be helpful to restrict the sale and dissemination of firearms, it is within its rights to try to limit possession of the same, in whatever ways it thinks are feasible."

"Yes, Your Honor."

That wasn't hard to figure out. So what has all the fuss been about, then? --Oh, how can guns be kept out of the hands of angry, swaggering, unthinking youth? But that's another question entirely, and it should be entrusted to the computing powers of those who are currently trying to figure out a way to safely transport men to Mars and back. That has nothing to do with what the 2nd Amendment means.

This case is being closely watched because supposedly the current justices are enjoying the luxury of having a "clean slate" in front of them. That is extremely rare, and it must be a big relief for them, and maybe even exciting for their hugely inflated egoes. This means that there are very few previous decisions on this matter, setting precedents that they have to consider. Therefore they can create some new law, just like the first writers of the Constitution.

From what I've read they're on the verge of doing just that. They're appearing to lean away from the rights of governments and toward those of gun owners. That way they dodge a lot of political bullets but do nothing to help people avoid real bullets flying in the city streets. And they will relegate the Second Amendment to being just a small piece of outdated language.