the framers

The Supreme Court listened to a gun control argument for the first time in over 70 years when a District of Columbia resident recently argued that the City's handgun ban violates the Second Amendment. Here's the wording of the Second Amendment:

"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."

Those who believe that all citizens have the right to own a gun argue that the Second Amendment guarantees such a right. Those who believe otherwise argue that the Second Amendment does not provide an absolute right; they believe that the Second Amendment is archaic, and was simply meant to clarify another section of the Constitution that presumably gave Congress the power to disarm State militias -- which was very important in the 18th Century because State militias made up a significant portion of the US military.

You can read the entire oral argument here, although I understand if 100 pages of transcribed arguing is not your idea of leisure reading. (I actually kind of enjoyed it.)


The Court must determine whether the D.C. handgun ban violates the Second Amendment. But after reading the transcript, it struck me that more than half of the argument was spent comparing 1780 to the present. Much of time was spent haggling over the meaning of the "well regulated militia" language.

Is it a limiting clause? Does the comma bifurcate the Amendment? Or is it simply there to remind people of one of the many purposes of the amendment? Or perhaps the language was added to honor the militia (an argument that the attorney representing the gun lobby ACTUALLY MADE on page 57.)

This eventually led to a very strange line of reasoning. At one point the attorney arguing on behalf of the gun lobby argued, "the handgun ban serves to weaken America's military preparedness." Then, ~100 words later, he argued that machine guns should be banned because "it's not an arm of the type that people might be expected to possess commonly in ordinary use."

(It didn't make sense to me either)

To resolve his apparent contradiction, he went on to argue that the framers intended for civilians -- if needed for militia duties -- to "bring arms supplied by themselves of the kind in common use at the time." He continued, "So at the present time, if people do not have, or are not recognized by any court to have, a common application for, say, a machine gun or a rocket launcher" their Second Amendment rights do not apply.

However, in the 1700's, he concedes, "the civilian arms were pretty much the sort that were used in the military." (and that is certainly not the case today)

So his argument was that if the U.S. is invaded by a foreign army, civilians are expected to defend themselves with arms of common civilian use (or those suitable for military use in the 1700's.)

Ok, so let's get this straight: if a powerful foreign army has defeated the entire United States Military -- and its full arsenal of machine guns, tanks, fighter jets, bombers, predator drones, laser guided missiles, and weapons of mass destruction -- civilians are expected to take up the defense with handguns and rifles.

What are we going to do with handguns? Melt them down and make machine guns?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a strict anti-gun person. I don't have a strong opinion on the subject either way. But some of these arguments are actually being made in front of the Supreme Court of the United States!!

I understand the general argument of the gun lobby. I really do. If criminals and local police officers are carrying guns, the average citizen should have the right to own one as well.


The Supreme Court's role is to determine whether laws are in accordance with the Constitution. However, the Constitution is vague. It is not an actual body of law as much as it is simply a framework. Yet even today, several Supreme Court Justices insist that their judicial philosophy is based on trying to determine the intent of the Framers. "How would the framers of the Constitution feel about this gun law?"

This theme was the prevalent for the first two thirds of the handgun argument.

How ridiculous did it get? Amongst other things, the argument touched on points such as politics between the federalists and anti-federalists, peasants' rights in 17th century England, the Blackstone Commentaries, Joseph Story, and guns as protection from Native Americans, wolves, bears, outlaws and tyrants.

There was even a short discussion about the English Bill of Rights in 1689 being applicable only to Protestants, and how the Scottish and Roman Catholics were forbidden from bearing arms, which at the time was considered a form of oppression -- thus our citizens will be oppressed if forbidden from bearing arms today.


So back to the original question, what would our Founding Fathers think about this handgun ban?

I don't know, and frankly, I'm not sure I'd base all of my philosophical decisions on the opinion of a group of men who used ink on the Constitution to honor our state militias, but not ban slavery.

Not to mention, they wore long blonde wigs to work every day.