Gun Crazy

If my supermarket discussions are any measure, I’ve aroused the ire of those who read a right to own a gun with no reasonable constraints into the Second Amendment of the Constitution which reads, “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.” 

I’m not qualified either in Constitutional law or in English grammar to judge the original intent of the singular language of the Second Amendment.  Arguments are made that the justification clause (“A well regulated Militia…”) limits and defines the operative clause (…the right of the people…”) so that only those in well regulated militias may keep and bear arms.  Constitutional “originalists” point out the use of justification clauses in many state constitutions of the era that are not limiting in that way.  I don’t know which side is correct.

What I do know is that the way we Americans deal with guns is flat-out crazy.  Here are a few current examples.

On January 8th, Jared Lee Loughner used a semi-automatic handgun equipped with a large capacity magazine to fire 30 shots in 15 seconds to kill 6 people, including a 9-year old girl and a federal judge, and to wound 13, including Representative Gabrielle Giffords. A ban on large capacity magazines expired in 2004, but Congress failed to renew it under pressure from interests that equate the right to own a gun with the right to wield high-volume firepower. That’s crazy.

This term, Florida Gov. Rick Scott has signed a law, H.B.155, threatening doctors with sanctions if they talk with families about the risks of a gun in the home or offer advice on gun safety that is determined to be “not relevant” or “unnecessarily harassing.”  The law does not define these terms, however, injecting legal uncertainty and government scrutiny into the privacy of the doctor-patient relationship.  That’s crazy.

The National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund tracked the cause of fatalities of law enforcement officers for the first half of 2011. For the first time in 13 years, firearm-related fatalities outpaced traffic-related deaths. Forty officers were shot and killed between January 1st and June 30th, a 33 percent increase over 2010 when 30 officers were killed by gunfire. That’s beyond crazy; all the way to tragic.

I’m just guessing here, but if you’d told the original 18th Century framers of the Second Amendment that the term “Arms” they intended to apply to the muzzle-loaded, single-shot flintlocks they knew would ultimately apply to Twenty-First Century semi-automatic 30-round-clip-fed weapons, like Jared Lee Loughner’s, that can kill more people per minute than a whole platoon of well regulated Militia, they’d tell you that you were crazy.