The Second Amendment

I have been giving some thought to the second amendment lately and I think some of my views on it may be changing. I agree with the right to keep and bear arms and I will always agree with this right, but it is becomming more and more appearant to me that this right is not quite as simple as I would like it to be. Unfortunately while I believe that gun onwership is not only a right but also a responsibilty of every citizen of the USA, that right is being misused by many people. One of the core foundations of democracy is the idea of self rule and while this means that we are given certain rights, this also means that we accept certain responsibilities. When it comes to the second amendement it seems that right now more people are far more concerned with their rights than they are about their resonsibilities. This fact is part of why I am changing my views on supporting legislation that restricts access to guns. Where one time I was firmly against any and all laws that restricted access to guns, I find myself realizing that this ideal is not responsible of me as a citizen of this country.

Whenever I am asked as a citizen of the United States to consider a change to law the first thing I do is give consideration to the documents that this country was founded on. I am a firm beleiver that the Constitution of the United States is one of the finest examples of democratic ideals in the worlds history. I believe that those who worked on this document were some of the greatest minds in the history of our race. The reason the Founding Fathers included the second amendement as part of the bill of rights was because in the world they lived in an armed populace was about the only way they could possibly raise an army strong enough to combat threats.

Why We Have the Second Ammendment

This may seem like a strange idea to us now but you have to remember that in the beginning the United States was not the world power it is today. It was a small country with a small population that had justifiable fears of much larger and more powerful nations such as England and France. Along with the fear of other nations, the United States was also conflicting with the Native Americans whose homes we were invading as we expanded our nation. This meant that the very survival of the country depended on its citizens being armed.

Along with the idea that the country needed an armed malitia, the other reason the right to keep and bear arms was given to us was out of a consideration of livlihood. Many of the earliest citizens of our country lived on the frontier and hunting game was not just a sport, but a necessity for their survival. While today no one needs to live off of hunting, that was not always the case. Thus the second ammendement gauranteed that those people blazing the path on the frontier could not only survive but also defend themselves.

While those were the times the Founding Fathers created the constitution in, those are not the times we live in now. We no longer need an armed populace to defend our borders. In fact we have the strongest military in the world and it' unlikely we will lose that place any time soon. Not only do we no longer need a militia to defend our borders, we also are not on the brink of starvation meaning that hunting is not the necessity it once was.

The reason I bring up all these facts is to show that while we may have been given a right to keep and bear arms, the reasons for this right have dramtically changed over the last two hundred plus years. While there are some out there that will decry this idea, the fact is the constitution was designed to be adjusted for the needs of a society the Founding Fathers knew that would change over time. If this was not how they felt then they would have never given us the ability to make ammendments to the constitution.

The Role of Ammendments

The fact that we are able to make ammendments to the constitution is a very important thing to keep in mind when you consider any law that may or may not restrict one of our rights. If you don't keep this in mind then you either have never read any of the documents this country was founded on, or your blatently ignoring the intention of the Founding Fathers of this country to suit your own purposes.

While, it's obvious that the constitution and other documents of the country can be ammended, this doesn't actually mean we should. Any change to the constitution and the bill of rights should only be made after very strenuous public debate and even when a change to the ammendment is not being considered, any law that prevents access to a right by any class of citizen should also recieve the same ammount of debate. To do less would be to compromise the principles our country is founded on.

The good news is that no one is actually trying to repeal the second ammendment. While there are plenty of talking heads that are screaming this is happening or that this will happen, it's not true. What is going on currently is a debate about how to create laws that allow for a greater degree of safety for children and everyone else. Unfortunately while there are very strong merits to this idea, it has gotten lost in a morass of ambiguous claims of rights being stripped away, of government over reach and more. I am sad to say that I allowed myself to be a victim of this very same hyperbole.

Fortunately while I have been a victim of hyperbole and dogma, I am waking up to a different reality. I didn't do this over night and I didn't do it just to side with liberals. I am waking up because I am seeing that guns are a problem in our society and we as a people need to start thinking about effective ways to deal with it. While I wish I lived in a world that didn't have the need for laws to restrict people from doing the wrong thing, I don't. I live in a world where far more people seem to be unwilling to live up to their responsibilities than there are those who will do so. This by nature means that in order to protect not only myself, but those around me, things have to be done to make this happen, and unfortuantely I can't see any way to do this other than to pass gun laws that make it harder for people to obtain a gun.

I know there are plenty of arguments against this. I also know that passing these laws do restrict one of our rights. However, this doesn't mean those arguments are correct or that we shouldn't do what is right for the best of our society. Because I do my best to give every side of an issue consideration before I choose a course of action I only feel its fair to discuss those arguments here and thus give people who may read this as broad a point of view as possible so that they can make up their own minds about this issue.

Makng Guns Illegal Means Only Criminals Will Have Guns!

This is actually the side of the argument I would most commonly argue before I started changing my mind on the whole thing. The basic idea behind this argument is that if you take guns away from law abiding citizens then you have a world in which only criminals have guns. This argument is actually true, but there is one big problem with it, No one is trying to take guns away from law abiding citizens. The fact is that most gun laws have required something that almost all citizens possess and that is a clean background and in some cases a proof that you actually know how to use your gun safely. 

Passing Laws Against Guns Is A Restriction of my Rights!

This is probably the second argument I would default to when I argued against gun laws. Again I actually agree with the argument, but where I have changed is when I consider the other side of the entire rights argument, responsibility. It seems that lately people are more than happy to scream about their rights being viloated and howl about having things taken from them, but they never speak about their responsibility. The idea of democracy is based on self governance. Self governance is based on the idea that while we all have certain rights, we also have a collective responsibility. When someone is not able to live up to their responsibility they don't deserve their rights. 

