Laws about freedom of speech don’t just shift when it comes to content and context, they’re also constantly updated to address something else: technology. Radio. Movies. Television. The internet. Even comic books. All have sparked changes in what is permitted and how speech is regulated. But somehow, we pretend that guns are different; that words written when the most deadly weapon required a ramrod and black powder mean that we can’t make adjustments for a semi-automatic rifle and a 30-round clip.
The truth is that guns are different. Because the right to bear arms is a lesser right. A right that was never intended to exist at all.
What makes individual gun ownership a lesser right? It’s a right that only exists in the minds of a handful of hard-right Supreme Court justices who happen to be on the court at this moment. Until 2008, no federal court had ever ruled that the Second Amendment included a right to individual gun ownership. It was always understood as it was written: Guns were allowed in individual hands as a means to supply the armed forces.
Here’s the Milwaukee Independent looking at how Chief Justice Warren Burger discussed the Second Amendment.
That the Second Amendment exists at all is more an accident of timing than an attempt to put guns in the hands of every American.
The amendment grew out of a fear that having a standing army would leave the nation open to depredations by an authoritarian leader, or that the nascent democracy would be overthrown by a military junta. To that end, they explicitly inserted the Second Amendment as an alternative means of providing national defense.
There were multiple drafts of the Second Amendment. Every one of them includes text explaining that this amendment exists only because it’s needed to provide for the nation’s defense.
Just a year after the Constitution was ratified, George Washington nudged Congress to create an official U.S. military, but the still-fearful Congress limited that force to just few hundred soldiers and officers. It would be another six years before it was allowed to grow significantly. When war came in 1812 two things were immediately obvious: The number of soldiers then in the official U.S. military were far from enough to defend the nation, and the poorly organized civilian militias for which the Second Amendment was created were an absolute failure when it came to national defense.
In the next year, the professional military of the United States grew by over 300%. “Second Amendment solutions” were on their way out.
The Second Amendment is failure. It never worked for its intended purposes. It was born from the understandable fears of a new nation engaged in a radical new scheme. But it was a mistake. It may be the most costly mistake this nation has ever made other than failing to end slavery at the outset.
The right thing to do would be to recognize that mistake and pass a new amendment that simply ends the Second Amendment, just as the 18th Amendment was repealed by the 21st Amendment in 1933. (Take a drink.)
Instead, we get statements like this piece of profound ignorance. One that is wrong. Wrong. Wrong again. And then … still wrong.
Recognizing that an actual repeal of the Second Amendment—while absolutely just—isn’t likely, the next best thing is to simply recognize that the right to individual gun ownership is a lesser right, one whose appearance in that useless amendment subjects it to practical constraint.
The Second Amendment was a failure from the start, and should have been repealed 200 years ago
There is no such thing as an unconstrained right. Speech has limits. Religion has limits. Assembly has limits. The idea that any of these things can be completely “free” of government oversight is a pipedream, and everyone from the founders to the...www.dailykos.com
Individual gun ownership rights are the result of a Supreme Court decision. Specifically Heller v DC
Just like abortion rights are the result of a Supreme Court decision. Specifically Roe v Wade
The current court is ready to take away Roe v Wade.
A future court can do the same with Heller v DC.
Prior to 2010 the Second Amendment applied only to the Federal government, not the states and local jurisdictions, who were at liberty to regulate firearms as they saw fit.
The mistake was to incorporate the Second Amendment to the states, contrary to the original intent of the Framers.
