The first American gun control law: the Second Amendment

Second AmendmentThe arms manufacturers and the NRA lobbyists have it all backwards. The Second Amendment was not created to guarantee an individual right to bear and use arms for whatever purposes desired. Instead, the Amendment can be considered the nation’s first national gun control law, designed to keep arms out of the hands of insurrectionists.

The Second Amendment’s national gun control effort was preceded by state gun control laws. For example, in the 1750s, Georgia statutes required slave patrol militias to make monthly searches of “all Negro Houses for offensive Weapons and Ammunition,” that is, to keep guns out of the hands of slaves.

Although James Madison’s original wording of the Second Amendment stressed the importance of “a well armed and well regulated militia being the best security of a free country,” the word “country” was replaced by “state,” in order to win the approval of Virginia and other slave-owning states for the new Constitution.

In its final wording–“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”)–the Second Amendment:

  • Granted the federal government the right to use armed militias to protect the security of the new nation, and
  • Left untouched the state right to use militias to prevent slaves from obtaining and using weapons.

To learn more, read this article or watch this powerful interview with Thom Hartman.

For more than 100 years, the judgments of state and federal courts as well as the United States Supreme Court held sway: the Second Amendment did not guarantee an individual’s right to buy and use guns outside the context of a state-controlled militia.

Then as recently as 1977, at a meeting of the National Rifle Association, a concerted effort was undertaken by ultraconservatives to sell the country on a reframed version of the Second Amendment establishing those rights.

The arms industry has now gained control over enough of the government to usurp arms control, undermining the democratic processes by which ordinary citizens seek to reinstate reasonable restrictions on weapons sales.

So ask yourself, do you want arms manufacturers rewriting our history and our Constitution, especially when their lobbying has contributed to the U.S. having the world’s highest gun fatality rate?

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology

The holy text of the NRA

By guest author Dr. Mike Corgan

The Second Amendment’s 27 words are the holiest of holy texts to the National Rifle Association (NRA) and its supporters. “We get to have guns” is an absolute right, says the NRA.

Assault rifle
Photo by 82josh used under CCA-SA 3.0 Unported license.

Is the Second or any of the other Bill of Rights Amendments absolute? Not so in the case of the First Amendment–freedom of speech. Federal courts have said you can’t “falsely call fire in a theater.”

But gun advocates seem to think differently, i.e., any infringement begins the “slippery slope” to confiscation.

Of all the Amendments in the Bill Of Rights, only the Second has an introductory clause that states its purpose: “A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State….”

In this Amendment, the words Militia, State, and Arms are capitalized, but “people” is not. Does this suggest an emphasis on what was deemed important, as writers of those days usually intended?

A number of federal courts have held that that the introductory clause is not itself  restrictive, yet it does stand alone in the Bill.

A recent article in the New York Times reported that the U.S. Constitution is no longer the model for new democracies around the globe. The reason? The Second Amendment.

Gun violence is still one of of the areas in which the U.S. leads the world. Another recent article in the Times noted that American buyers are keeping the Kalashnikov assault rifle factory in Russia going strong.

Is this how we want to be known?

Michael T. Corgan, Ph.D., Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies
Department of International Relations, Boston University

Mass shooter in action

By guest author Dr. Mike Corgan

“Run, Hide, Fight” is a new reality police video promulgated by the Boston University Police for the BU community.

The film, featured on some local news programs, is a powerfully realistic depiction of what could happen if a mass shooter went into action on the campus.

The instructions are clear and disturbing. Learn escape routes from your office. If you sense that an incident like the Aurora theater shooting is occurring. run away, even if others  are too scared to do so. If running isn’t possible, hide or barricade yourself into a secure and presumably bulletproof  area. Finally, be prepared to fight as best you can if trapped.

Is this the stuff of some latter-day paranoid McCarthyite fantasy? Alas, as recent events have all too graphically shown, mass shootings can and do occur anywhere.

Unfortunately, we as a citizenry can’t do much in advance about gunmen intent on violently settling grievances, then adding random killings to their spree.

But we can do something about the amount of killing taking place. So can the National Rifle Association (NRA).

The Second Amendment protects the right to “keep and bear arms” but like others in the Bill of Rights, this right is not absolute. You can’t own a machine gun or many other military grade weapons. Problem is the NRA tries to keep the prohibited list as small as possible and even shrink it.

It is the military grade weaponry (e.g., 100-round magazines for semi-automatic assault-type rifles easily  converted to full automatic firing) that make the mass killings possible. Without abrogating the Second Amendment, we can do something about that.

The NRA is fond of using the “slippery slope” metaphor to argue that any restriction on gun ownership is a step to confiscation.

That argument works the other way, too. The continued loosening of gun laws can also lead–and has certainly already led–to mass killings that have become far too abundant.

Michael T. Corgan, Ph.D., Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies
Department of International Relations, Boston University