To make this point I am going to point out something. I am a convicted felon and I was punished for this crime. While I can argue that the laws I was punished under were injust, the fact is I commited my crime knowing full well it was against the law. I had no excuse for breaking this law, but I still chose to and so as a means of correcting my action I was put in prison and several of my rights were taken away. The reason my rights were taken away was because I had not lived up to my responsibiity as a citizen of the United States. I wilingly and with full knowledge of my actions, broke the law. While I lost many rights during my incarceration, I was given some of them back on my release, but not all of them including the right to keep and bear arms. 

So, my question is this, if I had a right to keep and bear arms without having a responsibility to govern myself, how would you feel if I had armed myself the moment I stepped out of prison? 

I know someone will be thinking "he shouldn't have broken the law if he didn't want to lose his rights." and you are one hundred percent correct, but what about alll the crimes that go on every single day that are not stopped? Why are you prefectly okay with a citizen of this country having their second amendment right completely stripped for their entire life yet you holler when people want to ask for stiffer gun laws to make sure guns only end up in the hands of responsible people?

The Founding Fathers Gave Us the Sceond Ammendment For A Reason!

I actually touched on this earlier, but this point dove tails nicely into the point I was just discussing. A lot of people have this image of our Founding Fathers as infallable human beings who walked along the earth with a slight glow displaying their inherrint rightousness. The problem is that this is far from infallable and they knew this. They knew they were not perfect men and they made sure they created a document that could be changed when the need arose. This is a fact and no matter how much you close your eyes to it, it's not going to change.

If you think that the Founding Fathers were perfect and we should follow how they envisioned democracy then you probably need to tear up your voter registration card. The Founding Fathers believed that only land owning whites were educated enough to vote which means that most of you reading this wouldn't have been able to vote under their ideals. Not only does that mean any women, black, hispanic or other race of person couldn't vote, it means poor white men couldn't vote either. Think about this for a second and then tell me if you really believe that things shouldn't change over time. 

Another point I have to make here is that yes, we have a second ammendment right to keep and bear arms. Yet, while many people scream and holler every single time a new gun law is mentioned or a current one is enforced, they seem to have little problem with restricting other rights. How many laws have been passed restricting the right to free speech? the right to assembly? the right against unreasonable search? The right to due process? How is it that people are willing to stand and shout about the second ammendment being restricted yet have no problem with laws passed to restrict or clarify other rights? This seems a bit like hypocrisy to me.

I Have a Right to Defend Myself!

This is one I have heard a lot in regards to gun laws. I actually agree, everyone has a right to defend themselves, but I have to wonder if a gun is actually required to defend yourself. I have lived a life that is best described as wild and I have spent a lot of time around those who do actually see guns as a way to impose their will. In my entire life, despite hanging out with violent people I have only had a gun pulled on me once and that was by a police officer.

There are two points this fact should bring up. First, if I spent my life around violent people and only had a gun pulled on me once for good cause, how often does a person actually need to have a gun to defend themself? Second, how many more times would I have had a gun drawn on me if they were made more available? I myself know that I can be a bit of a hot head, and know that had I had access to a gun for "self defense" I most likely would have used it for "self defense" when it wasn't actually required. Given those facts, I really don't see how having laws that restrict people from getting guns actually impacts your right to self defense period.

Guns Don't Kill People, People Do!

I was actually getting tired of this excuse of an arugment even before I started changing my thoughts on gun laws. While it is true that a gun can't kill someone without a person, the fact is that far to many people die because of guns. There are some that argue that if people didn't use guns they would kill with other weapons, and this is true, there are some people who will kill know matter what they have to do it with. However, while there are some people who would kill another person, giving them a gun makes it easier for them to do. Not only do those who already have an inclination for violence find guns easier to kill with, people who probably would have never commited murder use guns as well.

If guns didn't make it easier to kill then there wouldn't be evidence to support this idea. The fact is that out of all murders commited in the US every year, a vast majority of them were commited with guns. This is something I have tried to ignore and justify for a long time because I didn't want to change my stance on gun laws but I just can't do it anymore. The evidence that guns make people more dangerous is to great and until we learn to embed the idea of acting responsibly with the idea of rights, this isn't going to change. No ammount of wishful thinking, demogougery or hyperbole is going to change it either.

We Need to Enforce the Laws We Have Now, Not Make New Ones!

This is probably the one argument that really makes me shake my head. While the argument actually makes sense, the problem is that the laws are being enforced. Right now if I wanted to get a gun I would not be able to unless I did it by illegal means or if I found a loophole in existing laws. Now in one way, yes better law enforcement would prevent me from getting a gun, but that is something that is true of all crime, not just gun laws. However, when it comes to closing loopholes in gun laws, there isn't support from people who see how it makes existing laws more enforceable instead it leads to cries about violated rights. The sad fact is that sometimes you have to make new laws to make current laws actually enforcable.

Conclusion

In the end the issue of gun rights versus gun control isn't a simple thing. There likely isn't ever going to be an easy answer. While some people might believe the best thing to do is get rid of guns all together, that isn't going to happen. I realize not everyone is going to agree with my point of veiw and this is a good thing. If everyone thought the same we would have never become an independent country, we would have never given guns to the people, and more than likely you wouldn't be reading anything I have said.

I believe that the constitution does give the government the power to pass gun laws. I don't believe the government can ever completely outlaw guns and I don't want it to. While I believe we need to think about ways to make gun laws more effective, I also don't believe government is the sole answer to this problem. I was told a long time ago that while I had a right to free speech, if I misused that right to often it would be taken away, and I think the same is true of guns. If those who own and use guns don't start taking steps to be more responsible with them, then eventually those who are okay with the government taking guns away will outnumber those who support gun ownership so greatly there won't be anyone to really stop it from happening.