April
9, 2002 12:50 p.m. Exit
Gun Control
These
days, it’s hands-off the Second Amendment.
ews
stories from around the nation identifying gun control as a trip-wire
issue dividing conservatives and liberals don't surprise. The events of
September 11 have heightened the resolution of the "individual rights"
interpreters of the Second Amendment. These are distinguished from the
"collective rights" faction. The former stare the language in
the face and come away with a reading different from the collective crowd.
At issue is the interpretation of a single sentence: "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." Opponents
of comprehensive gun-control laws view this as a constitutional guarantee
of the right of Americans to own guns. An easy to way to put it is that
they view the amendment as if the initial clause were irrelevant, leaving
us simply with a guarantee against federal gun control that challenges
the right of citizens to own weapons. By contrast, of course, there are
those (roughly speaking, the nation's intelligentsia) who insist that
the Second Amendment goes no further than to say that Congress may not
legislate against the right of individual states to organize militias
of arms-bearing citizens.
The
learned arguments go on and on. The gun-control lobby has suffered two
severe blows in the recent period. One of them is that Professor Laurence
Tribe of Harvard, much esteemed by American liberals, in part because
of his enthusiasm for abortion rights, having examined the historical
documents, opines that indeed the people who framed the Bill of Rights
intended to guarantee individual, not merely collective, gun-ownership
rights. And the Fifth Circuit ruled in the same direction in United
States v. Emerson.
As with other contentions
requiring constitutional interpretation, the division over gun control
is only one part historical (What did the framers intend?). Another, more
significant part, is political (What does the American public want?)
But it's better, and safer, to ask the question: What do the American
people reasonably want? It probably could be established by polling
that the American people would be happy to hang anybody who burns the
U.S. flag, but such sentiments are not likely to be codified.
It's more fruitful to argue reasonable limitations on gun ownership. A
comic routine in Las Vegas in 1980 featured a debate between presidential
contenders Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter on the matter of gun control,
Walter Cronkite presiding. "What about atom bombs, Governor Reagan?
Do you believe the Constitution guarantees the right of individuals to
have atom bombs?"
"Well, Mr. Cronkite,"
the comedian answered pensively, "just small atom bombs."
The assertion of a right at ridiculous lengths — the absolutization
of it, in the manner of the American Civil Liberties Union — is a
way of undermining it. If the Constitution says you can say anything you
want under any circumstances, then you can shout fire! in a crowded
movie theater. If you have the right to remain silent in all circumstance,
then you can decline to give testimony vital to another citizen's freedom
and rights. If you insist that a citizen has the right to own a machine
gun, you discredit his right to own a pistol or a rifle.
What ripened in the aftermath of September 11 was a sensibility —
of the individual citizen's dependence, at the margin, on his own resources.
George Will put it pithily (as ever), when he asked, Call for a cop, an
ambulance, and a pizza, and ask which is likelier to get to you first.
A rifle in the closet wouldn't have been useful against the swooping 767s
that struck the Twin Towers. But a sense of the implications of chaos
and anarchy was sharpened. An analyst 20 years ago remarked that an 82-year-old
couple living in an apartment in the Bronx, after twice being assaulted,
found it possible to sleep at night only after acquiring a pistol and
advertising its presence on a note pinned to the outside door.
Both sides will find
it useful to temper extreme expressions of their positions. But it is
certainly true that at this moment it is likelier that congressmen running
for election or reelection in November will not press the collective interpretation
of the Second Amendment.
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ews
stories from around the nation identifying gun control as a trip-wire
issue dividing conservatives and liberals don't surprise. The events of
September 11 have heightened the resolution of the "individual rights"
interpreters of the Second Amendment. These are distinguished from the
"collective rights" faction. The former stare the language in
the face and come away with a reading different from the collective crowd.
At issue is the interpretation of a single sentence: "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." Opponents
of comprehensive gun-control laws view this as a constitutional guarantee
of the right of Americans to own guns. An easy to way to put it is that
they view the amendment as if the initial clause were irrelevant, leaving
us simply with a guarantee against federal gun control that challenges
the right of citizens to own weapons. By contrast, of course, there are
those (roughly speaking, the nation's intelligentsia) who insist that
the Second Amendment goes no further than to say that Congress may not
legislate against the right of individual states to organize militias
of arms-bearing citizens. 
