Challenge the Gun Lobby on Second Amendment History and Turn the Tide on Gun Violence

It simply makes good sense, to study and respect history.  We all need to understand with clarity what mankind has experienced and to learn from the mistakes and misjudgments made through the centuries and even now today. 

With this in mind, I am struck every day by the willful rewriting of history by the gun lobby and gun enthusiasts.  I get it, they feel emboldened that they have the upper hand now, having spent fifty years reshaping history to their ends and manipulating their sympathizers’ beliefs about the constitutional discussions of 230 plus years ago. 

But they are fundamentally wrong, and they are seriously undermining U.S. society with the tragic violence enabled by their position.

At the same time, I am even more struck by the willingness of gun safety proponents and political leaders to allow the gun lobby to go unchallenged as it twists and misrepresents confirmable history to achieve its self-serving political and economic/business goals.   Enough.  It’s time to refute the false narrative of the gun lobby and refute it relentlessly.

I am eager to do my part, with my journey into our history focusing recently on the Constitutional Convention of May-September 1787 in Philadelphia, with several excellent books capturing the daily discussions, negotiations, and political tensions inherent in the process. 

Reading that history, one is struck by what the “Founding Fathers” accomplished in writing the Constitution.  But, at the same time, one cannot but see how the weaknesses of the document inevitably came to the fore and how the need to address shortcomings brought the Bill of Rights just two years later. 

The Bill of Rights tackled the political needs of the moment, including the general fear of having a standing national army quartered in citizens’ homes and consequently the need for militias.  And as in the case of the Convention’s compromise on slavery, the passage of time has brought the Second Amendment’s conceptual flaws clearly into the open for all to see; put simply, national security developments have made a “well organized militia” irrelevant as state militias morphed into the National Guard within the national defense structure.

In the 1789 Constitution, it was clear that the Founding Fathers were simply kicking the can of the injustice of slavery down the Constitutional Road, leading to an eventual Civil War 72 years later and the writing of the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to ban slavery and guarantee civil rights. 

And two years later, in drafting the December 15, 1791 Bill of Rights and the Second Amendment, it was clear that the drafters were simply focused on ensuring a well organized militia, with white male citizens bringing their own single shot muskets and pistols to the task as stated in the May 8, 1792 Law on Militia (underscoring added):

That each and every free able-bodied white male citizen of the respective States, resident therein, who is or shall be of age of eighteen years, and under the age of forty-five years (except as is herein after excepted) shall severally and respectively be enrolled in the militia, by the Captain or Commanding Officer of the company, within whose bounds such citizen shall reside, and that within twelve months after the passing of this Act. And it shall at all time hereafter be the duty of every such Captain or Commanding Officer of a company, to enroll every such citizen as aforesaid, and also those who shall, from time to time, arrive at the age of 18 years, or being at the age of 18 years, and under the age of 45 years (except as before excepted) shall come to reside within his bounds; and shall without delay notify such citizen of the said enrollment, by the proper non-commissioned Officer of the company, by whom such notice may be proved. That every citizen, so enrolled and notified, shall, within six months thereafter, provide himself with a good musket or firelock, a sufficient bayonet and belt, two spare flints, and a knapsack, a pouch, with a box therein, to contain not less than twenty four cartridges, suited to the bore of his musket or firelock, each cartridge to contain a proper quantity of powder and ball; or with a good rifle, knapsack, shot-pouch, and powder-horn, twenty balls suited to the bore of his rifle, and a quarter of a pound of powder; and shall appear so armed, accoutred and provided, when called out to exercise or into service, except, that when called out on company days to exercise only, he may appear without a knapsack…

Hard to read the Second Amendment and the follow-on Law on Militia, enacted less than six months later, and believe what the gun lobby and militia proponents assert today, that the Second Amendment’s 27 words are a blank check authorizing the carrying of huge magazine, rapid fire weapons of war indiscriminately on the streets of American cities, towns, and neighborhoods today. 

It just isn’t so, no matter how aggressive and insistent the gun lobby’s communications effort has been over the past five decades.  It just isn’t true that “shall not be infringed” is the only phrase that mattered then or today.  It just isn’t so.

Let’s hope that leading gun safety organizations and serious historians of late 18th century America will work together to set the historical record irrefutably straight.  Let’s hope that the Supreme Court is reading history as it occurred and evolved, and not as conveyed by the gun lobby’s self-serving version of events, and that its decisions reflect such an understanding.

Let’s hope that historical truth will prevail, and we turn the tide on the violence fostered by the gun lobby’s flawed interpretation of the Second Amendment.

SCOTUS members, much depends on you.  The country is watching.