As the gun nuts will surely point out, former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens doesn’t know how to distinguish automatic from semi-automatic firearms. I’ve never understood why this distinction is so important to gun nuts. As a legal matter, obviously it is important to know the difference. But the reason that non-gun enthusiasts make this mistake so often is because the semi-automatic weapons are so incredibly lethal that the distinction doesn’t make any practical difference to them. Does anyone think Adam Lanza’s semi-automatic weapon was inadequate to the job of killing 20 kids and 6 teachers in a couple of minutes?
It’s really the ease and quickness that killers like Lanza and James Eagan Holmes (the Aurora, Colorado shooter) can mow down large groups of people that is the concern.
In any case, Stevens’ proposed amendment to the Second Amendment is sloppy. It would make it impossible for a National Guard officer to disarm an insubordinate underling.
As a result of the rulings in Heller and McDonald, the Second Amendment, which was adopted to protect the states from federal interference with their power to ensure that their militias were “well regulated,” has given federal judges the ultimate power to determine the validity of state regulations of both civilian and militia-related uses of arms. That anomalous result can be avoided by adding five words to the text of the Second Amendment to make it unambiguously conform to the original intent of its draftsmen. As so amended, it would read:
“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms when serving in the Militia shall not be infringed.”
As we know, the wording of these things can get twisted over time. So, if you want to rewrite the Second Amendment you should be as specific as possible. I’d go with:
A well regulated Militia is no longer necessary to the security of a free State. We now call those things the Army Reserve, the Navy Reserve, the Marine Corps Reserve, the Air Force Reserve, the Coast Guard Reserve, the Army National Guard of the United States, and the Air National Guard of the United States. If you serve in one of those Organizations, your weapon will be provided for you.
See, isn’t that better?
James Eagan Holmes, not Jones.
Well, it is almost a homonym.
And after the massive asteroid annihilates mankind from the face of the earth, and it takes the hundreds of millions of years necessary for some form of humans to re-evolve on this planet, and in their future civilization they decide that they will construct some sort of a Bill of Rights to enumerate their rights as the highest and most exceptional form of life on the planet; then we might see such a thing.
Until then, well, it’s fun to dream.
You didn’t put the Minutemen or Posse Comitatus on your list! You freedom-hating liberals are all alike!!!!!111!!!!
Should have been repealed when the 13th and 14th Amendments were passed. It was the “security of a free State” that empowered the Confederacy and led to the Civil War. When drafted, there were two reason why the compromise 2nd Amendment seemed reasonable. First, there was not to have been a permanent federal standing army. Second, it was questionable if all the states would remain committed to being within the Republic and their borders peaceably respected by other states. The Civil War answered those questions.
And if the War of Northern Aggre – er, Civil War were ever to end, we might have a chance to do this.
It’s the difference between a couple of minutes and a couple of seconds. A typical cyclic rate of fire for a fully automatic weapon is 500 rounds per minute. No one can pull a trigger this fast.
Isn’t the thing with semi automatic weapons that they are easier to aim? Full automatic has such kickback that soldiers never fire a burst of more than a second anyway.
Yes, unless you are doing “spray and pray”, a technique popular in VietNam.
OK, we have “the Second Amendment, which was adopted to protect the states from federal interference with their power…”
followed by “has given federal judges the ultimate power to determine the validity of state regulations…”
Anyone else sense a little disturbance in the Force there?
Automatic vs semi automatic is important but the most devastating thing about assault weapons like the AR15 is the round it uses. Is carries massive energy into the body which almost always is lethal with a single shot. Even if it looks like it made only a hole the area around the wound is shredded as it absorbs the energy.
But agreed also that the 13th and14th and the civil war should pretty much trump the idea that we need guns and local militias to protect us from the Federal govt.
.223 rounds are much less deadly than .30 rounds. I don’t want to be shot, but I’d rather be hit by a (single) .223 round than by a deer rifle.
