PMB notes that the text of the 2nd Amendment to the US Constitution, which prescribes the right of US citizens to own guns, reads as follows:
"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."
Now that we've seen a dramatic increase in US 'militia groups,' groups of private citizens who tend to stockpile arms and gather to conduct psuedo-military training exercises in preparation to defend themselves or their states against the US Federal government, PMB is compelled to comment briefly on how this phenomenon relates to the 2nd Amendment.
While many gun rights activists argue that the 2nd Amendment right to bear arms is an essential freedom whose primary function is to allow individuals to defend themselves and their families against criminals and allow for the use of guns in sporting or hunting pursuits, another prominent segment of activists views the 2nd Amendment primarily as a means of empowering the people for an uprising against a tyrannical government. While the former view is probably a more tenable justification for the 2nd Amendment in the 21st century, the latter is almost certainly more Constitutionally valid. Considering the language of the amendment together with its historical context--the Revolutionary War against tyrannical Britain, fought and won largely by a militia-style army--Constitutional originalists would have to agree that using arms as an aid to populist uprising against an overreaching government was the main purpose or spirit of the 2nd Amendment. For the rest of us who think that divining a singular and definitive meaning or notion of intent from the text of the Constitution is about as ridiculous as assuming that everyone who's ever read Macbeth ought to have come to the exact same conclusions about its 'meaning' and Shakespeare's 'intent,' one can still assume with some confidence based on the text and the history that, indeed, the clause 'A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State' either imposes a condition on 'the right of the people to keep and bear arms' (for the forming of a militia) or it constitutes clear evidence of an 'amplifying example' of the importance of the right to bear arms, the example of a militia being considered extremely important (thus 'amplifying') to those who drafted the amendment. This is to suggest that the 2nd Amendment pertains primarily to the formation of militia groups as a check against tyranny not because Constitutional intent is always clear, but rather because a piece of it happens to be rather clear in this particular case. Whether one subscribes to the idea that the 'militia clause' is qualifying or amplifying, the idea of the formation of a militia and its relation to the right to bear arms is central nonetheless.
What does this mean for the 2nd Amendment in the 21at century?
While PMB is not attempting here to argue for the sheer abolition or recusal of the 2nd Amendment, it's time to reconsider the whole militia thing.
As Obama and Medvedev's recent arms reduction treaty reduces the terms of nuclear weapons deployment down to no more than 1550 warheads or 700 launchers, the idea of 'a well regulated militia' with the ability to 'keep and bear arms' becomes perhaps slightly less ridiculous than it already was in the 1990s, when the US and Russia were operating with literally thousands of nuclear warheads. Of course, nuclear warheads really are just the tip of the 21st-century munitions and combat technology iceberg. Without going into anymore embarrassingly obvious details, suffice it to say that no militia acquiring any number of legal arms stands a shred of a chance against the US military. Perhaps the dark underside of this statement is that any fringe group, foreign or domestic, naturally stands its best chance against state military powers by engaging in acts of terrorism. And terrorists like Timothy McVeigh don't need guns to murder 168 people.
The point here is that, putting aside terrorist groups for whom obviously the 2nd Amendment was never meant to be an enabling factor (i.e. people who will engage in lethal combat against innocent, unengaged civilians as opposed to a state military), militias are now obsolete. In fact, as was the case with the Hutaree Militia in Michigan, the FBI is already protecting the nation and its law enforcement officers and government employees by tracking and getting to potentially violent militia groups before they even get the chance to stare down the barrel of a US tank. With the threat of terrorism continually present, whether from persons home or abroad, the only things a bunch of ragtag middle-aged men playing backyard George Washingtons and Paul Reveres are going to harm with their 2nd Amendment rights is innocent people and potentially themselves, and not the Federal government.
If we're going to justify the 2nd Amendment in the 21st century, let us at the very least dispense with the notion that the right to own guns has anything to do with anti-government resistance anymore. Let's stop feeding this potentially dangerous fantasy to burgeoning militia groups all over the country before people start getting killed for all the wrong reasons.
PMB will post again shortly on the Constitution, the early American government, the 'founders,' and the myriad ways in which contemporary anti-government populism evinces a harmful and regrettable ignorance of US history.
