Ideas For Democracy:  Goal #16

Right to bear arms and firearms safety, non-violent citizenship.

 

Citizens who want real democracy will actively support this policy and vote for trustworthy candidates who actively support this policy.

 

IFD - policy:  The taxpayers have a right to possess firearms but all citizens are obligated to learn and practice firearms safety.  It is reasonable and appropriate for government to impose restrictions or regulations designed to prevent firearms from being available for criminal behavior and for personal acts of violence by emotionally disturbed persons.

 

Personal firearms not effective for opposition to bad government:

The concept that the right to bear arms enables citizens to oppose tyrannical government by the use of armed force is misguided and essentially a dangerous state of ignorance.  This is an error in understanding and judgment because technological conditions have changed dramatically since the 1770s.  The period of the American Revolution was unique in world history because the weapons technology available to the general public was nearly the same as the weapons technology available to government.  Citizens could take possession of arsenals and armories, or convert merchant sailing ships into warships, and sail them as proficiently as a naval force.  But warfare and weapons technology changed rapidly after 1800 and during the twentieth century the inventory of weapons and communications technology available to government came to greatly exceed what ordinary citizens can obtain.  Since the 1930s, any genuine opposition to tyrannical government would have to be pursued by legal political action and not by any strategic plan for armed revolution.  Citizens with rifles cannot successfully oppose the Department of Defense.  Due to this practical reality, as well as for moral and ethical reasons, I do not support any idea that American citizens can "overthrow" the entrenched two-party tyranny by means of armed force.  No one should waste their time or energy on such a plan or discussion of armed rebellion.  Plan to vote, and plan to vote against the two-party system.

 

Firearms responsibility and firearms safety:

I believe that firearms should be taxed to maintain trust funds for firearms safety and education.  Those who manufacture firearms should be held legally responsible for any sale of firearms to emotionally disturbed persons or to persons with criminal intent.  All citizens who purchase firearms and ammunition for legal purposes have no objections to registrations or records or regulations that enforce firearms safety practices.  It is reasonable to require a license or permit for citizens who have an historical or technical interest in firearms or who wish to collect firearms.  To require licenses and registrations with regard to ordinary possession of firearms does not obstruct civil rights.  State governments require the registration of automobiles, and licenses for drivers, and motor vehicle insurance, even though the right to travel by coach was so obviously assumed at the time of the American Constitution in 1787 that it was not mentioned in that document.  For our Constitution to state that citizens had a right to travel would have been virtually equivalent to stating that citizens had a right to eat and sleep.  But we all accept that the requirements of motor vehicle registration, licensing of drivers, and mandatory vehicle insurance, are not obstructions to the basic right of persons to travel.  Similar treatment is appropriate for the possession of firearms.  Motor vehicle insurance is required by law because driving a motor vehicle creates a risk of harm to property and persons.  Millions of dollars of damages and injuries occur every year due to the common operation of motor vehicles.  It would be reasonable to require a citizen to carry firearms insurance, because it is obvious that operating a handgun or a rifle presents a risk of harm to property or persons.  It would also be reasonable to require that the cost of a minimal form of firearms insurance be included in the price of that weapon.  People who oppose reasonable measures for firearms safety often sound like they believe the right to bear arms means the right to shoot your neighbor.  We have a long history of tolerance and admiration for the arts, which means people expressing their emotions and thoughts through drawing, painting, sculpture, architecture, all of the arts.  But we do not need to tolerate the idea that people have a legal right to express anger, resentment or frustration by shooting others because they have a right to bear arms.  The key concept here is that the right to bear arms is not a right to shoot your neighbor.

 

Right to "bear arms" or maintain a state militia?

