MisUnderInterpreting
Forgive my theft of the style of Bill Sammon's title for the interesting read, Misunderestimated, but I thought it fitting. Attempts to second-guess or poor understanding of the nature of the Second Amendment to the Constitution, like most enactments of that time, usually allows those elements to be twisted in their meaning, diminished or downright discarded. Thus, we have a textbook example in Ron Miller's piece on Fredericksburg.com.
Ron starts out with the typical "I'm one of you" lines, akin to saying "I've got a lot of black friends, but" line right before someone starts picking on blacks.
I SHOULD SAY at the outset that I believe that I have a right to own a gun and I do own one.
Have to take his word for it on that, but if he does own them, he obviously hasn't given as much thought as he should've as to why he is, historically at least, able to own one in the United States.
But I don't think that the Second Amendment unequivocally guarantees me that right. Let me explain.
And so it begins. The first two-thirds of his piece revolve around other secured freedoms and the plight of the Militia in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. His reason for bringing this up is to then discredit, by association, the Second Amendment to the Bill of Rights.
After wading through all that text, he gets to the start of where he could have actually began his article.
Although the idea of defending this nation by means of a civilian militia proved to be a pipe dream, a noble experiment that needlessly cost thousands of lives, its ghost remains in the Constitution to this day. That's what the Second Amendment is: a kind of fossil. It is only a single sentence and few short words have never provoked so much controversy. However, it is clear what the authors intended when it is read in its historical context.
Having also spent a little time showcasing the Founding Fathers as naive in all this, it helps to discredit their intellect and intent in the establishment of our form of government and the enumeration of certain rights. The guy's good, but obvious. He's now made them irrelevant enough to state his true thesis, that the Second Amendment is a fossil, a relic of an age long since vanished. It was for some noble experiment of naive, witless dreamers and fools have misinterpreted it all this time until Ron came along. Fools like, Scott Bursor:
Commentators often attack the vitality of the military and political functions of the militia concept with the argument that they can no longer be performed by a militia. Simply stated, the argument is that an armed citizenry cannot restrain a domestic tyrant or deter a foreign conqueror backed by a modern army. This empirical assertion is frequently made by lawyers, politicians, or other advocates who offer neither argument nor authority for the proposition. And while this assertion may be true in some limited number of circumstances, as a categorical assertion it is demonstrably false.
Consider some recent examples. The Vietnam War demonstrated that a modern military power can be resisted by guerilla fighters bearing only small arms. This lesson has not been forgotten. In 1992, the United States declined to intervene in the conflict in Bosnia-Hercegovina after an aide to General Colin Powell, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, advised the Senate Armed Services Committee that the widespread ownership of arms in the former Yugoslav republic made even limited intervention "perilous and deadly." The deterrent effect of an armed populace was emphasized by Canadian Major General Lewis Mackenzie, who led United Nations peace keeping troops in Sarajevo for five months. Despite the tremendous capabilities of the United States Armed Forces, he explained, the prevalence of arms ownership in the area caused him to believe that if American forces were to be sent to Bosnia, "Americans [would be] killed.... You can't isolate it, make it nice and sanitary."
The validity of these concerns has also been demonstrated in the current conflict in Chechnya where "[m]ore than 40,000 soldiers from the Russian army ... have quickly been humbled by a few thousand urban guerrillas who mostly live at home, wear jeans, use castoff weapons and have almost no coherent battle plans or organization." The Russian army's nuclear capability apparently has not translated into a tactical advantage in the streets of Chechnya.
...The Second Amendment does not guarantee immunity from punishment for insurrection; it merely guarantees the capacity for resistance.
I dare say Mr. Bursor has well-refuted the practicality of a "Militia" even in modern times, but is this all the Second Amendment really guaranteed?
From the venerable guncite, I offer the following:
The 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.
The original intent and purpose of the Second Amendment was to preserve and guarantee, not grant, the pre-existing right of individuals to keep and bear arms. Although the amendment emphasizes the need for a militia, membership in any militia, let alone a well-regulated one, was not intended to be a prerequisite for exercising the right to keep arms. The Second Amendment was meant to preserve and guarantee an individual right for a collective purpose. That does not transform the right into a "collective right." The militia clause was a declaration of purpose, and preserving the people's right to keep and bear arms was the method the framers chose to, in-part, ensure the continuation of a well-regulated militia.
There is no contrary evidence from the writings of the Founding Fathers, early American legal commentators, or pre-twentieth century Supreme Court decisions, indicating that the Second Amendment was intended to apply solely to members of an active militia.
The same ready source also puts paid to Mr. Miller's dubious understanding of the language.
Mr. Miller's argument is one built on a shaky foundation of misdirection or horrendous misunderstanding. It's hard to nail down exactly which is which in his case. It is typical of the shoddy anti-Second Amendment literature of the 90's and I offer it as an example of an updated version (the "I'm a Pepper too" defense) of the same.
Such attempts to reinterpret history in this light, on the small scale as in this article or larger works such as the disgraced Michael Bellesiles' work are meant to go unchallenged and ignored. Their acceptance allows others to build outright lies on a misplaced foundation of shoddy evidence, thus giving them otherwise undeserved and nonexistent credibility. Thus, such works should always be exposed for what they are, the sand foundation that will hold no house.
As a final note, let me also put this thought into your head. Even if there were no Second Amendment, even without an individual guarantee of firearm ownership, the right to keep and bear arms is still protected by the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, which constrict the federal government to its enumerated powers. Nowhere in those enumerated powers is the right to regulate, restrict, or control firearms. Just food for thought.
