Why is it so important to such an overwhelmingly
large portion of U.S. citizens to “Bear Arms”? Why do we feel safer with a gun
in our house? What is it that we believe we achieve by owning them? We know
that, in “the wrong hands” they can, and will be used to murder on a massive
scale. So, what makes OUR hands so right? Where do we draw that line?
There’s
been a lot of discussion about these questions lately as the frequency and
severity of civilian gun violence has increased at an alarming rate. Many
politicians, mostly on the left, have been calling for changes in the U.S.’s
policy on gun purchasing and ownership. But they have been met with such strong
opposition, so consistently, that no reforms have even come close to being
passed. The reasons for this are fairly evident, but we’ll get to that later.
For now, let’s get to know a little about how we’ve gotten to our unique
position as the country with the highest and most fatal rates of civilian gun
violence in the entire world.
The history of gun
control laws in the United States is actually a pretty quick lesson to go over.
So obviously, we can begin with the beginning, the birth of the United States
Constitution in 1791, including the crowd favorite Second Amendment.
“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.”
During
this period in our country’s history, it was very important to all of us that
we could defend ourselves and our families when called upon to do so, be it by
our newly formed, and objectively fragile federal and state governments, or as
a response to the dangers that lurked around every corner in our vast and
mysterious, recently acquired landscape. The next time we hear about gun policy
isn’t until nearly a hundred years later, after the most important change our
government has ever made: the emancipation of the slaves, marking the first
time our country blushed and realized it too can make horrifying, irredeemable
mistakes. In 1865 many southern states responded to the freeing of the slaves
by displaying their full, unwavering capacity for hate and fear by enacting
“black codes” which forbid any black person from possessing firearms. Soon
after, in 1871, the National Rifle Association or N.R.A. was formed with the
purpose of preparing our civilians for war by improving their marksmanship.
Yup, that’s it, no other agenda, pretty good idea at the time, really. Though,
I’ll warn you now, they may come up again, with some slight philosophy changes…
In 1927 congress realizes it’s probably not a bad idea to ban the mailing of
concealable weapons. When 1934 rolls around, the Mafia had become a big problem
for law enforcement and their frequent use of ‘Tommy guns’ brought about the
very first federal gun control law: The New Deal for Crime. This levied a two
hundred dollar tax on the manufacture and sale of machine guns and sawed-off
shotguns. In 1938, the National Firearms Act prohibits the sale of firearms to
any criminals, convicted or accused. Thirty years later, in 1968, after the
assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the
aptly named ‘Gun Control Act’ and the more long-winded ‘Omnibus Crime Control
and Safe Streets Act’ are established, together prohibiting the sale of guns to
felons, drug users, the mentally ill, raising the purchasing age to twenty one,
as well as requiring vendors to keep, ever so slightly more detailed records of
their sales. 1972 brings us the formation of the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms
Commission (A.T.F.) and thus the issuing of gun licenses begins. In 1986 we
start to see the influence that our civilian marksmanship teachers (the N.R.A.) have developed with the
creation of the ‘Firearm Owners Protection Act.” This protects our rights as
proud gun-toting Americans by forbidding the federal government from
establishing a national registry of gun owners, while also limiting the
A.T.F.’s gun dealer inspections to only once a year and follow up inspections
only for multiple violations. Displaying their irrefutably benevolent
capacity for compromise, civilian ownership of machine guns made after
1986 was also banned in this act. In 1993 the ‘Brady Handgun Violence
Prevention Act’ is passed allowing the FBI to make background checks for buyers
before a sale. But don’t worry, this is definitely NOT a registry of gun
owners. This is followed closely by the 1994 ‘Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act’ tentatively
setting a federal ban on the manufacture of assault rifles, sort of… for a bit.
The ‘Tiahrt Amendment’, which prohibits law enforcement from releasing
information regarding where criminals purchased the guns they used in crimes is
enacted in 2003. In 2004 that thing about assault rifles from 1994 gets thrown
out, so we can go ahead and make those again. 2005 brings us the ‘Protection of
Lawful Commerce in Arms Act’ ensuring that gun manufacturers cannot be held
responsible for what folks end up doing with their products. And finally in
2008 ‘The Supreme Court in the District of Columbia v. Heller” solidifies an individual’s
right to possess firearms in order to defend our homes. But that’s pretty much
it. And if the N.R.A. has anything
to say about it, (and they do,) the background checks from 1993 will be the
last time the Second Amendment gets messed with. But… why is that? What makes
this such a particularly difficult amendment to change, even in light of what
is becoming a tradition of mass shootings in America? We change our thoughts
and policies on other laws all the time. But what makes this one so special?
