The Second Amendment does not give individuals the right to carry guns. That is the opinion of former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Warren Burger, a conservative. He argued that the meaning of this clause cannot be understood apart from the purpose, the setting, and the objectives of the draftsmen.
At the time of the Bill of Rights, people were apprehensive about the new national government being presented to them, and this helps explain the language and purpose of the Second Amendment. The state militia was the predicate of the “right” guarantee, so as to protect the security of the states. Many states required all white males aged 16 and older to own a gun and train with the state militia.
The Southern states had a more specific purpose for their militias: They used them to intimidate the people they held in slavery. They would raid the cabins, looking for weapons and, the greatest weapon, reading materials. Some scholars have claimed that Madison drafted the Second Amendment specifically to reassure the Southern states that the federal government could not disband or outlaw those militias.
It should be noted that when slavery was ended, those militias were well organized to convert to the KKK’s marauding bands.
In 1991, former Chief Justice Warren stated that if he were writing the Constitution at that time, there would be no Second Amendment. A huge national defense establishment had assumed the role of the militia of 200 years ago. Americans have the right to defend their homes, and nothing should undermine this right; nor does anyone question that the Constitution protects the right of hunters to own and keep sporting guns for hunting, any more than anyone would challenge the right to own and keep fishing rods and other equipment for fishing.
In 2011, former Chief Justice Burger stated in a PBS interview that the Second Amendment “has been the subject of one of the greatest pieces of fraud, and I repeat the word ‘fraud,’ on the American people by special interest groups that I have seen in my lifetime.”
Why is it that America seems to pledge allegiance to an amendment that was created at a time when NO ONE feared that their guns would be taken away? Guns were a household item at a time that businesses that rid gardens and houses of destructive critters, departments that removed dangerous animals, and veterinarians that “euthanized” the beloved aged pet that was sick, were inconceivable. At the time, these were done with a gun, and they were the responsibility of the home.
Somehow, the American people have accepted the idea that because it was written in the Constitution, the Second Amendment is indisputable. And because it profits special interest groups to focus on the clause of the amendment that says “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed,” we have not had the kind of laws regulating the gun industry that we have for alcohol and driving a car.
How can we change this? We have to demand that our “media” educate the citizenry, as the First Amendment gives them responsibility along with freedom. And we need to educate locally. Let’s invite the scholars and historians to educate us re the Second Amendment and the time of the Constitutional Convention that produced it.
If we do not act to effect change in thinking, we are culpable of the continued massacre of children and other innocent people simply trying to live their lives.
Cynthia Loring MacBain lives in Southampton.