Wednesday, April 02, 2008
Understanding the Second Amendment
Bill Mashburn
Mashburn is a professor emeritus of mechanical engineering at Virginia Tech.
As we await this summer's Supreme Court decision on District of Columbia v. Heller, it is important we have a good understanding of the Second Amendment.
First we must know the Founding Fathers of the new American republic had all been rigorously educated in the classical European tradition and were not just backwoodsmen with a love of guns. They had studied the writings of great philosophers like Nicollò Machiavelli, Cesare Beccaria, Hubo Grotius and Charles Montesquieu, who, without exception declared a democracy could not exist without the right of the citizens to have and bear arms.
"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 the Second Amendment.
The wording has caused confusion in the interpretation. The meaning of such words as "militia," " keep arms," "bear arms" and "well regulated" was the meaning of these words as they were used in the English common law of the 16th through the 18th centuries -- not as they are used to day.
They cannot be interpreted safely except by reference to this common law and to the British institutions as they were when the instrument was framed and adopted. Some believe because the word militia is used, this should apply only to the National Guard. However, guardsmen are prohibited by law from keeping their own military arms.
Nationwide there are more than 20,000 gun control laws that regulate everything from who can own a gun and how it can be purchased to where one can possess or use it.
In one of his writings, Beccaris states, "The laws that forbid the carrying of arms disarm those only who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. Can it be supposed that those who have the courage to violate the most sacred laws of humanity, will respect the less important and arbitrary ones?"
Well-intended laws often disarm potential victims. A report in the Wall Street Journal states, "Crimes are stopped with guns about five times as frequently as crimes committed with guns."
To be disarmed by one's government is tantamount to being enslaved by it. When Romania fell to the communists after World War II, citizens were first asked to register their guns. Then they were asked to bring them to the police station when dignitaries were visiting. Then they were told to leave them there. They lived for the next 40 years under a dictatorship that deprived them of all rights.
The FBI has recently declared Detroit America's most dangerous city. It also reports that more than 80 percent of children there are born to single parents. Other reports show that violence by young men has increased as male authority figures -- such as fathers -- have vanished from their lives. This combined with a constant barrage of murders shown on TV programs has caused our society to seek the lowest level. Yet we still blame guns for all crime. They are the weapon of choice for criminal minds.
Guns are also the weapon of choice for those who wish to provide the first line of protection for themselves and family. The Supreme Court has ruled more than once that the police have no legal responsibility to protect individuals who are in immediate danger from violent individuals even though they risk their lives to try.
Those who want a gun-free culture are not interested in whether their desire is constitutional. They just want guns removed. Guns may not make us feel particularly safe, but a strong Constitution does.
