Round 6 — The Right to Keep and Bear Arms

Well folks, this is an election year.  This guarantees we will disagree on many things but please heed this bit of advice – wear boots!  The Republican Party likes to claim that they are “originalist” and that they know the intentions that the Founding Fathers had when they penned the US Constitution. This is frequently their justification for doing EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE from what the documents actually say.  They like to try to scare us into believing that the country is on the verge of destruction and that we are straying from the Founders’ intentions but lets really look at some of these claims.

Yep, this is the “Third Rail”… Let’s grab on…

The Republican Party, fueled by National Rifle Association (NRA) lobbyist in fearmongering about the right to keep and bear arms.  They like to describe all Democrats (many of which are gun owners by the way) as power-crazed socialists who want to take way everyone’s guns. They have even gone to the extreme of saying things like if everyone had a gun, less people would be killed in mass shootings.  Aside from the sheer stupidity of these arguments, its important to point out that RATIONAL Republicans, like Antonin Scalia point out that “like most rights, the right — Second Amendment — by the — the rights granted by the Second Amendment are not unlimited.’  In other words, gun control is not the same a gun ban.  But the GOP still likes to claim “they are coming for our guns.“

The architects of the Constitution understood that people needed to arm themselves.  The reality of life in the 18^th Century was that armies were not to be trusted and if the were being attacked by an army from another country (like France), or Indians, or pirate, or (image this, Parliaments) they would need to form militias and to do so they would need not just hunting rifles but actual military arms.  But when the Congress penned that Amendment to the Constitution, they were talking about the population having the right to form a militia to defend themselves not commit crimes or rebel against the federal government.  The expressly said “a well-regulated militia,” which implies some order and discipline (although we are clearly talking about something different from our current National Guard which is a true army). 

The Founding Fathers expected many of the rules the NRA opposes to be normal practice. 

• Gun Registration:  All of the colonies enrolled local citizens, men between the ages of 16-72 in state militias. To do this, the colonies and then the newly independent states had to keep track of who owned what type of weapons and who could be called upon for militia service.
• Restrictions on carrying weapons in public:  The United States inherited a variety of restrictions that evolved under English Common Law. Armed travel was limited to a few well-defined occasions such as assisting justices of the peace and acting a part of the army or militia.  Concealable weapons such as handguns were subject to even more stringent restrictions.  Thus, there was no general right to take your weapons anywhere or to carry any sort of weapon.  The popularity of hand guns and open carry is really a biproduct of racist “Jim Crow” laws following the Civil War and something our Founding Fathers would have had serious objections to.
• Loyalty Oaths:  One of the most common claims one hears from the NRA is that the Congress included the Second Amendment to make possible a right of revolution. This is UTTER BULLOCKS!  In fact, the Continental Army  engaged in large-scale disarmament of the civilian population during the American Revolution. The right to bear arms was conditional on swearing a loyalty oath to the government. Individuals who refused to swear such an oath were disarmed.

So, once again, the GOP and the NRA come down on the wrong side of history.  Nobody wants your guns.  States like Pennsylvania even enshrine their own right to bear arms in the state constitution.  The Second Amendment DOES guarantee the right to own MILITARY weapons not just your hunting rifle so an assault rifle ban is unconstitutional but a restriction on where you can carry it, who can own one, and how you can use one is not.

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