Amendment II
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.
This is exactly how it is written in the Constitution - punctuation, capital letters and all. One sentence.
When you think about, it's kind of crazy that so much death, violence and acrimony has occurred in this country over one sentence.
Scholars and Constitutional lawyers and politicians and everyone in between have made arguments to how exactly apply that one sentence into law. Meanwhile... Shootings... Masses of them... Masses of mass shootings. What could we possibly contribute here?
Well, we look at from a grammatical point of view. Those two clauses within the commas? Because they're separated out by commas was the intent that the two were conditions that could change. Those two clauses could be removed and the one sentence would still make sense. A well regulated Militia shall not be infringed. But what does that even mean? Every definition of 'militia' contains some form of the word 'citizen.' If you were to change the word 'militia' to say, 'citizenry' then things would be more applicable to the 21st century. But the big however here, is that we still have the words well regulated.
No matter how you hash up that sentence the words 'well regulated' are intended to be essential to the sentence, and well regulated we certainly are not. The subtle bit of 'Frank Luntz-like' strategy of reframing the debate terminology is genuinely helpful - from gun control to gun safety. We definitely need more gun safety because things are out of control. And nowhere in that sentence, especially given the 'well regulated' language, does it give the citizenry the civil right to own a gun.
Judging from their respective interviews, Senators Chris Murphy (D-CT) and Pat Toomey (R-PA), incremental steps are the only way forward on gun safety measures, starting with background checks that 90 percent of Americans support. Other reasonable measures could be instituted such as a waiting period (if only for 2 days) and a permit. How modest is that? Republican strategist Al Cardenas later in the panel discussion called for an even stricter measure on assault rifles. However, any measure that mentions restrictions on assault rifles is DOA for Senate Republicans and Joe Manchin. With incremental measures, Mr. Murphy feels that there are 60 votes in the Senate. We'll see...
Mr. Murphy also feels that this could be an opportunity to quell the outcry for the end of the filibuster as passing gun safety legislation could get 60 votes. You would think that modest proposals could get say 70 votes, but even 60 seems like one is setting an unreasonable goal. It's also worth noting here that Mr. Toomey has it wrong when it comes to the filibuster and race. While the filibuster in and of itself isn't racist, it has been a tool throughout its existence for racist and suppressive purposes. You really can't get around that. But even more disappointing was Mr. Toomey's defense of restrictive voting laws that are designed to make it more difficult for minorities to vote.
More difficult to vote, get a driver's license, a fishing license or marriage license than it is to buy a gun. The least we can do is to require similar in terms of guns. We still wouldn't be well regulated but at least better.
NBC's Vicky Nguyen gave us the easily digestible, but hard to swallow, fact that while Americans make up 4 percent of the population, we own 44 percent of the worlds guns. When Senator Toomey says we do not have too many guns in circulation - over 400 million at this point - one has to wonder how many is too much for him? A buy back program would also be a reasonable step - get guns off the street and put money in people's pockets. Hmmm...
Even after twenty first graders and 17 high school students were gunned down, followed by 61 people people in Las Vegas followed by another 23 in El Paso all the way up to last week in Atlanta and Boulder, we still can not agree on the meaning of one sentence.
Panel: Vicky Nguyen, NBC News; Heather McGhee, Color of Change; Peter Baker, The New York Times; Al Cardenas, Republican Strategist
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