The Second Amendment:
Approximately
100,000 Americans were hit by guns in 2011. Almost 12,000 killed. And over
18,000 chose a firearm as the instrument with which to end their own life.
Gun
deaths in England & Wales totalled 39.
President
Obama has responded to America’s latest mass shooting with the most aggressive attempt
at halting the gun madness by any American president. The right answer for
many, an affront to others. As 2013 begins, America finds itself divided and
President Obama stands both on the precipice of a monumental political
achievement, and on the tightrope of political turmoil. In the first of two
parts, Political Sticks takes on Gun
Control.
Background
The
following text is a transcription of the Second Amendment to the Constitution
of the United States in its original form taken from the US National Archives
website. This amendment forms part of the first Ten Amendments that were
ratified December 15, 1791, and form what is known as the ‘Bill of Rights’.
Amendment II:
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.[1]
In
fact, there are two versions of this amendment. One with three commas, and one
with a single comma after the word state. Discussion on the differing versions
- one passed by congress and another distributed and ratified by the States -
has continued (and will likely continue) for years.
The
controversy of the Second Amendment, recently described as having the ‘most
lethal comma in the history of literature’ by CNN talk show host Piers Morgan[2], seems
not to be cooled by the 19th Century rule, borrowed from English law, that ‘[p]unctuation is no part of the statute’.[3]
Similarly, speculation surrounding the meaning of, or intentions behind the Amendment
has not been dampened by a 2008 Supreme Court case officially establishing
interpretation of the Second Amendment as a protection of an individual’s right
to possess and carry firearms.[4]
Enter the N.R.A
What
is now the law of the land began as an outlandish theory pedalled in the late
1970s by a group of conservatives who took power at the National Rifle
Association conference. Their desire for a new interpretation of the Second
Amendment was widely ridiculed and even later labelled a fraud by a Chief
Justice of the United States[5].
However,
the beginning of the 1980s saw a pro-gun President installed in the White House, and
a report commissioned by Republican Senator Orrin Hatch[6] claiming
to find proof that the Second Amendment was intended as an individual right.[7] Academic
studies intended to find a similar outcome were commissioned by the N.R.A., and
an audacious constitutional study, rejected even by the right flanks of the
Republican Party, was pushed with brute force into conservative conventional
wisdom.[8]
Madness
Regardless
of arguments surrounding the Second Amendment, and avoiding any suggestion that
any one of us knows the intention behind the Bill of Rights. Let’s take the
Amendment at face value and assume that the keeping and bearing of arms relates
to both militias and individuals and is not to be infringed in any way. Let us
also assume we are still living in the late 1790s or early 1800s and the most
powerful weapon we have access to is a musket. Ignore the fact that, when the
Amendment was written, those creating it could not possibly imagine the awesome
power and sheer capacity to inflict death of the weapons used at Sandy Hook, Aurora
and Virginia Tech.
Does
the constitution say the right to keep and bear arms is not to be infringed
unless you are a juvenile or mentally ill. Or, for that matter, if you are a
convicted criminal? It does not. But common sense, tells us to keep guns away
from these people as much as we can, indeed, the pro-gun argument nauseatingly
repeats the phrase ‘guns don’t kill people, people kill people’.
In other words: Keep the guns away from those
who will use them to kill people. In other words: Take the assault weapons out
of circulation and you seriously reduce the likelihood of one falling into the
hands of a deranged killer.
The
point being, there is already legislation in place, there is already an
acceptance that the right to bear arms has exceptions that have been endorsed
by the Supreme Court. You can’t have tanks or an RPG grenade launcher – and
neither should anyone have any need for, nor the ability to purchase, any kind
of assault weapon.
These weapons have magazines holding hundreds of rounds of ammunition that can be discharged at an unimaginable rate. Each child at Sandy Hook was hit with between three and 11 bullets.[9] There is no reason, no reason on this earth, why anyone should have access to such an awesome killing machine that can, in seconds, do that to a child or any other human being. And so far, not one pro-gun argument has been put forward to the contrary.
Without
quoting the constitution, or claiming to be a victim of Government suppression,
without using the words ‘to protect my family’ or ‘they’re fun’, explain to me
– in calm and measured language - why you think you need an assault weapon that
can discharge one hundred bullets per minute.
The
pro-gun lobby will argue that had a teacher been armed with an AR15 or a
Bushmaster .223 at Sandy Hook, or had everyone been armed in Aurora, these
atrocities would not have happened.
Armed to the teeth
Imagine
seventy people, each armed, reacting to a masked gunman in a dark cinema.
Imagine several thousand rounds of ammunition in the room rather than several
hundred. Imagine the chaos as those several thousand rounds of ammunition begin
to fly around the room indiscriminately.
In
the case of a recent incident at the Empire State Building, two police officers
fired 16 shots at a man who had shot one of his co-workers. The police, firing
at close quarters, missed their target and struck ‘flowerpots and other objects around’.
The police - fully trained in the use of firearms - hit nine bystanders.[10]
Imagine
one teacher, with access to a handgun, taking on a shooter in a school armed
with an assault rifle. Imagine the terror of the moment. Imagine children
screaming, running across classrooms and hallways. How long before inadequately
trained, unprepared teacher shoots the wrong man, or shoots a child? How long
before a disgruntled teacher turns the weapon on his pupils in a moment of rage
or a sadistic pre-meditated killing spree?
Of
course, we can guard against this by arming all
teachers. So that if the unthinkable happens, every teacher can pick up a
firearm and begin firing around the school. An excellent solution to be sure…
Be
under no illusion, the shooter went to Sandy Hook with enough ammunition to
murder the whole school.[11]
The idea that one armed person could even retrieve the handgun from the locked
box it would inevitably have to be kept in, let alone take down an armour-clad,
AR15-wielding madman is quite frankly fanciful.
There
was armed security at Columbine. And Virginia Tech. Fort Hood is a military
base with more weapons than any school, college or cinema combined. No-one
stopped anything.
The
N.R.A. is in ever increasing danger of appearing to want everyone armed just so
they can remain armed and play with their ‘fun’ assault weapons. That is
awfully close to a PR nightmare of epic proportions.
Take me to Part 2 of this article!
Take me to Part 2 of this article!
Click on the links below to read previous content from Political Sticks:
Click on the links below to read previous content from Political Sticks:
[2] Piers Morgan on the Richard
Bacon Show – BBC Radio 5live, 17/01/2013
[3] 105 U.S. 77 (1881) Hammock v. Farmers Loan & Trust Co
[4] 554 U.S. 570 (2008) District of
Columbia v. Heller
[5] Warren E. Burger, Chief Justice of the United
States (1969-86) writing in Parade Magazine, January 14, 1990
[6] Rep. Utah, and chair of the
Subcommittee on the Constitution
[7] Hatch commissioned a history of
the Second Amendment, resulting in a 1982 report ‘The Right to Keep and Bear
Arms’ -
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2012/04/the-second-amendment.html
[9]
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/12/guns-parents-and-sandy-hook-time-to-take-the-bullet/266315/
[10] As reported by CNN:
http://www.cnn.co.uk/2012/08/24/justice/new-york-empire-state/index.html
[11]
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/americas/united-states/121216/police-sandy-hook-gunman-was-loaded-ammo
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