When we think about the foundations of our nation, we naturally think about the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Yet sadly, not everyone believes in these documents relevance today. Nowhere is this more evident than in the obstructionist view of the Second Amendment. It has been called irrelevant, misunderstood and out of date for the modern world. Slowly but surely, the Second Amendment has become the redheaded stepchild of the nation.
Picking the Second Amendment apart isn’t a new thing, but it has become far more fashionable since the Heller and McDonald Supreme Court decisions. The gun control extremists even claim it was these two court decisions that gave individuals the right to own a firearm, instead of what they really were – decisions affirming the individual right always existed and it just took that long for an infringement case to get to the Supreme Court.
Still, that doesn’t stop the gun control crowd from claiming the Second Amendment to mean you can only bear arms while in the state sponsored militia, the modern day National Guard. History of course doesn’t support this creative reinterpretation when in fact every able bodied man of the time was part of the militia of the day, some well organized, some not so much. The common defense of self, home and community was just part of being in the community.
One of the most popular Second Amendment attacks is that it only grants you the right to bear arms that were available at the time, in other words muskets. The rational is that there is no way the Founding Fathers could have foreseen the type of modern weaponry we have today. Again, the argument completely ignores history and that there were far more advanced weaponry available when the Second Amendment was written. It’s also important to remember that muskets WERE the “weapons of war” of the day. The United States and British troops were issued muskets to go into battle with, clearly a point well understood when the Second Amendment was written.
Then of course there is the interpretation that the Second Amendment only covers hunting, and therefore is invalid in modern times when sustenance can be purchased from a grocery store. Only in rural areas do the gun control zealots concede the tradition of hunting should be tolerated, and even there they are trying to regulate hunting out of existence. Hunting might have been a more essential skill at the early years of our country, but nowhere in the Second Amendment text does it say or even imply hunting for food.
Even more creative are the recent additions to the ‘not covered by the Second Amendment’ crowd’s argument. This includes saying “arms” does not include ammunition or magazines. While it boggles the mind that someone would try to separate the fact that arms use ammunition and that it’s okay to infringe on the right to possess the very item the arms were intended to fire. The same illogic is extended to magazines. This historical equivalent to a modern magazine limitation would be that you could only possess a small power horn or tiny cartridge box with your musket.
Modern gun control elitists also contend the Second Amendment does not include the right to sell or purchase firearms. This is the main argument for banning firearms retailers in NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) communities. So while the local government proudly says they “support the Second Amendment, but…” the but includes many limitations and exceptions where they feel it is okay for them to regulate firearms retailers out of existence. Absolutely unsupported “safety” guidelines of not being within 500 feet of places like residential areas, parks, schools, day cares, another firearm retailer or so-called “high risk alcohol outlets” are designed to eliminate the ability for stores to operate in their area.
The latest trend is to subject firearms retailers to a Conditional Use Permit application. With this new costly and protracted bureaucratic process, a city or county has unlimited discretion to approve or deny a new firearm retailer’s application based on an undefined and arbitrary “fit” to the community and perceived impact to the surrounding properties. The notification portion of the process also ensures the NIMBY’s from inside and outside the community will mount a popularity contest to the Planning Commission to determine if a legally responsible retailer should be allowed to operate, simply because they do not like firearms and don’t believe they should be allowed in the community.
If that’s where gun control has been and where we are now, a hint into the future comes from the confirmation hearing of Judge Brett Kavanaugh. California’s Senior Senator argued that common possession does not equal common use as describe by the late Justice Antonin Scalia’s writing of the majority opinion in District of Columbia v. Heller. Here he wrote the Second Amendment protected the sort of weapons “in common use at the time.” The Senator’s direct quote was “You’re saying the numbers determine common use? Common use is an activity. It’s not common storage or possession, it’s use. So what you said is that these weapons are commonly used. They’re not.”
This sets up all kinds of new legal buffoonery. In highly gun controlled states like California, New York, Massachusetts and New Jersey, among others, will they be able to argue that so-called “assault weapons”, which are highly regulated or even outlawed, are no longer in “common use” there? If you possess but don’t regularly “use” your firearm, does the Second Amendment not cover it? And what would be a fair test of “use”? If you use your firearm for self defense like the approximately three million others in the United States every year but don’t fire it, is that enough “use”?
While the Second Amendment has been beaten up, carved into pieces, minimized, misunderstood and creatively reinterpreted, it has survived to this day – at least in most of the country. In other areas such as my current home state of California, it is a mere shadow of what it once was and getting dimmer and dimmer every day.
Unless we are out protecting it and ensuring our elected representatives will no longer stand for the incremental elimination of our rights, the Second Amendment will fall. It’s on all of us to stand up and be counted before we have no rights to fight for.
Bob
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