Forgive my theft of the style of Bill Sammon's title for the interesting read, Misunderestimated, but I thought it fitting. Attempts to second-guess or poor understanding of the nature of the Second Amendment to the Constitution, like most enactments of that time, usually allows those elements to be twisted in their meaning, diminished or downright discarded. Thus, we have a textbook example in Ron Miller's piece on Fredericksburg.com.
Ron starts out with the typical "I'm one of you" lines, akin to saying "I've got a lot of black friends, but" line right before someone starts picking on blacks.
I SHOULD SAY at the outset that I believe that I have a right to own a gun and I do own one.
Have to take his word for it on that, but if he does own them, he obviously hasn't given as much thought as he should've as to why he is, historically at least, able to own one in the United States.
But I don't think that the Second Amendment unequivocally guarantees me that right. Let me explain.
And so it begins. The first two-thirds of his piece revolve around other secured freedoms and the plight of the Militia in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. His reason for bringing this up is to then discredit, by association, the Second Amendment to the Bill of Rights.
After wading through all that text, he gets to the start of where he could have actually began his article.
Although the idea of defending this nation by means of a civilian militia proved to be a pipe dream, a noble experiment that needlessly cost thousands of lives, its ghost remains in the Constitution to this day. That's what the Second Amendment is: a kind of fossil. It is only a single sentence and few short words have never provoked so much controversy. However, it is clear what the authors intended when it is read in its historical context.
Having also spent a little time showcasing the Founding Fathers as naive in all this, it helps to discredit their intellect and intent in the establishment of our form of government and the enumeration of certain rights. The guy's good, but obvious. He's now made them irrelevant enough to state his true thesis, that the Second Amendment is a fossil, a relic of an age long since vanished. It was for some noble experiment of naive, witless dreamers and fools have misinterpreted it all this time until Ron came along. Fools like, Scott Bursor:
Commentators often attack the vitality of the military and political functions of the militia concept with the argument that they can no longer be performed by a militia. Simply stated, the argument is that an armed citizenry cannot restrain a domestic tyrant or deter a foreign conqueror backed by a modern army. This empirical assertion is frequently made by lawyers, politicians, or other advocates who offer neither argument nor authority for the proposition. And while this assertion may be true in some limited number of circumstances, as a categorical assertion it is demonstrably false.
Consider some recent examples. The Vietnam War demonstrated that a modern military power can be resisted by guerilla fighters bearing only small arms. This lesson has not been forgotten. In 1992, the United States declined to intervene in the conflict in Bosnia-Hercegovina after an aide to General Colin Powell, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, advised the Senate Armed Services Committee that the widespread ownership of arms in the former Yugoslav republic made even limited intervention "perilous and deadly." The deterrent effect of an armed populace was emphasized by Canadian Major General Lewis Mackenzie, who led United Nations peace keeping troops in Sarajevo for five months. Despite the tremendous capabilities of the United States Armed Forces, he explained, the prevalence of arms ownership in the area caused him to believe that if American forces were to be sent to Bosnia, "Americans [would be] killed.... You can't isolate it, make it nice and sanitary."
The validity of these concerns has also been demonstrated in the current conflict in Chechnya where "[m]ore than 40,000 soldiers from the Russian army ... have quickly been humbled by a few thousand urban guerrillas who mostly live at home, wear jeans, use castoff weapons and have almost no coherent battle plans or organization." The Russian army's nuclear capability apparently has not translated into a tactical advantage in the streets of Chechnya.
...The Second Amendment does not guarantee immunity from punishment for insurrection; it merely guarantees the capacity for resistance.
I dare say Mr. Bursor has well-refuted the practicality of a "Militia" even in modern times, but is this all the Second Amendment really guaranteed?
From the venerable guncite, I offer the following:
The 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.
The original intent and purpose of the Second Amendment was to preserve and guarantee, not grant, the pre-existing right of individuals to keep and bear arms. Although the amendment emphasizes the need for a militia, membership in any militia, let alone a well-regulated one, was not intended to be a prerequisite for exercising the right to keep arms. The Second Amendment was meant to preserve and guarantee an individual right for a collective purpose. That does not transform the right into a "collective right." The militia clause was a declaration of purpose, and preserving the people's right to keep and bear arms was the method the framers chose to, in-part, ensure the continuation of a well-regulated militia.
There is no contrary evidence from the writings of the Founding Fathers, early American legal commentators, or pre-twentieth century Supreme Court decisions, indicating that the Second Amendment was intended to apply solely to members of an active militia.
The same ready source also puts paid to Mr. Miller's dubious understanding of the language.
Mr. Miller's argument is one built on a shaky foundation of misdirection or horrendous misunderstanding. It's hard to nail down exactly which is which in his case. It is typical of the shoddy anti-Second Amendment literature of the 90's and I offer it as an example of an updated version (the "I'm a Pepper too" defense) of the same.
Such attempts to reinterpret history in this light, on the small scale as in this article or larger works such as the disgraced Michael Bellesiles' work are meant to go unchallenged and ignored. Their acceptance allows others to build outright lies on a misplaced foundation of shoddy evidence, thus giving them otherwise undeserved and nonexistent credibility. Thus, such works should always be exposed for what they are, the sand foundation that will hold no house.
As a final note, let me also put this thought into your head. Even if there were no Second Amendment, even without an individual guarantee of firearm ownership, the right to keep and bear arms is still protected by the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, which constrict the federal government to its enumerated powers. Nowhere in those enumerated powers is the right to regulate, restrict, or control firearms. Just food for thought.
posted by Rob Beck | 6:17 AM
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