The gun debate in America rages on, with the NRA’s spokesman giving a speech today, just one week after the massacre at Sandy Hook, a tone-deaf speech even by their standards. While he was speaking, a gunman in Pennsylvania shot three others and then (we believe) himself. So what can be done to deliver gun control?
Some people think a reinterpretation of the commas in the Second Amendment can save America. To remind you:
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.
Current rulings make the first part about a militia and its purpose merely “prefatory”, i.e. irrelevant context, with the part starting “the right” being “operative”. Others think the commas are a well-armed red herring, and considering the framers’ intentions might be more productive.
Neither is unlikely to help any time soon. Neither the current Supreme Court, nor any Supreme Court imaginable in the next decade, is likely to accept any kind of more radical ban on guns with the Second Amendment still unchallenged.
It’s time for America’s progressives to make a real push on a different front: abolishing the Second Amendment altogether. As Walter Shapiro says, it’d take just 15 words: “The second article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed.”
It’d be absurd to suggest that’d be easy, or even realistic any time soon. Even to get a 28th Amendment proposed takes either two thirds of the Senate and the House or two thirds of state legislatures. That’s hard. Then 38 states need to ratify it. That’s even harder.
The polling trend has been heading in the wrong direction, although there’s been a bit of a shift after the most recent outrage. But (as Shapiro again observes) opinions have changed radically on issues like equal marriage, and the fact that it might take 15 or 20 years doesn’t mean the job shouldn’t be begun. It means ignoring Alex Massie’s unusually siren argument that it’s hard to do so it shouldn’t be done in case someone takes away rights you care about. It would get round the concerns about democracy in the otherwise sensible Lexington blogpost.
Those equal marriage wins took some serious strategic thinking to deliver in four states this November, too: can the same techniques be applied here? After all, frustrating and unequal as the reservation of marriage for heterosexual couples is, it’s not in the same league as being shot in your classroom.
(pic from Code Pink)
#1 by Some Guy on December 21, 2012 - 7:46 pm
At some level equal marriage speaks to Libertarian ideals. Gun control doesn’t. They’re not analogous.
#2 by No_Offence_Alan on December 22, 2012 - 12:14 am
When the 2nd amendment was written (1791) the rate of fire of a contemporary fire-arm was about 1 round per 20 seconds. Today 20 rounds per second from automatic weapons is possible.
So they should apply the 2nd amendment as follows – you have the right to bear arms, so long as the “arms” is a flintlock musket.
#3 by Indy on December 22, 2012 - 10:44 am
The American attitude to guns is such a huge cultural barrier it is almost impossible to cross. It’s the same with healthcare.
I have an American friend here who is on medication to control his mood and at one point he was working insane hours, he went to his GP and said he wanted his medication changed and his GP said no. She said the reason you are in this state is because you are working crazy hours. I prescribe cutting back those hours, sleeping 8 hours a night, eating proper meals and going for regular walks, that will sort you out.
He was absolutely furious and complained to me about doctors thinking they can tell you how to live your life instead of just prescribing what you ask them to prescribe. That really brought home to me a big difference in the way we regard healthcare because for Americans they are paying the doctor so the doctor doesn’t have the same independence our GPs do. But from my friend’s perspective it was outrageous behaviour and the doctor had crossed a line into trying to dictate his lifestyle.
It is pretty much impossible to reconcile those points of view as I discovered when I defended the GP! I think it is the same kind of scenario with gun control.
Even very rational Americans will defend gun ownership as something that people have a right to, in order to defend themselves. There is absolutely no logic to it. When I discussed it with this same friend he said but Scotland is actually a more violent place than the States so don’t lecture me. Which is true – but the fact that we have a bigger problem with violence but a much much smaller problem with people being shot is proof positive that gun control works. It IS guns that kill people, control the guns and you control the number of people who are killed. There is simply no other explanation for the huge discrepancy in deaths caused by firearms between the USA and the UK.