In order to take a
closer look at the second Amendment to our famously well constructed
Constitution and Bill of Rights, perhaps we should take a look at its brother,
Amendment III. As we all know, (right?) the third amendment states:
“No soldier shall, in
times of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor
in times of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.”
The quartering of
soldiers was of particular importance to the English. The ‘totally unfair’
parents of our teenaged nation, and former overlords from across the pond, who,
because of various dubious experiences from their own infamously illustrious
tenure, were strongly opposed to the concept of a government maintaining a
‘standing army.’ The British solution to this taboo was to sprinkle their guys
with guns, in uniforms, among the general populace. In proper English fashion,
they politely requested that folks graciously allow small groups of these
armed, well-dressed blokes to take up residence in their homes. This way, there
was not one large building housing a complete squadron of military personnel,
(which would constitute a standing army,) but rather a loosely scattered
collection of alarmingly well-prepared gentlemen. While perhaps a possible
solution to our current gun control debate, (Eh? Think about it, we wouldn’t
need guns to protect ourselves if there were a well-trained, even-tempered Brit
in our kitchen,) Americans were not keen on even that compromise. Thus, The
Third Amendment was born.
As the U.S. matured and
began to grow into the self-reliant, (self-obsessed?) nation we are today, the
concept of being the proprietor of a military ‘B&B’ faded from our
collective national consciousness. We spread our borders so wide that they
eventually reached “from sea to shining sea,” equipped with a sturdy pair of
cheap-labor trousers and a maple-flavored, beaver pelt hat. In every state we
established a carefully constructed and incorruptible judicial system and a
trustworthy, unbiased, police force (note to self: check for accuracy). We
became so confident as a country that we even found ourselves getting involved
in the quarrels of other countries, sending our casually seated army (don’t worry England,) around the world to
meddle in their affairs.
With our motivations and overall demeanor having
developed into an entirely different entity than it was when the Constitution
and these early Amendments were established, it comes as no surprise that some
of the issues that we felt so strongly about began to feel outdated. If we have
lost interest in our concern about the quartering of soldiers, then perhaps
there might be other Amendments we ought to take a look at.
Maybe the first one? No, that seems to check out,
basically just the right to party and complain.
How about the Fourth Amendment?
“The right of the people to be secure in their
persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and
seizures, shall not be violated; and no Warrants shall issue but upon probable
cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place
to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
Or, in other words, as the English like to put it:
“Every man’s house is his castle.”
Although, I suppose that also sounds like support
for Florida’s “Stand-your-Ground” laws, (which legally justify the use of
firearms on one’s own property, even if it leads to death;) the British, and
our Founding Fathers were thinking more about the government, (not your
unlucky, prankster cousin.) The idea behind the Fourth Amendment is to protect
our right to the privacy of our personal property against the government’s
prying eyes. It describes the necessity for ‘probable cause’ to be determined
before any government organization’s inspection of our bodies while in public,
our legally procured property, and even our private documents. What “probable
cause” actually means gets a bit dense and murky, and is subject to change
based on the given circumstances, but the Amendment itself seems very clear in
it’s wording in regard to the basic procedure. Doesn’t it? Well apparently,
over the years, even that has become subject to interpretation. For
instance, the New York Police Department developed a policy known as “Stop and
Frisk.” This policy, based on ‘Terry v. Ohio,’ a Supreme Court ruling from
1968, allowed police officers to perform searches on civilians without
pre-determined, court approved, probable cause, under the assumption that this
would prevent crimes from being committed. Under “Stop and Frisk” only “Reasonable Suspicion” is
required to perform a search of a suspect. The idea behind the policy was that
the process of obtaining a legally sanctioned warrant was hindering law
enforcement from identifying criminals who were carrying concealed weapons. They
hoped that by giving police officers more freedom to make judgment-calls based
on their training and experience, without the lengthy process of proving the
necessity for a warrant, violent crime would decrease. While the intention was
noble and seemingly justifiable, this is clearly in blatant contradiction with
our ‘search and seizure’ rights under the Fourth Amendment. Recently this
practice has been brought into question based on the fact that it has been
largely ineffectual in actually preventing violent crimes as well as being used
more frequently to target black and latino citizens and arresting them for
minor drug offenses.