The issue is simple. It shows that one side of this debate/argument doesn’t know the basic facts and doesn’t understand what the fuck it is talking about. IE, they are arguing out of their depth about a subject they know nothing about.
If you can understand what including Republicans in Scientific debates who don’t understand the basic facts of global warming is bad, you can understand why that also applies to liberals who don’t know much about guns in gun control debates.
But yeah, it’s OK if you are a liberal.
Yes, indeed, the (ex)senior “liberal” justice on the Supreme Court knows nothing about the interpreting the constitution, especially the second amendment. Only the “conservatives” understand.
The constitutional issue is whether the states have the power to regulate privately-owned firearms, not the specifics of “gun control”. In 2006, Roberts Repubs overruled existing precedent and held there is an individual constitutional “right” to own firearms, which flies in the face of the text of the amendment (as Stevens points out).
Anyway, a sensible interpretation of the second amendment has nothing to do with the technicalities of what “automatic” means—weapons which obviously didn’t even exist in 1789 for the “originalists”. But it’s OK if you are a gun nut (or a Repub justice pandering to your party’s base….)
So, are you suggesting that if you don’t serve in a branch of the military or the police/FBI, etc… then you wouldn’t be allowed to own a gun? That would eliminate all hunters, recreational/responsible gun owners, and frankly people that may actually need firearms for sustenance or protection of their property.
Instead, perhaps the solution is to add that firearms of any kind may be legally owned and possessed provided that their use is relegated to privately owned property that permits the use of firearms. The right to bear arms in public spaces is prohibited.
Basically, if you want to own an uzi in your house. That’s fine, just don’t bring to the mall, school, church, etc…
After all, it’s perfectly legal to yell “FIRE!” on your property. It’s not legal to yell “FIRE!” in a crowded theater.
Perhaps the same should apply to guns. I believe that one of Jefferson’s drafts of the Virginia Constitution started to address this, stating something to the effect of allowing one the right to bear arms on their lands.
No, he’s suggesting that the constitutional right to own a gun is only existent in the context of military or national guard. Just as was intended in the writing of the original amendment. It doesn’t say “confiscate all guns” at the end. Although I would certainly do so with every hand gun.
If it were me I would just repeal the damn thing.
Oh I’d also confiscate the guns utilized by the police as well.
I don’t think of repealing the 2nd Amendment as a way to solve gun control issues. What is will do is allow us to have a conversation about what we want to do about guns as a country, right now that’s being short circuited with the argument of a Constitution right being involved.
It’s great that Stevens is actually pointing out that massive work needs to be done on the constitution, especially after the catastrophic constitutional rulings (on so many fronts) by Roberts Repubs. Dems really should be getting behind some actual amendments as a long term project, which they never do.
As to the specifics of the second amendment however, that is almost certainly a lost cause in Gun Nation. The reality of what the Founders were concerned about—some sort of military oppression by a tyrannical FEDERAL government and the protection of a sovereign STATE’S liberty—has been rejected by the “conservative” movement because it doesn’t get them where they want to go: an individual constitutional “right” to own an armory, completely divorced from a state militia or even some threatened federal power.
What the Founders were concerned about is basically long gone as the nation’s structures evolved. There are no more state militias that “protect” a state from an abusive federal gub’mint. Indeed, the whole point of most gun control is that it is STATE regulation of its citizenry, which would seem entirely within the rights of the state under the text of the amendment! Today’s gun control measures largely do not come from the federal gub’mint.
By creating this baseless new individual “right”, Roberts Repubs turned the amendment on its head, and doomed the nation to enduring a permanent culture of gun insanity and countless preventable deaths from firearms. This was a deeply irresponsible ruling because it conferred a “right” that never could have been obtained through any other legal means and immediately became effectively irreversible. We will now never be able to rectify the error since too many people desire their private arsenals of whatever weapons are manufactured. We as a people will now bear the costs in thousands of dead and maimed innocent people for no social benefit whatever.
