Saving the Second Amendment

Gun lovers don't seem to understand that their own actions are endangering their beloved Second Amendment. People in this country were horrified by the slaughter of innocent schoolchildren at Sandy Hook. People are growing weary of the daily news of drive-by shootings, shooting suicides, rage shootings, crime shootings, and accidental shootings. After decades of complacency about gun violence, people want change.

People are asking their representatives in government to enact new laws to reduce the level of gun violence. Most people will be satisfied if rather modest changes are made, such as banning assault rifles and requiring background checks of everyone who buys guns, including people who buy them at gun shows. If the NRA would simply accede to these changes and let them become law, the public's furor for any additional new legislation would dissipate.

But the NRA has been resisting all change, just as it has for years. They insist that the Second Amendment gives them the right to have whatever weapons they want, free of government interference. If they succeed in blocking even the modest laws that are now under consideration, the majority of Americans will feel their will has been frustrated. It is very likely that they will start talking seriously about repealing the Second Amendment. People who want to protect their children from guns will feel that they have no choice other than to eliminate the one thing that the NRA gives as the reason why change can't occur.

With only 25 percent of Americans owning guns, it probably won't be all that hard to get rid of the Second Amendment. The Constitution only requires 75 percent of the states to ratify an amendment. There have been quite a few amendments over the years.

Repealing the Second Amendment will not ban guns. It will simply put gun laws on the same footing as other laws. States and municipalities will be able to decide whether they want guns around or not, and on what terms. Since most people don't own guns and don't have much interest in guns, a lot of places will probably put rather severe restrictions on gun ownership and use. We will start to see our death rates from guns decline to be more comparable to the rest of the world, which does not have the guns or the gun problems that we do. These successes will be noticed, and states will follow each others' examples and enact progressively stricter laws.

The Second Amendment protects the rights of the minority of Americans who own guns. That minority has been shrinking steadily for decades as our population has shifted from rural to urban. City folk and suburbanites just don't hunt much. They don't grow up with guns, so they don't have any emotional attachment to them. They don't think they need guns to protect themselves. Guns are simply irrelevant to an ever growing majority of Americans. If they get fed up enough with gun violence and an intransigent NRA, they'll dump the Second Amendment without regret.

Who Owns the Constitution?

Linguists, historians, first year law students, and Supreme Court justices all agree that there are many ways to determine the meaning of an old document such as the U.S. Constitution. You could try to give the words their “plain meaning”, using a dictionary to supplement generally understood terms. But people don't agree on what is generally understood, and the definitions in dictionaries change over time just as the usages of words change.

You could consult dictionaries published at the time the document was written. But dictionaries contain alternate meanings for words, and some dictionaries have meanings that are inconsistent with other dictionaries. How would you know which dictionary to choose and which meaning the authors intended?

You could read other things the authors of the Constitution wrote to try to discern what they meant. But the Constitution was written by a number of people who disagreed on many things, especially on what the Constitution should say and mean.

You could look at how others have interpreted the document. But over the hundreds of years the Constitution has been around, judges and other people have interpreted it lots of contradictory ways.

You could give up on interpreting the Constitution altogether and let some expert tell you what it means. This is a very popular approach, especially with judges who claim to base their decisions on a strict construction of the constitution. The problem is, who do we let decide? Often, judges rely upon people with recognized expertise, like university professors who have researched the Constitution and its history. But the experts often don't agree with each other, and they are as susceptible to error and bias as anyone else. You can find an expert who supports pretty much every possible theory of what the Founding Fathers meant.

People who don't agree with a particular interpretation of the Constitution may point out that times have changed and that the Constitution, which was written before modern technology reshaped our lives, must be made relevant to today's world or it will cease to be useful in guiding our government and our people. On the other hand, people who agree with an interpretation of the Constitution may argue that while technology may have changed, fundamental principles do not. The same people who rely on either of these arguments may use the other argument when it suits them. We see this when people who decry judicial activism in protest of a decision they dislike applaud the same kind of activism when it results in a decision that is to their liking.

Ultimately, it is not only impossible to know what the Constitution was originally supposed to mean, it is irrelevant. What we need to keep in mind is what the Constitution was supposed to do. It was written to be the framework for a nation that would be governed differently from the way many other nations at the time were governed. It was meant to establish a relationship between the government apparatus and the people.

It was not meant to be the law. Instead, it provided a mechanism for making, interpreting, implementing, and enforcing laws. It was not meant to be immutable, so it set out a procedure by which it could be amended. And it was not meant to be the property only of scholars, historians, linguists, judges, or experts. It belongs to all of us, so ultimately we, the people, acting as a nation and not just as individuals, say what it means and what we need it to mean.