Similarly, you might remember “The Patriot Act”
enacted by, then President George W. Bush, after the September 11th
terrorist attack in 2001. As
expressed in an official statement from justice.gov entitled “What is the
Patriot Act?” the federal government defends it’s amendment of the Fourth
Amendment thusly:
“The Patriot Act
updated the law to reflect new technologies and new threats. The Act brought
the law up to date with current technology, so we no longer have to fight a
digital-age battle with antique weapons-legal authorities leftover from the era
of rotary telephones. “
See?
Sometimes the world changes and our government policies have to stay updated
with those changes. When something horrifying like the events of September 11th
scares us so much that we feel like we are willing to forego our basic
constitutional right to privacy, maybe that should alarm us enough to consider
other outdated policies and laws that perhaps we should take a look at. Although, you’d think that the new
American tradition of regular mass shootings by members of our ‘well regulated
militia’ might cause similar alarm, any mention of our beloved Second Amendment
is met with outrage and is immediately shot down and swept under the rug. There
is a reason for this, but, well, to be honest, I’m too afraid to mention the
name of the organization responsible for this…
Um, yeah, so anyway, (*gulp*), do you remember the
whole Edward Snowden/N.S.A. hoopla? Yet again, we have an example of the
federal government feeling very comfortable with adjusting our Fourth Amendment
rights to suit their needs, this time without even feeling the need to rile up
support by playing to our fears. In this case, one very secretive branch of the
government (the National Security Agency) made the call, all on it’s own, with
a suspiciously unclear amount of oversight, to monitor citizens’ activities.
While the N.S.A. very quickly turned the attention back on Snowden, pointing
out that some of the information he released may have caused security concerns,
it was more of a distraction method. By calling the attention away from what
they had been doing to U.S. citizens and blaming Snowden for revealing their
unsupervised, unregulated practices, many Americans were too confused to pay
attention to what they had been up to anymore. While it is certainly
unfortunate that some of the methods the government used to combat terrorism
were put out in the open because of Snowden’s revelations, that should not
change public opinion about the fact that one of our government agencies had
been undermining our constitutional right to privacy. Whether or not our
privacy is actually more important than our safety is a matter of some
contention and may be another one of the rights that we need to debate in the
future. But, again, as it stands now, this is a clear example of how easy it
can be to flat out ignore or change one of our original, constitutional rights.
So there’s no doubt that the Fourth Amendment is open for interpretation and
change.
Many conservative politicians, who regularly defend
the second amendment on the basis that our founding fathers were infallible and
that we must uphold their values and regard their policies as irrefutable, have
recently been bringing up the idea of completely altering our structure for
taxation. The U.S. has been using an income based taxation structure since the
beginning, but there has been a lot of talk about making the monumental switch
to a tax program based, instead, on ‘consumption’. To put it in simpler terms:
currently, and throughout our country’s history, the amount of taxes a citizen
pays relate to how much money they make. That’s an income based taxation
system. What many conservatives have been proposing is changing the way our
government collects money from its citizens to a system based on spending. So
basically we would no longer pay taxes based on how much money we make, but
rather on how much money we spend. Essentially, if you get a big ol’ paycheck
every month, the government doesn’t get to touch a cent of it until you buy
something; And if you live paycheck to paycheck, spending every dollar you make
just to keep up with your basic expenses, you would have to pay taxes to the
federal government on every trip to the store or bill you pay. So with a
‘consumption’ based tax system, our poorer citizens would grow poorer and
poorer every time they bought anything, and our richest citizens would be more
likely to save their money and only buy things when necessary, effectively
making those of us with less money pay considerably higher taxes than those of
us with more money. Besides the fact that this does not take into account that
we are currently experiencing the widest income gap in our country’s history,
(so why would we do something to compound that problem, especially now,) it is
also completely contradictory to the usual rhetoric that we hear from the very
same politicians who generally extol a strict constructionist view. Kind of
hypocritical to say that ‘we shouldn’t change our policies because it’s worked
so far’ when it comes to things like gay marriage or gun control, but throw the
book out the window when we’re talking about taxes, doncha’ think? There are
many other examples of our government changing it’s mind or updating it’s
beliefs to reflect the popular ideals of the day (Slavery, Prohibition, Jim
Crowe laws, etc.) therefore, clearly, the Bill of Rights are not immutable.