This is the most dangerous legal “right” ever concocted and one really can’t blame the Founders. They would protest they never intended such insanity. This is solely the work of the “conservative” movement and its pandering to the militarist American White Male.
Well, if you’re saying the Founders’ idea was that the states would be defending themselves against the federal army, that isn’t quite correct. It’s more that the militias were to defend the nation against external threats instead of a standing army, because standing armies were deemed oppressive.
Because it’s also important to keep in mind that there were real threats when the 2nd Amendment was adopted that we no longer face–threats from the British, Spanish, French, and various hostile Indian tribes. The British, for instance, were still occupying forts on the frontier in violation of the Treaty of Paris.
To say that the 2nd Amendment empowers citizens or militias to defend themselves against the federal government is basically to say it sanctions insurrection, which is a libertarian fantasy. Elsewhere the Constitution gives Congress the power to call out the militias to suppress insurrections. Certainly no one thought in 1794 that the 2nd Amendment authorized the Whiskey Rebellion.
I certainly agree with you that the goal of Art I and II vis-a-vis the early military was to have state militias substitute for a standing national army and that the Founders were opposed to standing armies for a wide variety of reasons. But under Art I Congress was given the power to create a standing army (of two years duration) [cl 12], and was permitted to organize, arm and discipline (state) militias [cl 16].
The second amendment, however, represents the counter-reaction to the military “plan” of the constitution. Anti-federalists worried and argued that the above clauses would allow the federal gub’mint to neglect the militias, let them fall into disarray while favoring an (oppressive) national (standing) army. Thus the second amendment, like most of the Bill of Rights, was seen as providing limits and checks on the federal gub’mint. Under it, the states would have the right to support and provide for their militias should the feds elect to neglect them or interfere with them.
Now why were the anti-federalists concerned and suspicious? From Stevens’ dissent in Heller:
“The Second Amendment…was a response to concerns raised during the ratification of the Constitution that the power of Congress to disarm the state militias and create a national standing army posed an intolerable threat to the sovereignty of the several States. …[near end of part II:] The history of the adoption of the Amendment thus describes an overriding concern about the potential threat to state sovereignty that a federal standing army would pose, and a desire to protect the States’ militias as the means by which to guard against that danger. But state militias could not effectively check the prospect of a federal standing army as long as Congress retained the power to disarm them, and so a guarantee against such disarmament was needed.” This dissent was joined by Souter, Ginsburg and Breyer.
Now there is no doubt there existed external threats to the nation in 1791. But I cannot understand this language reviewing the history as being entirely about repelling only external threats. The threat of a standing army was that it could be used against “a free State”, thus necessitating continued reliance on the militia in the eyes of the anti-federalists. That’s what I conclude from Stevens dissent anyway.
As to the Whiskey Rebellion, that was a civilian insurrection by a segment of the private citizenry, not the organized actions of a state-led militia. Indeed, the state in which the rebellion occurred (PA) heeded Washington’s call to raise their militia against the citizen insurrection. Hence I cannot see how this incident advances either side of our respective positions.
I certainly do not want to be dogmatic on this, I’m just setting forth the basis for my understanding, which is appropriate since the subject of the post, Justice Stevens, was the author of the most extensive non-biased analysis of the amendment. The crucial point of course is that we both agree that the amendment cannot be read to be wholly outside the context of state militias and military defense and instead supposedly create an individual personal right to own and stockpile home firearms—which is how the 5 conservative male activists posing as justices willfully misread it to satisfy the base of their party.
Hmm, yes, I see what you mean. There is a bit more to it than I was saying. Still, I have difficulty accepting the idea that the central government has given the states permission to rebel against it. But thanks for the clarification.
I am sure most of the same nitwits that demand anyone discussing guns must know how to disassemble and rebuild an AK47 before discussing guns are also dismissing global warming while believing the earth is 6,000 years old.