Sunday, March 25, 2007

The Truth About the Second Amendment

A local conservative blogger (I won’t dignify him with a link to his cranky, disrespectful site) has on his sidebar a photograph of a gun-toting woman along with the caption: “The Right of the People To Keep & Bear Arms Shall Not Be Infringed!” Now, to be fair, that blogger doesn’t claim that he’s quoting the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, but the language is just familiar enough to us all that it’s easy enough to infer that that’s what he’s doing. Except that the quotation is wrong and misleading (intentionally or otherwise), because here is what the Second Amendment actually says:
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.
Anti-gun controllers like that blogger tend to ignore the first half of the sentence because it is inconvenient to their claim that gun control legislation is unconstitutional. The problem is, you can’t ignore it. It’s there. It affects the meaning of the Amendment. For more, see The Truth About the Second Amendment.

The recent Federal Court decision overturning a gun control law in D.C. is disturbing because it rejects long-established judicial precedent and the correct interpretation of the Second Amendment. I’m hoping that the Supreme Court will hear the certain appeal and will re-establish common sense. For more information about the case, and the need for more effective gun control laws, see The Brady Campaign.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I am always mystified when people spend so much effort trying to deprive others of their rights. What exactly is the point of depriving your fellow citizens of their guns? You will not gain anything from it.

As near as I can tell, the primary argument against guns is that some people think guns are bad. Since these people do not like guns they think nobody else should like them either. Following that premise, these folks have gone off looking for a constitutional justification to ban guns. Hence we have shamefully silly semantical circumlocutions such that you advocate.

Unknown said...

Gun control--not necessarily banning all guns, but stricter registration rules and bans on guns that have no civilized purpose--will reduce gun violence, intented or otherwise. The country will be a safer place. That's what we'll all gain.