This Blog posting advocates an alternative legal and political approach to the right of American citizens to bear arms. It does so for two reasons. The first is based upon an understanding that the language of the Second Amendment of the Constitution does not confer an unqualified right of citizens to bear arms. This should not be a matter of legal interpretation by the Supreme Court, as it did in 2008, District of Columbia vs. Heller, or any other body of legal interpretation. It is a matter of an understanding of the English language and of its use by the writers of the Second Amendment. The second reason is based upon a Common Sense approach to the immorality of allowing so many Americans to die by gun violence in comparison with other countries who limit citizen gun ownership. We will argue that despite its sacrosanct placement in the Bill of Rights, the Second Amendment, alone among all ten, is anachronistic in the extreme and should be repealed. The issue it deals with is more properly for the people of today to decide through Congressional legislation.
Wording of The Second Amendment
(1) 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.
Qualification of the right to bear arms
There are two questions of importance here: (1) Is a qualification placed upon the right to bear arms? (2) Is the Second Amendment relevant today?
If the writers’ intent were not to so qualify the right to bear arms, then why was the militia even mentioned? Why did they not just say:
(2) The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
The most that one might say in defense of an unqualified right in version (1) is that they were simply giving one example of why we should have the right to bear arms. They might then also have written,
(3) A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, to the hunting for food, to the protection against unwanted intruders into one’s home, and to other enjoyments of gun ownshership, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.
We should assume that the authors of the Constitution and of the Second Amendment were highly intelligent, well versed in use of the English language, and deliberative people. If they meant version (2), a completely unqualified right, or version (3), an unqualified right, but with some gratuitous examples thrown in, then they would have so written it. But they wrote version (1), which contains the solitary predicate: A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, which leads one to the conclusion that they meant for the Militia to be the raison d’etre of the right to bear arms; otherwise, they would have given us version (2) or (3).
If they could have seen that their intent over the ensuing years might have been grammatically misinterpreted, they might of written, for greater clarity:
(4) In order to maintain 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.
I suspect, however, that the syntax of their day made the phrasing of version (1) equivalent in meaning to version (4).
In conclusion, what should be discussed by the Supreme Court is whether the right to bear arms is qualified or not qualified by the need to raise a militia, based solely upon an understanding of the English language plus any other evidence that may be adduced from the times in which they lived; more will be said about this later. In 2008 the Supreme Court ruled that the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia and to use it for traditionally lawful purposes such as hunting, target shooting, and self-defense within the home. Such a ruling is either good law (after all, a majority of 9 esteemed judges decided) or good politics; it still begs the question of why the authors of the Amendment (also esteemed thinkers) should have thrown in the militia phrase at all. Is the Court saying that the authors have simply given us a piece of gratuitous information that we can disregard if we like? The original framers were not in the habit of such gratuity elsewhere in the Constitution.
Relevance Today
If one accepts the premise that in version (1) the founders did indeed qualify the right to bear arms by the need to raise a militia, the SCOTUS 2008 decision notwithstanding, then it is equally clear that the second amendment is anachronistic. This raises an interesting question with respect to the Bill of Rights itself. We are accustomed to regard the Bill of Rights, like the Ten Commandments, as comprising universal as well as timeless ethical, moral and political precepts. The other nine amendments of the Bill of Rights meet these criteria. Amendment 2 does not, because it fails the test of time. Why the Founders, an astute group of thinkers, should not have foreseen the possible obsolescence of militias over time is puzzling, though to be fair, we are all creatures of our own time.
The constitution was written in 1787. The United States had just finished a revolutionary war in which State militias played a crucial part. At that time France and Spain still had colonies that bordered the U.S. and had expansionist designs. There was a long frontier to the west of a border that ran from Ohio to Florida. Even the British still had thoughts of claiming it, considering their war loss as being limited only to the 13 colonies. There were also some large Indian tribes with considerable fighting capability, like the Creeks in the south and west, who would have to be faced if there were thoughts of westward expansion, as there were at the time in Georgia and elsewhere. England still wanted to exert commercial control over its former colonies, and indeed we went to war again with them in 1812. Finally, the new country was emerging from a political battle between those who wanted a strong central government vs. those who wanted a decentralized power structure, with the States enjoying considerable autonomy. How then could the new nation be defended? It could not finance a large standing army, so the ready solution was to have local militias, and for individual citizens to arm and train themselves. Then, when the need arose, they could form themselves into militias to defend whatever part of the country required it. Thus we have the connection between a need for militias and the right of the people to keep and bear arms. They also may have felt that the country was so vulnerable that this right had to be enacted in perpetuity and thus its placement within the Bill of Rights. What would they have thought and done were they to have seen 160 years into the future? The U.S. would become the most powerful nation on earth, have a professional, standing, paid armed force plus reserves and a National Guard. All soldiers would be trained and armed at the expense of the government, and their army units would not be ad hoc militias, pulled together when some threat would arise. Their weapons would not be their private possession. They would be developed and purchased by the government and stored at bases and in armories when not in use.