But his argument was simply that if someone comes after me I want to be able to defend myself. He said if he could carry a gun in Scotland he would because there were times that he felt unsafe. On one level that is easily understandable. I can see why people would feel that way. But the evidence is so overwhelmingly to the contrary – guns don’t make you safe, they make you much more unsafe. It is trying to get people to understand that and to look at it from a societal level rather than just from their own personal point of view. I don’t have any high hopes to be honest. Many Americans in my experience are individualistic to a degree it is hard for us to comprehend. There is a mistrust of “the state” that is just completely illogical but ingrained in them because of the version of history they are taught.
#4 by Iain Menzies on December 22, 2012 - 11:35 am
Are you suggesting that gun control would have stopped what happened at Sandy Crook?
I hope you are, because if you arent i find this really distastful.
The reason i find it so is this. If you dont think that gun control woulkd have stopped this, then you cant think it will stop the next shooting. Which means you are more interested in restricting access to guns than in stopping these events. And are using this event to make a purely political point.
If you do think that gun control would/could have stopped this then please tell us how. Cos for the life of me i cant think of a way that it would have if the laddie Lanza wanted to do it.
#5 by James on December 22, 2012 - 2:56 pm
I think radical gun control wouldn’t necessarily stop any individual incident, any more than you can typically be sure that a particular extreme weather event is caused by climate change. But reducing the number (and ferocity) of guns out there would certainly diminish the number of attacks of that sort. See the Economist blogpost I linked to on that one.
#6 by Indy on December 22, 2012 - 5:01 pm
The evidence on gun control is overwhelming surely? Let’s face facts, if people here could get hold of guns as easily as they can in the States we would see many of these sorts of incidents as well as many more fights and domestic violence incidents ending in someone being shot dead.
The problem in America is that guns are so prevalent it is hard to put the genie back in the bottle. People will think well I am not giving up my gun because the criminals won’t and I need my gun to defend myself against the criminals. And so it just goes on and on.
We are so lucky we are not in that position because it is hard to see a way out of it.
#7 by Iain Menzies on December 23, 2012 - 1:51 pm
Well you have a point in that there are ALOT of guns floating about in the US.
But it isnt the ownership thats the problem. Having a gun doesnt mean you kill people, you only have to look at Switzerland (which i think has a higher gun to population ratio than the US) it must be something else.
I read a blog post a few days ago…cant find it now sorry, but the point was made in it that untill the 1970’s these kind of shootings just didnt happen whereas now its every few months. Apparently there has been arun of school killings in China…but its not guns its kniefs that are being used.
There is a nice scene in the west wing after a similar event where Barlet and Hoynes are discussing gun control and Hoynes brings up a supposed killing somewhere else done with an axe, and asks the question do we need axe control? Its a good question.
#8 by Cadgers on December 22, 2012 - 11:56 am
“right to bear arms” doesn’t say anything about ammunition.
#9 by Topher Dawson on December 22, 2012 - 6:28 pm
It is hard to know where the right to bear arms stops. I went into a sporting goods shop in Nebraska which to be fair was mostly hunting rifles and shotguns, but there was also a “tactical shotgun” such as the police use, and an assault rifle with a 50 shot magazine. I asked the salesman what people would use such a thing for, and he said, “for giggles”. In other words he could see no practical use for it. I asked if I would be allowed to buy it, and he said there would have to be background checks. When asked how long these would take, he said it was a phone call which usually took about 5 minutes.
In Maine and some other states it appears to be legal to own a machine gun, and to fit it with a silencer. What is the purpose of that? I agree with earlier contributors, this is not a genie which will go back in the bottle.
#10 by Topher Dawson on December 23, 2012 - 11:37 am
Further research reveals that silenced machine guns are legal (http://atfmachinegun.com/Legal.aspx) in most US states, as is the concealed carry of weapons (CCW) (http://www.moccw.org/map.html).
Sorry I don’t know how to post links in blue. I hope Scotland does not go down this mad firearms route.