Gun Control and the Second Amendment

No one can argue that guns are not a presence in today's society. How, and to what extent, guns should be regulated is the subject of much debate. This debate grows more intense as anecdotes of gun violence increase in frequency, and more guns and deadlier guns continue to enter the country. On the other hand, the Second Amendment ambiguously protects gun owners and prevents the government from taking guns away from citizens, according to pro-gun activists.

The exact meaning of the Second Amendment, and the intentions of the framers when they wrote the Bill of Rights, is very difficult to discern. Both sides of the gun control issue interpret the Second Amendment to support their position, so perhaps a consensus about the meaning will never be reached. However, political scientists have attempted to figure out the meaning based on political thought of the day, and the background of the framers.

In his book, The Politics of Gun Control, Robert J. Spitzer argues that the Second Amendment does not even apply to gun control, and it is irrelevant to today's society. He says that the purpose behind the Bill of Rights as a whole was to protect the states from the power of the national government. The purpose in writing the Bill of Rights was to appease the anti-federalists, who had a distrust of large national government, so that they would consent to ratifying the Constitution. Thus, the Second Amendment is a piece of this plan.

It called for the states to be able to maintain their militias, because the anti-federalists were dubious of the standing army called for in the Constitution. They believed that the government would not have the resources to maintain a large national army, thus that job should be left to the states, as is called for in the Articles of the Confederation. They won the Revolutionary War with state militias, and they hated the British with their large, organized, standing army. However, militias soon became impractical and were replaced by a standing army. The clause about possession of firearms in the amendment refers to militias for which the government does not provide the weapons, which, again, is outdated and irrelevant to today.

Spitzer says that the only debate between the writers about the amendment was about militias versus a standing army, indicating that possession of arms had no connection to the amendment. And even in the Federalist Papers, the writers talk about how a standing army is superior, and it will not deprive states of their sovereignty, thus the Federalist Papers support the necessity of a standing army. What Spitzer concludes is that purpose of the Second Amendment was to limit the federal government, and strike a balance between state power and federal power. It was written, not to protect gun owners, but to assuage anti-federalists. And the gun rights called for that apply to militias do not apply to individual citizens. Because militias are outdated, the Second Amendment as a whole is irrelevant, thus the rights that gun advocates believe are constitutionally protected, are, in fact, not, because the Bill of Rights says nothing at all concerning gun control.

Robert E. Shalope, on the other hand, argues in his article, "The Ideological Origins of the Second Amendment," that the Second Amendment does, in fact, protect gun rights. He looks at the influences on the framers, including their culture, and the thinkers that came before them. He presents evidence that supports the idea of a right to guns, and says it is specifically addressed in the Bill of Rights.

Among the philosophers that the framers drew from was Machiavelli, who writes that citizens must be armed and ready to fight, in order to prevent corruption in government. Civic rights go hand in hand with arms, and arms are necessary for liberty because they keep rulers honest. Shalope also mentions Raleigh, who says that tyrants are rulers who disarm the people so that they cannot resist power, and Bodin, who says that in any good democracy, the public should be armed. Writers contemporary to the founders, such as James Harrington, Andrew Fletcher, and others, developed these ideas further. Other thinkers also pointed to the English as an example of people who surrendered their arms and became luxury loving, and they lost their liberty. In America, however, the people still had a chance to maintain their liberty because they were as yet uncorrupted. American writers of the day described a link between the American spirit and their possession of arms. Jeffrey Snyder wrote an article "A Nation of Cowards," in which he writes that the Second Amendment was a product of the Revolutionary War and the political thoughts of the day. And the prevailing attitude of the day was one that supported the possession of firearms, and saw their possession as necessary to the people to protect their freedom.

When Madison wrote the Bill of Rights, he was writing it in a political environment that supported this ideology. In researching ideas on what to include, he asked for suggestions from the states, and from other citizens. Shalope says that Madison received suggestions that could be divided into four categories, which are all included in the amendment. They are: the right of the individual to possess firearms, the fear of a professional army, a support of state militias, and a civilian controlled military. There are two separate clauses in the amendment, but neither is less important than the other. According to Shalope, the debates of the day suggested that people distinguished between individuals and militias in terms of gun ownership, and that people also saw the right to a gun as inalienable.

This is consistent with the idea that the Second Amendment was written to protect state militias from the national government. One can certainly argue that Spitzer is right in saying that the amendment deals with militias, but his argument is incomplete. The same Americans that hated the British and their well-organized army, and thus wanted to protect their state militias, also had disdain for the British because they gave up their rights to guns. The Americans at that time were fiercely protective of all their rights, and they certainly would not somehow forget to include the right to possess firearms, after seeing what happened to the British, who grew to depend on a professional army. The culture and political thought of the time was certainly in support of gun ownership, thus the framers had to have that as part of their intent behind the Second Amendment. They appeased the anti-federalists with the militia issue, but in addition to that, they incorporated individual citizen rights to firearms, to protect their liberty.

Despite the protections included in the Second Amendment, gun-control advocates still argue that the link between guns and violence should take precedence over the Constitutional argument. Spitzer seems pretty certain that a direct link exists between guns and violence. He says that gun control is equivalent to crime control. The mere presence of a gun could precipitate violence that might not otherwise occur, and even if it would occur otherwise, the presence of a gun makes the violence that does occur more dangerous and deadly. Thus, less guns might lead to less crime, and it would certainly lead to less violent crime.