What to do about the Second Amendment?
If you believe that the Second Amendment’s mention of militias was a deliberate qualification, then we are led to the rather silly proposition that the estimated 300 million guns currently in the hands of U.S. citizens (excluding the army) are there for the purpose of maintaining or quickly organizing a militia.
If you believe otherwise, and that the 2008 Court’s decision is correct, then we must deal with the practical question of its consequences regarding the scale of injury, death and crime by guns in this country.
The following table illustrates how the U.S. ranks with other civilized and developed nations of the world with regard to citizen gun ownership and gun related deaths.
| Country | Guns per 100 people | Gun-related deaths per 100 people |
| United States | 88.8 | 10.2 |
| Switzerland | 45.7 | 3.84 |
| Finland | 45.3 | 3.64 |
| Sweden | 31.6 | 1.47 |
| Norway | 31.3 | 1.78 |
| France | 31.2 | 3 |
| Canada | 30.8 | 2.44 |
| Austria | 30.4 | 2.94 |
| Iceland | 30.3 | 1.25 |
| Germany | 30.3 | 1.1 |
| New Zealand | 22.6 | 2.66 |
| Greece | 22.5 | 1.5 |
| Belgium | 17.2 | 2.43 |
| Luxembourg | 15.3 | 1.81 |
| Australia | 15 | 1.04 |
| South Africa | 12.7 | 9.41 |
| Turkey | 12.5 | 0.72 |
| Denmark | 12 | 1.45 |
| Malta | 11.9 | 2.16 |
| Italy | 11.9 | 1.28 |
| Spain | 10.4 | 0.63 |
| Ireland | 8.6 | 1.03 |
| Portugal | 8.5 | 1.77 |
| Israel | 7.3 | 1.86 |
| United Kingdom | 6.2 | 0.25 |
| Netherlands | 3.9 | 0.46 |
| Japan | 0.6 | 0.06 |
With 88.8 guns per 100 people, the U.S. has 279 million guns, one for nearly every person in the country, and 10% of deaths are gun-related. The next highest country, Switzerland, has half the number of guns per person and one third the number of deaths from guns. Israel, with all of its ongoing stress from wars and terrorism, is fourth from the bottom with a mere 7.3 guns per 100 people and 1.8% of gun related deaths. Interestingly, the U.K. is below Israel, third from the bottom.
Being awash in so many guns, it becomes easier in the U.S. to commit crime, to settle arguments, and to kill with guns than in any other way. The recent mass murders of schoolchildren, worshipers, and others by angry and emotionally disturbed people, are particularly heinous. And these mass murders are likely to increase as candidates for performing these acts enlarge from the emotionally disturbed, the ubiquitous war games indoctrinating our youth, and the ideologically motivated. Even guns that are kept in the home for self protection have been found to result in more deaths of the owners and their children through accidental or emotional misuse than are lives saved by intruder protection.
Thus, the practical consequence of the 2008 Supreme Court decision is to present us with a set of scales. On one scale is the legitimate pleasure or need of millions of Americans gained from gun use in hunting, target shooting or self protection. On the other scale are the deaths per year of 48,000 citizens by guns (not counting suicides), through crime, mass murder and terrorism, accidental death by mishandling (especially by children), and settling of emotional or petty arguments. This decision is basically a present day moral judgment and should be made by the people through Congressional legislation, not by the Second Amendment, which carries the outdated and obsolete qualification of citizen militias.
Some argue that even if the Second Amendment were to be repealed and Congress were to pass a highly restrictive gun possession law, that it would be too difficult to collect and destroy the existing 300 million guns. One has only to ask: What is more difficult: to collect 300 million guns or to watch even a single parent mourn the murder of his/her child by gun violence?
Conclusion:
1. In 2019 we no longer have need for militias, because we have a standing army, reserves and the National Guard.
2. The Second Amendment, as worded, no longer has validity and should be repealed, and any decision to give the people back the right to bear arms, with or without qualification, should be determined by the people through the normal democratic process of Congressional legislation.