Another central issue that hangs over the Second Amendment is the intent of the writers of the Constitution, and the people who voted in support of the Ten Amendments that we call the Bill of Rights.  The Second Amendment makes reference to "a well-regulated militia" which at the time meant citizens of each separate state, or former colony, engaging in military training and exercises and maintaining stores of weapons, explosives  and ammunition.  At the time, each colony and even each town and city had accepted a measure of responsibility to defend their communities.  In each town in New England, there was a town green set aside for the use of the militia to march and practice the use of their rifles and other forms of weaponry.  Such military exercises or "musters" were often limited in time and scope because of the monetary cost to the community and the desire of the men to attend to their agricultural chores and other personal business.  However, the Second-Amendment concept embodied in the Constitution was that a local militia was available, comprised of volunteers from the community, to defend the community with armed force if and when necessary. 

 

In Vermont, and most likely in other states, the building in which State Police are stationed is called a "barracks."  This usage is left over from the past when it was understood that the contemporary State Police and Department of Public Safety was originally the State Militia.  And further, the State Militia included individual citizens or households who volunteered to be available on short notice to take up arms in defense of their community or their state (colony).  They might bring their own rifles or be armed by the state or municipal government.  This means a legitimate interpretation of the Second Amendment is not that it means individual citizens have a right to own guns, but that each state has the right and power to maintain an armed force that could be known as the "State Militia" or the State Police.  Over time, including changes that occurred through the national trauma of the American Civil War, citizens who volunteered to participate in warfare to defend their state of the United States were offered payment.  The militia was also expected to be used to control a riot or public disorder.  This interpretation suggests that the Second Amendment is not a guaranteed right for individual citizens to own guns.  However, at the time of the writing of the Constitution the American colonies were comprised of people who assumed most households possessed one or more rifles for providing themselves with both food and a means of defense against hostile attack.  That right of a household or individual citizen to possess a rifle or handgun and ammunition was totally assumed and not questioned by anyone. 

 

These two interpretations are equally valid and it is also equally valid to conclude that the Second Amendment guarantees both rights:  the right of the states and municipalities to maintain armed forces or the means to raise a state-governed or locally-governed armed force, or the right of individual citizens to possess weapons for self-defense.  The problem that has developed through our technological history since 1787 is that it is impractical for a state or municipality to invest the enormous sums of money that would be required to maintain an armed force of its own.  We have come to believe with strong conviction that the "armed forces" of a town or city or a state are not soldiers but our police forces with the limited role of enforcing local and state laws.  The majority of Americans are opposed to the concept that the local and state police are an army charged with the duty to defend their state or municipality against an armed invasion or insurrection.  But, that is a valid interpretation, based on our legal and political history, of what the Second Amendment originally intended.  This is why the Second Amendment presents us with a complex problem.

 

Separate personal defense from armed forces:

If we want to use the Second Amendment as a Constitutional guarantee of the right of an individual citizen to own firearms and ammunition, then we can probably take legal action, through our state legislatures and national Congress to clarify that particular element of the Second Amendment.  Both the Congress and the state legislatures could pass legislation that provides reasonably clear definitions that limit the size and functions of "personal defense weapons" and identify personal defense weapons in a manner that clearly separates them and distinguishes them from "military ordnance."  Then, all related laws can be written or revised to support the legal intent that personal defense weapons should not and shall not include military arms or ordnance such as machine guns, automatic firearms, bombs, grenades, explosives, tanks, warships, warplanes, cannons, missiles, rocket launchers, and so forth.

 

Please note, that if such laws separating personal firearms from military ordnance were challenged in federal courts, and if the federal courts ruled that the intent of the Second Amendment was to guarantee the rights of the states to maintain state militias, that kind of interpretation might be deemed to mean that the Second Amendment does not guarantee the right of individual citizens to own firearms.  However, the remainder of the Constitution implies that the right to own a firearm was assumed by community values in 1787, and is further protected by the Fourth, Ninth and Tenth Amendments, not the Second.   

 

References:

Amendment 2

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.

 

Amendment 4:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Amendment 9:

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

 

Amendment 10:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.