The True Test of the Second Amendment
by Wil Norton
Written by: Wil Norton
“A well-regulated militia” is the exact wording of the second amendment. What does this mean? Does it mean that we have unencumbered rights to bear firearms? It has been debated for longer than the current gun debate. The Supreme Court has been asked again and again to interpret this amendment of the Bill of Rights. Still, the answers are inconclusive.
The thing to remember is that this provision is old. Older than even a properly trained police force in many parts of the United States. However, the United States is a very old democracy. 246 years old with a Bill of Rights that is paramount in understanding why the nation functions as a government for and by the people. This is a consideration when talking about the second amendment.
The Bill of Rights is two things at once. It is both dated and sustainable. It is dated in the fact that the purpose of the militia that was spelled out in the original wording is outside the true way we live in contemporary American life. It is also a living document in the fact that its principles remain vital at the very heart of who we are as a country. The right to bear firearms should not be infringed.
We now have the latest debate when it comes to this right. The debate over the use of firearms in tragic incidents of carnage. We saw this here locally in Nashville recently in the Covenant School bloodshed. So, what can we do? Should we put all the guns “six feet in a hole” as Lynnard Skynyrd once sang? That would be an answer in a vacuum. Unfortunately, politics isn’t a vacuum. It is a code of law to alleviate a problem in society in this incidence. It is also a place where the rule of law governs society.
The government of any state or the national government can’t just issue an order for the police to confiscate every firearm. This would be the rule of a monarchy that we broke away from when America announced its independence from England. This is the fear that is placated among some in a false danger. The document that allows firearms also doesn’t allow this sort of action by the government. Hence the nature of the Bill of Rights.
Still, this doesn’t answer the critical question. That question is how we handle the violence caused by firearms to the point that even elementary schools aren’t safe from the carnage? The most obvious answer is two things. The first is to discover the reasons that these types of minds can be prevented from unleashing evil upon society. The second is the defense of our children and communities from such perpetrators on the side of law enforcement. I will discuss both solutions in turn.
As far as prevention is concerned, it is important to note that trying to prevent a criminal before he becomes a criminal is problematic. There are sure fire ways of discovering whether a person is dangerous or not. This case is obvious in the profile and criminal history of some individuals. The problem comes from the fact that there is always a gray area. An area where you can’t truly be certain either way. Perhaps a person who might be unusual but perhaps doesn’t have violent tendencies.
The Steven Spielberg film Minority Report describes the problem of this concept. The plot centers around a law enforcement unit called “PreCrime” that labels criminals by profiling before they have committed a crime. Therefore, we must consider where we are going when trying to label possible criminals before they actually commit a crime. This is the classic slippery slope conundrum. Perhaps we pull an obviously dangerous individual off the streets. Does this lead to a new type of criminal justice where we just label people criminal because they suffer from a mental illness like depression or bipolar disorder? This must be a top consideration when dealing with mental health and criminality.
Still, the solution of preventing the attainment of a firearm by someone who has been deemed unfit to carry one is not as dramatic as the labelling of criminals before they become criminals. It is an obvious safety measure that has massive public support. Guns are not toys. They are not to be considered easy to obtain playthings that are owned for reasons such as these.
Guns are designed to kill. They are a responsibility. Keeping them out of the hands of irresponsible children by adults is probably a healthy measure for those who own them. Recreation use like hunting is even legal in nations that otherwise ban firearms. This is the responsibility of the owners of firearms. Measures like keeping them out of the hands of children and learning their proper use should be considered in all circumstances. This was probably the practice and intent of the founding fathers with the wording of the Bill of Rights and should be maintained.
This leads to the second solution, the increase of law enforcement in and around schools to prevent the sort of carnage that was seen at Covenant School. This is an important step but seems to be more of a band aid that is still never enough to truly fully protect our children. Perhaps with more measures the massacre at Covenant might have been prevented. Still, the increase of law enforcement and safety measures can always be improved.
This leads to my final thought when it comes to the issue of gun violence. That is the problem of contemporary American culture. This is the role of something that can’t be legislated easily. The decline of personal worth is a large reason that many of our vulnerable citizens are committing violent acts. The decline of religion and civil society as a whole is a large reason for this in my opinion. Without a sense of belonging and community, the problem of mental illness itself has become paramount in American society.
We live in a cruel world where personal worth is largely decided by placement in the larger world of careers and personal achievement. For those left behind in this cruel system, the use of drugs and mental illness like depression become problems that many try to treat with simple solutions like medication. Medication has a role but so does the feeling of personal worth. There is something more out there that we fail to maintain, and this is a problem that has been getting worse generation after generation in current trends in American society.
This is where faith and community come in. The idea that some are alone in their problems and lack of worth is a true problem not specifically in gun violence but in the larger issue of mental illness. Faith based initiatives and the return of theology might be able to mediate this sort of problem instead of simply putting ourselves as a measure of personal worth from achievement.
Spirituality is a global phenomenon that clearly spells out good and evil in human action. The belief in something called “agency” is the belief that we all have the personhood to choose good and evil. Evil is a very real thing and the massacre at Covenant School is an obvious sign of true evil. Anything we can do as a society to bring more people to understand this truth as a society would benefit the country socially from my standpoint and prevent this sort of evil from happening.
Therefore, the solutions to the problem of gun violence require not just law enforcement and medical measures to prevent. These are top-down solutions. The solutions must be bottom up. There must be a force in society that builds up the individual so that the machine that processes becomes the enlightenment of personal worth. This would be the other side of a solution that prevents such tragedies.