I’ve mentioned how
there may be a reason for the persistent stubbornness of the Second Amendment,
and while I’m probably putting myself in danger by bringing it up, it’s because
of the National Rifle Association. Yeah, those guys, the ones who were teaching
us how to aim better so that we could defend ourselves if we were attacked way
back in the day. Over the years, since those days that we were worried about
attacks from the ‘savage natives’ or whomever else we might have been afraid
of, the mission statement of the N.R.A has changed drastically. Since nowadays
we’re pretty confident in our safety within the secure borders of our beautiful
country, the N.R.A.’s purpose as a civilian training program has become
ostensibly obsolete. So instead of going the way of, say, home-soldier-checker-uppers,
they made some changes to their agenda. Somehow, this organization has gained
untold wealth and immeasurable influence in government. It has become a well-established fact
that the N.R.A. lobbyists have been slipping money into the pockets of
politicians who are willing to play nice, for decades. It is in their best
interest to prevent any policy changes on gun control because, well, they’re
the gun guys. And they’re really good at what they do. Through intimidation,
money and influence, the N.R.A. has their paws in every aspect of our political
system. Those politicians who choose to play their game, are forever indebted
to them due to the constant flow of funding and support that they receive from
the powerful organization. After accepting this assistance, (most likely the
primary reason for their successful election,) this politician now has no
choice but to submit to their generous benefactor’s every whim. Thus, the
N.R.A. has ensured that all of it’s positions have enough support to get voted
on by a wide majority of elected officials, however they are told to do so.
Recently, their lust for power has grown so vast that we have even begun to see
evidence of their agenda outside of the United States. In countries such as South
Africa, Mexico, Germany, Italy, and most notably in 2005, during an attempt by
the Brazilian government to establish new restrictions on gun ownership, due to
their own, famously high rates of gun violence. When the National Rifle Association heard about the possibility that Brazil
might be enacting tighter restrictions on its citizen’s ability to bear arms,
naturally, they sprung into action. They began running advertisements in Brazil
proclaiming the importance and benefits of gun ownership and presumably, with
even greater ease, buying politicians, in order to ensure their interests are
represented just as overwhelmingly as they are at home. The N.R.A.’s fear was
that, were gun control regulations passed in a place like Brazil, U.S. citizens
might realize that it’s possible to stay safe without our own personal arsenal, and maybe we would fall out of love with our favorite amendment.
But, unfortunately, as far as I can see, we’re
basically stuck with them for the foreseeable future… *sigh* So, let’s get back to the real purpose of the
Second Amendment: that “ A well regulated Militia [is] necessary to the
security of a free State…” Well, I mean, yeah, right, of course… a civilian
militia… hmm… Can we think about that for a second? So that would mean a group
of your untrained, not necessarily educated, probably politically uninformed,
possibly incredibly bigoted neighbors, getting together, arming themselves with
guns and taking to the streets… Uhh… Yunno, I’m not sure I like that idea… I
mean, I guess that WAS something we needed at a certain point. Like, when there
were attacks from natives. Or when there was a criminal on the loose and the
police force was stretched too thin to go out and look for him. What we know a
civilian militia was used for most often was returning escaped slaves to their
masters, because, of course, they were property and belonged to their master;
It’s just that, they could escape. So the community would band together to
retrieve their neighbor’s expensive tool. So yeah, I see why they needed an
armed civilian militia… for that awful reason. But, what would be a modern day
equivalent of that? Maybe there isn’t? Perhaps, and I know I’m going out on a
limb here, we don’t need a “well regulated Militia” anymore. This concept does
not apply to the way our community and political system works anymore. The
world has changed and continues to change and we need to change with it.
Excellent post, Lucius! I appreciate your providing historical and Constitutional context for your arguments about the 2nd Amendment. And I agree with you! One minor note: the income tax has not been around since the beginning. It was introduced as the 16th Constitutional Amendment in 1913.
ReplyDeleteThank You! Glad someone caught that. It's nice to know I'll be called out for stuff like that. Your fact checking is sincerely appreciated.
DeleteAnd thanks for reading!
Good blog! It's time to evaluate whether modern gun power compares to the muskets the Founding Fathers were protecting.
ReplyDelete