Trump's Latest Executive Order: Protecting Second Amendment Rights
Does the Second Amendment need protecting, and if so from what?
By: Andrew Goddard
Last Friday, yet another in the flurry of Trump’s executive orders arrived, this one dubbed, “Protecting Second Amendment Rights.” That may sound to some like a laudable goal, but perhaps we need to lift up the hood and kick the tires of this Second-hand idea before we buy it.
It would be a good idea to first ask the fundamental question — Does the Second Amendment need protecting, and if so from what?
One of the outcomes of the firehose of lies and misinformation put out by the firearm industry and its zealous mouthpiece organizations like the NRA is the mistaken belief that the Second Amendment grants Americans the absolute right to own any type of firearm they so desire, and the right to carry them wherever and whenever they choose.
Setting aside the fact that the Bill of Rights does not “grant” rights, but rather constrains the Federal Government to respect existing rights of the people, there are many pressing reasons why constraints seen as important in the late 18th Century might not be suited to solve problems in the 21st Century.
One of the fundamental objectives of the Founders when they drafted our Constitution was “to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common Defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.”
At the time, the newly minted United States was under threat from various predatory countries that had designs on taking over the untapped wealth of this new nation. The Founders were very wary of the negative side effects of occupying armies organizing the defense of the individual states prior to independence. So they thought that an armed citizenry, controlled by civil authority, would provide adequate defense when needed, but would not impose financial or other hardships on the people.
Flash forward to today, it’s clear we have the most powerful and complex military system on the planet that is by many orders of magnitude more than capable of defending our nation from any foreseeable threat. Hence, armed civilians are no longer needed for national defense.
A far more pressing concern in this 21st Century is the unacceptable level of domestic firearms violence that affects the lives of millions of Americans and neither ensures domestic tranquility nor promotes the general welfare.
I would argue that the largest “threat” to the Second Amendment began to be formulated in the late 1970’s when so called gun rights organizations began a concerted effort to reimagine and repurpose the language of the amendment to support an entirely new concept of its meaning.
The first phrase — “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State” — was discredited as irrelevant, and as such had no bearing on the right to bear arms. After years of effort, this idea was finally given the blessing of the Supreme Court by Justice Antonin Scalia in the case Heller v. District of Columbia. Further, the words “the right of the people,” which linguistically uses a plural noun, was deemed to be an individual right; and the “shall not be infringed” was taken as a prohibition on any form of regulation of firearms.
A subsequent, seemingly odd ruling in the Bruen case stated that any regulation of firearms would only be considered “Constitutional” if there was an analogous regulation in place in history. It defies reality that a Constitutional amendment born of the 21st Century should or could reflect a concept that would’ve been recognizable to our 18th century Founders. Yet according to our current Supreme Court, 21st Century regulations must now adhere strictly to 18th Century thought and practices.
In my opinion, the biggest threat to lawful firearms ownership in America has nothing whatsoever to do with the Second Amendment, or whatever twisted interpretation of it is currently in vogue.
The biggest threat is from the fact that more than 40,000 American citizens are shot to death each year, with more than double that being wounded, and countless millions being adversely affected by the threat of random firearm violence. This is the total opposite of domestic tranquility and more akin to the effects of war!
It is the very industry which profits from the sale of civilian firearms — and the organizations they sponsor — who are blocking efforts to reduce this terrible toll and preventing us from using fact-based research to craft sensible gun violence prevention legislation.
The very fact that firearms are the leading cause of death for our 17-and-under children should be enough to make us realize that 21st Century problems need 21st Century solutions that are not constrained by 18th Century conditions or the profits of a particular industry.
Andrew Goddard is Legislative Director of the Virginia Center for Public Safety and board member of Safer Country. He has also served on the board of the Virginia Behavioral Health and Developmental Services. His interest in gun violence prevention came about as a result of his son’s injuries sustained in the Virginia Tech tragedy on April 16, 2007. His career has also included 20 years of international humanitarian relief and development, working and living in a number of developing countries including Kenya, Somalia, Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Egypt. He also worked for eight years as a Design Engineer and Project Manager.
Every time I read an opinion piece such as this, I recognize the need to defend the 2nd Amendment.