In 1791, 15 years after the Declaration of Independence was signed and 10 years after the Articles of Confederation went into effect, the amendments to the US Constitution that we know as the Bill of Rights were ratified. James Madison had originally written 19 amendments, 12 of which were approved by congress to be voted on by the states. Of these 12, 10 made the final cut. You probably learned what each of them are and what they mean in your high school civics class. One of Madison’s amendments, what we know today as the 2nd Amendment, reads as follows:
“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.”
If you live in America today and own an electronic device, you probably hear a lot about Gun Control. It’s an omnipresent issue in our society. The Supreme Court has been hearing cases on the 2nd Amendment for hundreds of years. If you go back and read them, it might just confuse you more. Essentially, legally interpreting the Amendment as it was written comes down to two trains of thought. 1) Is the Amendment primarily intended for the opening clause A well regulated Militia, or 2) does it apply the right of the people, as in any general citizen. A consensus opinion has evaded Americans and unfortunately we can’t ask President Madison for clarification. I’d like to examine that argument, the context of the Amendment, and what it means for us today.
In 1791, the Militia was the equivalent of the National Guard today. America was bordered by Spain to the South and West, and by England to the North. Much of the frontier was in a state of nearly constant conflict with Native Americans. During the roughly decade of time in which the Articles of Confederation served as our constitution, the federal Army was practically non-existent. Additionally, there was no sophisticated road system that could be rapidly utilized to mobilize armed forces. I write all of this to say: state and local militias were really important because the federal government was an unreliable mess during the 1780s, and war was a real and constant danger for a large portion of the population.
Fast forward to today and that’s not quite the reality. There hasn’t been a war on mainland America in over 100 years. The National Guard is still around, and our Federal Military has about 1.3 million active members and a budget of roughly 600 billion US dollars a year. Whatever purpose local militia served in colonial America has long been outdated. We don’t need minutemen running off to fight the British at Lexington and Concord. A huge portion of our economy is now, and has been, composed of ensuring our military is one of the best in the world.
The second interpretation, the right of the people, is undoubtedly what causes the most stir. An extremely detailed study in 2017 by the Pew Research Center suggested that 41% of Americans either own a gun or live with someone who does. Of gun-owning individuals, 67% cited protection as a major reason. Other major reasons cited included hunting, sport shooting, collection, and of course some people actually own a gun for their job. Generally speaking, for an individual without a significant criminal background or a clinically diagnosed mental illness, buying a firearm is a relatively easy process. There is variation in this from state to state, with places like California, Massachusetts, New York, and Hawaii having some of the strictest gun laws. Notably, these states have some of the lowest rates of gun homicide.
The most contested parts of the gun control debate and the 2nd Amendment can be narrowed down to this: who should be allowed to purchase firearms, and what kind of firearms should they be allowed to buy? Because as much as any “developed” country in the world, Americans shoot each other. When James Madison and the other framers of the constitution developed the 2nd Amendment, it’s hard to imagine this was the issue they envisioned.
Today, gun violence and gun control is an ceaseless story in the United States. You can find gun related homicides in local news almost daily. Beyond the daily violence, there is of course the mass shootings. Since October we’ve had Las Vegas (59 dead), Sutherland Springs (27), Parkland (17), and Santa Fe High School (10). You can probably recall more in recent memory like Sandy Hook (28), Pulse Nightclub in Orlando (49), and the Emanuel African Church in Charleston, South Carolina (9). There are more that could be named. As someone born in the 90s, the list starts in my memory with Columbine in 1999. I don’t remember it happening, but that’s the first one I remember learning about. Turns out that’s a case of recency bias. Here’s the cover of Time magazine in February of 1989, a month after a shooting at a Stockton, California elementary school left 5 people dead.
That was nearly 30 years ago, and it was far from the first incident in the United States. I can recall the first mass shooting that really shook me as it was happening; it was Virginia Tech in 2007. I was in 6th grade. I remember watching the live coverage in class, walking near the TV and sitting on a counter as the anchors and reporters recounted the events that had unfolded. 32 people were killed that day. That was 11 years ago. It is such a difficult thing to wrap your mind around, how someone could be so disturbed that they inflict that amount of damage on innocent people.
It’s a hollow, helpless, and numbing feeling that we have reached this point in American society. When a shooting occurs the immediate national response is sorrowful. There are countless “thoughts and prayers,” to the victims and their families. Bodies are counted for the news segments, and the total is sent across the bottom line of your TV screen like the final score of a football game. Even now, I’m typing the number of victims in between parentheses on a website. These people, adults and children, are murdered for senseless reasons. It’s a truly awful occurrence that we have somehow become accustomed to. A short time passes, and we largely go on living our everyday life until the next mass shooting occurs. The cycle repeats with a seemingly increasing frequency.
When these horrific events take place, it’s evident to me that America has both a gun problem and a mental health problem. There are clearly some very sick people, who decide to carry out terrible acts. Unfortunately, these individuals have access to very powerful weapons. Some of these guns are assault rifles that were designed to imitate what our military uses in combat. True to their design they are capable of rapid, heavy destruction. Other times, like the most recent shooting at Santa Fe High School, the weapons are more traditionally common firearms. Politics can be complicated. There are two sides to most stories; right and wrong is not always black and white. This issue to me though, should not be politically divisive. It should be about logic and reality.
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this issue, and writing this article. I’ve seen a lot of people express the argument that the mass shootings are not a gun problem, but a mental health problem. As I said above, I think it’s both. My concern is, what legislation can regulate mental health? Proposing a strategy for the federal, or even state governments, to dissuade the violent tendencies of many individuals seems like an arduous and borderline unrealistic goal. How does a legislative body improve parenting? How high can our expectations be realistically for a school guidance counselor or a therapist to change the nature of another human being, and how do we monitor that legally? I don’t know the answer to these questions, and I don’t know if a direct solution is available. Mental health is phenomenon we must improve person to person by the way we treat people, the behavior we tolerate, and the culture we induce.
Guns, on the other hand, seem much more accessible to regulate. In fact, it seems many Americans want them to be more regulated through a variety of aspects.
I’m not naive enough to think federal and state governments passing laws restricting the accessibility to guns will be a golden solution to ending gun violence in the U.S. I just believe that we are far beyond the point of trying. We elect representatives to our government to serve the best interests of our country/state and the people they represent. I don’t think I’m being too presumptuous by saying that Americans don’t believe continued mass shootings are in our best interests.
James Madison and the rest of our founding fathers were far from perfect. One of the things I think they designed correctly though, was the ability for our Constitution and federal laws to be updated. We’ve done this many times. Slavery is no longer legal in our country. Women can vote. Individuals born in the U.S. gain citizenship as infants. The selling of alcohol was prohibited for 13 years, and then we wrote another Amendment to end prohibition. All of these are additions not present in the Bill of Rights. Regardless of what you believe the 2nd Amendment meant at the time it was written- whether it was design for the Militia or for the people at large- it’s context does not fit logically with the reality we have today in American Society. The argument should not be about what does the 2nd Amendment mean. The argument should be about how we can modify the 2nd Amendment to improve our country and fix the horrific cycle of mass-scale gun violence.
The 520 Wire 