The Right to Arm Bears

I didn't make that up, I read it somewhere a long time ago, I think it was in Mad magazine. It went with a cartoon picture of a vicious, evil looking bear standing on its hind legs and shooting people with some kind of firearm. Funny, the things you remember.

There are two ways, well at least two ways, that you can interpret something like the Constitution or the Bible. One way is to try to figure out what was the intent of the author at the time it was written, and the other way is to try to determine what it means to us today. There are things that could be said, both pro and con, about either method.

Second Amendment: "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." This doesn't say anything about hunting, target shooting, or keeping firearms for personal protection, it's all about the states' right to maintain militias. The most recent Supreme Court decision of which I am aware extended the right to bear arms into those areas, but previous court decisions did not. I should be happy about the latest ruling, but I'm not really. I think that the earlier interpretations were correct. I think it's unfortunate that my fellow gun nuts have been leaning on the Second Amendment for all these years when a much better argument could have been made using the Ninth Amendment: "The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."

I don't think that the authors of the Second Amendment believed that it was necessary to enumerate the individual's right to own firearms because they had no reason to believe that anybody would try to infringe that right. Firearms ownership had been as common in the Colonies as automobile ownership is today, and the King of England never had a problem with that. It was the stockpiling of weapons to arm the militias that gave him fits. Indeed, the British troops that Paul Revere warned everybody about were on their way to confiscate or destroy just such a stockpile when they were met at Concord Bridge by a bunch of good old boys who were determined to prevent them.

Back in the Middle Ages, peasants were generally not allowed to posses weapons except in the service of the king, but yeomen were. Indeed, the word "yeoman" is derived from the old English word for "bowman". The vision of the Founding Fathers was that all Americans would be yeomen, and that no other class distinctions would be recognized. Since we are all yeomen, we retain the yeomen's right to bear arms that has been recognized under English Common Law for centuries.

The right to bear arms, however, doesn't mean that the use of weapons can't be regulated by the government. As with automobiles, the government has the obligation to regulate their use in the interests of law, order, and public safety, but they aren't allowed to ban them altogether. I think that last Supreme Court decision said something like that, and I generally agree with that part of the ruling. Too bad they had to pin their argument to the Second Amendment, for it's a weak argument that is bound to be overturned someday by another court.