| 113th Year, 41st Issue | Thursday, May 23, 2002 | Sparta, North Carolina |
"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." Seems simple enough. But then, you're probably too unsophisticated to recognize that this amendment is the only one of the first ten amendments (The Bill of Rights) that is not an individual right. No siree!
According to the liberal left, including a host of lifetime politicians, professional bureaucrats and self-appointed moralizers, if you ain't in the National Guard your gun should be illegal. But there are those who actually believe that the Second Amendment simply means what it says. Recently, Solicitor General Theodore Olson filed two briefs with the Supreme Court that stated, among other things, that the Second Amendment guarantees to all citizens the right "to possess and bear their own firearms." The Federal government is now on record that the Second Amendment protects an individual's right to keep and bear arms, returning the amendment to its original status prior to 1939. That massive low-pressure system that swept through last week was the result of the collective gasp of astonishment on the part of anti-gun forces across the country. The media response was predictable; The L.A. Times was compelled to editorialize, "Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft thinks he gets to rewrite the Constitution to reflect his personal opinions. His pronouncement this week that the Second Amendment guarantees individuals the right to own guns, despite six decades of federal policy and U.S. Supreme Court decisions [U.S. vs. Miller] to the contrary, is another audacious move by a man who mistakenly thinks his job is to make, not enforce, the law." The New York Times piled on with "The court's view has been that the Second Amendment protects only those rights that have ‘some reasonable relationship to the preservation of the efficiency of a well regulated militia,' as the court put it in its last word on the subject, a 1939 decision called United States vs. Miller." It is worth noting that the U.S. vs. Miller ruling has been continually cited as the basis for massive government gun regulation for the past 60-some years, as implied by the L.A. Times and explicitly stated by the N.Y. Times, and the "militia" argument was the justification for the "assault weapon" ban. The actual ruling is though is quite different from the anti-gun propaganda.
The Miller case hit the Supreme Court on appeal over the right of a person to own a sawed-off shotgun. At the time of the appeal, Miller was, inconveniently, dead. Hence nobody appeared in Court to defend Miller or, more importantly, to provide evidence of his position. The court stated "In the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use of a ‘shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in length' at this time has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument." Since the defendant presented no evidence, the case was remanded to the lower court for reconsideration. The court did not strike down the "Individual right of ownership" interpretation; the court did imply, on a literal interpretation, that only weapons useful to a militia were protected by the Second Amendment for individual possession and ownership. That puts the "assault weapon" ban in a whole different perspective.
A more recent decision by the 5th Circuit Court, issued in October, 2001, was overshadowed by events but established a clear interpretation of individual rights to gun ownership. In U.S. vs. Emerson, the court concluded, "We reject the collective rights and sophisticated collective rights models for interpreting the Second Amendment.
"We hold, consistent with Miller, that it protects the right of individuals, including those not then actually a member of any militia or engaged in active military service or training, to privately possess and bear their own firearms, such as the pistol involved here, that are suitable as personal, individual weapons and are not of the general kind or type excluded by Miller." This interpretation is consistent with the views of Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe and law professor Sanford Levinson, two rarities among liberals and both influential in Constitutional law.
The tide of gun control advocacy appears to be turning. In spite of the misinformation and distortions passed off by NPR, Brady, the Violence Policy Center, the AMA and the major media, sanity in interpretation of the Constitution appears to be in the ascendancy. John Lott's "More Guns, Less Crime," Richard Poe's "Seven Myths of Gun Control" and the increasing crime rates in Britain, Australia, France and Canada provide strong evidence of the benefits of Second Amendment guarantees.
Now, if we can just get the same level of consideration applied to the Fifth Amendment, which states, among other items, "nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation."
Back to the Mushroom Chronicles Archive
Email: allnews@ls.net