militia maintenance

I did not grow up with guns in my home. My parents never owned a gun, and I’m almost positive that neither my mother nor my father has ever even fired a weapon before. I did grow up with the mentality that guns are bad, and that I never wanted to use one, especially once I was older and went through my pacifist phase.

My views have changed recently, however. I wouldn’t say that I’m now an enthusiastic member of the NRA, and I’m not going to be donning reflective orange gear to forage around in forests anytime soon, but I do recognize the rights of others to do so.

I was in eighth grade when Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold stormed Columbine High School and orchestrated the second deadliest school shooting in our history. Though there’d been other school shootings and violence, the scale of this incident immediately polarized the nation and brought out the zealots defending or denouncing the right of citizens to bear arms.

The Second Amendment guarantees this right of the citizens, but civilians and government officials alike seem determined to tell us that that’s not really what the Founders meant when they wrote:

“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.”

There are theories about what the Founders could have meant: “the people” really means the State; “to bear arms” really means in a military sense; “militia” really means the Army. In “Right to Keep and Bear Arms,” a report to the Senate, Senator Orrin Hatch wrote,

“They argue that the Second Amendment's words ‘right of the people’ mean ‘a right of the state’ — apparently overlooking the impact of those same words when used in the First and Fourth Amendments. The ‘right of the people’ to assemble or to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures is not contested as an individual guarantee. Still they ignore consistency and claim that the right to ‘bear arms’ relates only to military uses. This not only violates a consistent constitutional reading of ‘right of the people’ but also ignores that the second amendment protects a right to ‘keep’ arms.

“When our ancestors forged a land ‘conceived in liberty’, they did so with musket and rifle. When they reacted to attempts to dissolve their free institutions, and established their identity as a free nation, they did so as a nation of armed freemen. When they sought to record forever a guarantee of their rights, they devoted one full amendment out of ten to nothing but the protection of their right to keep and bear arms against governmental interference. Under my chairmanship the Subcommittee on the Constitution will concern itself with a proper recognition of, and respect for, this right most valued by free men.”

I recently began exploring the idea of purchasing a firearm of my very own (once I save up a lot of money for a really nice piece). Since I reside in Illinois, I am required to apply for and hold a valid Firearm Owner’s Identification (FOID) card. The card falls under the control of the Illinois State Police; before issuing the card, the applicant is run through the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), which in turn is run by the FBI. The NCIS determines whether the applicant can possess a firearm based on criteria enumerated by the Gun Control Act of 1968.

I cannot legally own a gun if I’m under 18, or under indictment for a crime, or am mentally defective, or am addicted to a controlled substance, or have been convicted of a federal crime (imprisonment of more than 1 year) or a state crime (imprisonment of more than 2 years). Reading the restrictions of lawfully infringing the Second Amendment, I now understand why it is so easy to buy guns on the black market, and why citizens choose to do so.

I can also understand why many citizens believe that these restrictions should be imposed. They don’t want another Columbine (even though it happened again with more fatalities at Virginia Tech almost exactly eight years later). They want to get guns out of the hands of criminals. It makes sense, in a paternalistic way. But it’s undermining the freedom bestowed by the Framers, by the men who fought for freedom and liberty from the Crown, who died so that we might do what we want and be left alone to do it.

I own a t-shirt from Random Shirts.com, showing a man holding a squirrel. The caption is “Guns don’t kill squirrels. Cars do.” It’s an obvious analogy to the argument “Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.” Still true.

The people of the various provinces are strictly forbidden to have in their possession any swords, bows, spears, firearms or other types of arms. The possession of these elements makes difficult the collection of taxes and dues, and tends to permit uprising. – Toyotomi Hideyoshi, Japanese Shogun, August 29, 1558