He also point out that many suicides are committed with guns because they are effective, so if the potential suicide victim did not have access to a gun, they would have to turn to other less effective methods. This means that the suicide rate would go down because less attempted suicides would be successful. This statistic is meaningful when considering adolescents, who often choose to commit suicide in a spontaneous moment of depression, and would not necessarily try again if they failed the first time.

Also among Spitzer's arguments for gun control is the chance of an accident occurring while handling a gun. Less guns equals less accidents. He concludes by saying that even if guns are owned only by law-abiding citizens, the mere presence of guns in society is dangerous, because guns can kill. Thus, more guns in America means more potential for harm.

In his article, "A Nation of Cowards," Jeffrey Snyder states flatly that the gun-owning public is not to blame for the violent crime in our society. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms says that 90% of violent crimes are committed without a handgun, which is what Spitzer says is the most dangerous type of gun because it can be easily carried and concealed. The ATF also says that 93% of guns held by violent criminals are not obtained through lawful methods that would be subject to the legislation supported by gun control advocates. Thus more laws would be ineffective to controlling crime, and only affect gun owners who obey the law. And these gun owners are not the people who commit violent crimes. Indeed, a statistic used in Spitzer's book says that of the 220 million guns in America, about 100,000 are used for crime, which is about five one-hundredths of one percent.

Snyder also talks about how Florida passed a statewide concealed-carry law in 1987 that allowed citizens who followed a reasonable set of rules the right to carry a concealed weapon. Surprisingly enough, the homicide rate fell. John Lott, from the University of Chicago, wrote a whole book about the subject of gun control called, More Guns, Less Crime, and one can probably deduce from the title, without even having to read the book, what he concludes about gun control.

While gun control advocates say that the job of the police is to protect citizens, Snyder says that police will not be there when an actual crime is being committed, when citizens actually need them. Just because the police are professionally trained to protect people does not mean that regular citizens should not be allowed to protect themselves. Indeed, armed citizens kill three times as many criminals as the police do, and their error rate is 2%, while the police error rate is 11%.

Although guns are inherently violent, and their only purpose for existence is to cause harm, more guns does not necessarily mean more crime. As Spitzer says, less guns would not cause less crime, only possibly limit the amount of violence. Lott concludes that more guns means less crime, because citizens can then protect themselves, and criminals are more cautious about their actions because they do not know who has a gun. However, guns in the possession of young people or those not mature enough or educated enough to use them properly and respect the danger are certainly a problem. But this has nothing to do with crime, or with guns in the hands of the responsible, law-abiding public, who make up the majority of gun owners. Those who commit crimes will do so with or without guns, thus restricting them will only negligibly change the amount of crime in society. The link between guns and crime is that more guns, if anything, prevents crime, rather than causes crime.

As far as gun laws that the nation should have, not restricting guns at all is unreasonable and certainly not wise. On the other hand, completely restricting guns would only keep them out of the hands of law-abiding citizens, not criminals, who have access to them through other methods. But, as the NRA argues as its reason for opposing all gun restrictions regardless of their appropriateness, a "slippery slope" exists, meaning that once small gun control measures are enacted, this paves the way for more and more restrictive legislation that will be harder and harder to oppose because each new piece is only a small, seemingly reasonable step. A group like the NRA is necessary to slow down inevitable changes that will be made.

If the Constitution does, in fact, protect the right of citizens to own guns, then the question is about protecting that right in a prudent and just manner. Some restrictions are necessary and wise, such as the assault rifle ban, and the restriction of other such blatantly large-scale weapons that are manufactured for combat purposes only. Also, the ban on armor-piercing bullets, which have no sporting uses, and are meant to pierce bulletproof vests, is reasonable. Laws that keep guns away from "criminals," but still allow citizen access are also reasonable, such as background checks and waiting periods. The NRA argues that these laws simply make it harder for law-abiding citizens to have guns. But if these laws do not disallow law-abiding citizens to own guns, and merely make the process of obtaining them take longer, in an attempt to weed out potential buyers that should not have guns, such as minors or mentally unstable people, then no rights have been violated, and a measure of gun control has taken place. Thus, enforceable laws that perhaps inconvenience regular gun buyers, but prevent criminals from buying guns through the same channels, are certainly reasonable.

The general public should be allowed to own and carry firearms. The potential for accidents and violence will always exist, and nothing can be done about that, regardless of how many laws are passed. Guns will always be a presence in society, and criminals will always have ways of obtaining guns. If there is, indeed, an arms race in the streets, as Spitzer mentions, then steps should be taken to scale back the magnitude of weapons that are available, which is done by limiting new technology that enters the country illegally. However, any laws that even begin to infringe on the right by average citizens to be in possession of a reasonable type and number of firearms, for whatever purpose, should not be enacted. This could become difficult when defining what is and is not reasonable. But the point here is that American citizens do not need the government to decide who among them can or cannot own or carry a gun, and American citizens do not need the government watching over them and breathing down their necks to make sure that they do not hurt themselves while playing with guns.