JUST WHAT DOES THE U.S. CONSTITUTION SAY ABOUT YOUR RIGHT TO OWN FIREARMS?
Young Americans are more confused than ever about basic freedoms guaranteed to every law-abiding citizen of this nation by our Constitution's Bill of Rights.
Many modern youth think the right to keep and bear arms, the Second Amendment to the Constitution, seems sinister, even criminal, mostly because television and movies condemn firearms as tools of violence, glamorize them as symbols of status and stigmatize them as a sign of unstable minds.
MAINSTREAM GUN OWNERSHIP: IT'S NOT A CRIME.
The truth is that more than 70 million average, law-abiding Americans own guns for hunting, sport shooting, self-defense or as collector's items. Certainly some guns in our society are used for criminal purposes, but these are about one half of one percent of all firearms.
OUR CONSTITUTION: A BILL OF RIGHTS AT IS CORE.
The Second Amendment is one of ten amendments made to the Constitution a few years after the American colonies won their independence from England. Collectively they are called the Bill of Rights, and they were drafted by our founding fathers to insure the individual freedoms and absolute equality of every American.
The amendments were conceived and added to the Constitution in no particular order and are considered of equal ranking in the freedoms they protect. The Second Amendment says that "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."
OPPONENTS TWIST THE AMENDMENT'S MEANING.
Today some who are seeking to ban private firearms ownership claim the amendment means only that a "militia" (some claim a National Guard) should have a constitutional right to keep and own a gun.
But the majority of constitutional scholars concludes that the Second Amendment very clearly guarantees individual citizens the right to own firearms, and that "militia", considering the time, place and political climate, was a reference to an armed citizenry that could be called upon to defend its country in time of war.
In fact, Patrick Henry, a contributor to America's Constitution and one of the greatest advocates for individual liberty the world has ever know, in 1788 painted a very clear picture of what the Second Amendment means when he said "The great object is, that every man be armed."
A HISTORY OF CONTROVERSY.
Today's debate over the right to keep and bear arms is nothing new. In the post-Civil War South, disgruntled politicians did their best to deny firearms to newly freed slaves.
And, in early twentieth-century America, the next generation of political bosses did their best to keep guns out of the hands of the immigrants who labored in our newly industrialized nation.
But more recently, political opponents of the Second Amendment have stretched common-sense restrictions on gun ownership (such as a felony conviction, drug addiction, or insanity) to include bans on styles of firearms, on types of ammunition, or bans based purely on what guns look like or what they're made of. This has been done in a piecemeal attempt to dismantle the Second Amendment one mechanical component at a time. Though offered as a cure for gun-related crime, there is absolutely no evidence that any relationship exists between rates of violent crime and the number or types or concentration of legally owned guns among Americans.
THE BILL OF RIGHTS: PROTECTION FOR OUR BASIC FREEDOMS.
What the Second Amendment's detractors fail to consider is this: The right to keep and bear arms is part of a Bill of Rights that concerns basic liberties. Freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the right to privacy, the right to a trial by jury of our peers, the right to assemble, all the rights and freedoms that constitute "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" also include the right to arm yourself for your own protection.
If you give up this right, then which of the other freedoms will you be willing to give up when it becomes fashionable to condemn it? Your right to say what you think, travel at will, meet with your friends, go -- or not go -- to church, read uncensored books, get the news of the day from someone other than a government spokesperson?
Owning a gun doesn't make you, by association, a part of the criminal element. It just means that you are a free American who made a free choice. Criminals are criminals, and if they use a firearm to commit a crime, then they should be punished.
But their criminal activities should never erode your freedoms as a law-abiding citizen living in a free society. In this nation we have individual freedoms rather than collective rights subject to change at the whim of a revolving government. This is why ours is the most unique nation in the history of the world.
It all began with a document called the Bill of Rights, containing, among others, the right to keep and bear arms. These are basic rights, and they remain your rights. As long as you do what it takes to understand them, respect them and protect them each and all.
AMERICAN RIFLEMAN - September 1997
