The Gun Issue

US Constitution, 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.”

These lines are the legal basis behind Americans’ unfettered access to firearms, and their freedom to carry and use them for hunting, fun, intimidation, paperweights, or to operate in the gray area between self-defense and vigilantism.

When an unarmed teenager is killed for mouthing off to a member of the local neighborhood watch, we might ask whether such an organization should rightly qualify as a well regulated militia, or whether that teenager’s family believes that rights to carry and use weapons with minimal justification, conscience, or consequence, will contribute to the security of a free state. But the answers aren't so easy.

One way or another, our nation’s founders left us with vague instructions on how to handle the gun issue today. Can I form a militia and enforce the peace as I see fit? Who regulates me? If my right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, why can’t I protect my neighborhood with a rocket propelled grenade? It’s been well over two hundred years since the Bill of Rights was signed and ratified. Its authors and their intentions are dead and gone. So is Trayvon Martin.  

I don’t really care if someone wants to have a collection of guns, make a big stink about liberty, and kill the occasional deer. It doesn’t bother me if someone thinks they’re safer with a gun under their pillow. I have no business uninvited in their bedroom anyway. I don’t really think that we can or should roll back centuries of culture and case law based on some obtuse re-read of the Second Amendment. But we can and must interpret that text to maximize the freedom of all; not just those who choose to own a gun and parade it around.

In the interpretation of the American Bill of Rights, we accept limits, and we carve out new rights. There’s no right to privacy in the constitution, but there is a cultural and legal expectation of some level of privacy in our lives. Medical records are confidential, but purchasing patterns are not. There’s nothing in the Second Amendment that restricts someone from owning any sort of arms, as long as they’re part of a well-regulated militia, but I don’t see heavily armed citizens patrolling our streets with high-powered military surplus. We invent new rights and new limitations as they are needed. When interpretations of rights are taken well beyond their logical extremes, as is the case with Stand Your Ground laws, it’s time to reconsider. That’s not the death of freedom. It’s saving freedom for other kids to walk home from a convenience store at night without the risk of summary execution by a fellow citizen.     

Like other areas of life where we engage in risky behavior at a potential cost to others, responsible gun ownership is possible. Most of us drive heavy steel vehicles at high speeds, arms-length from one another, barely a sneeze or a distraction away from disaster every day. It’s not a right. We could leave it to the professionals, or stick to horsedrawn speeds. But it’s something people really want to do in spite of the risks. So we establish speed limits, traffic laws, safety features, and cultural expectations. When somebody is negligent or malicious, they face dire consequences. 

I have no interest in taking away someone’s collection of firearms any more than I’d want to take away people’s cars. But like cars, I do believe that people should have licenses they must be reasonably qualified for, that the products should be regulated for safety, that there should be limitations in their use based on the freedoms of others not to be shot, and that the law should come down hard on people who betray the trust we maintain in one another. There’s nothing for or against any of that in the constitution. It’s just the right thing to do. For Trayvon’s sake, and for all of us.