“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.”
That language constitutes the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution in its entirety, and to most of the more than 80 million gun owners in this nation, it is the most important of the Amendments. Certainly, if the original ten amendments were put on the ballot today, it is the one that would be most likely to pass. Americans have a fascination and a need for guns, and because of the Second Amendment, we are probably the most heavily armed country in the world.
As a result, most people – especially those in states such as Arkansas where the gun culture is especially strong – probably didn’t know that, until last week, there was some doubt about whether they were protected against infringement of their gun ownership by state or local governments through laws or ordinances preventing or restricting ownership or possession of guns. In fact, the U.S. Supreme Court had never ruled that the Second Amendment applied to anybody other than the Federal Government until June 28.
On that date, the Court rendered its decision in the case of McDonald v. City of Chicago. Chicago has one of the highest murder rates in the country, and most of those murders are committed with the use of firearms. Consequently, Chicago enacted laws prohibiting the possession of firearms by private citizens. A number of Chicago residents sued the city to have those laws declared unconstitutional as being in violation of their rights under the Second Amendment.
Their efforts resulted in the Court’s decision reversing a number of 19th Century cases in which the Supreme Court then ruled that the original ten Amendments (also known as the “Bill of Rights”) applied only to the Federal government. However, after the Civil War, the 14th Amendment was enacted, which provided that all persons born or naturalized in the U.S. are citizens, and that no state shall abridge the privileges and immunities of any citizen, or deprive any citizen of life, liberty or property without due process of law.
Following the ratification of the 14th Amendment in 1868, the Supreme Court began to rule in various cases that portions of the Bill of Rights also applied to actions by state and local governments – a process called “selective incorporation.” In the Chicago case, it selectively incorporated citizens’ Second Amendment rights to actions by persons or governmental entities other than the Federal Government.
The decision, including all of the concurring and dissenting opinions, covers 200 pages, and most of the debate centered around whether the right to bear arms was extended to the states by the “equal protection” clause or the “due process” clause of the 14th Amendment. To most people, that sounds like a debate about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, but all of the Supreme Court Justices are graduates of either Harvard or Yale law schools, and those are the types of things they like to discuss.
Least you think that the right to bear arms is unrestricted, the Court frequently repeated that its ruling was limited to the right to possess a weapon – specifically a handgun – in the home for the purpose of self-defense. That is a narrow ruling, and while gun advocates, such as the National Rifle Association, celebrated it, gun control advocates and even the Mayor of Chicago felt that it was a ruling that they could live with.
Many questions about gun rights remain in the wake of this decision. The Court’s opinion did not touch upon issues such as whether a citizen has a right to possess a gun outside the home; whether gun registration laws are valid; or the number and type of weapons that a citizen may own, to name a few.
However, the Court specifically stated that they did not intend to cast doubt on prohibitions on possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms. Consequently, citizens may not see any real change in their rights regarding weapons except in places where they have been entirely prohibited – at least until a future case reaches the Supreme Court regarding a specific restriction on gun use or ownership.
The right to own and use guns receives a great deal of attention, but the consequences of that gun ownership is frequently given no attention. Approximately 50,000 people are killed in the U.S. each year by gunshot. Oddly, 55 percent of those are suicides, and most of those are committed by white men. Forty percent of gun-related deaths are murders, of which black men constitute, by far, the largest group of victims. The remainder of deaths are accidental shootings or police actions. However, over 100,000 people are injured each year from gunshots.
As the population and numbers of guns in the populace increase, those deaths and injuries will also increase. The American people are aware of the downside to unrestrained gun proliferation and use. In a CBS/New York Times national poll taken in April, 16% said that gun laws should be less strict, while 42% felt that the current laws should be maintained, and 40% believed they should be made more strict.
Many people legitimately believe that they should have a gun or guns in their homes for security. It is when guns are carried outside the home and into society that reasonable people begin to differ. The argument that “law-abiding” citizens should have the right to carry a gun to protect themselves sounds good until someone you may not even know crosses the “law-abiding” line and infringes upon your rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
You never know when that could happen, and arguably the access to and carrying of guns by an increasingly large part of the populace makes it more likely to happen. The Supreme Court will undoubtedly hear that argument sometime in the future.
(Richard Mays, a Heber Springs attorney and environmentalist, offers a liberal viewpoint on politics and social issues in each Friday’s edition)
