The US Gun Debate: Contentious, Spirited and Long Lasting, Part One

"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."--Second Amendment to the United States Constitution. 


Probably the most interesting thing about the recent return to a national gun debate (executive orders by President Obama and proposals pending now for Congressional action) is in how the nation is clearly and hotly divided into very different camps. The view on the majority in firearms legislation depends more and more on several factors, regional, cultural,  party affiliations,  et al.  This makes the making of any legislation on weapons for a national standard more difficult than almost any domestic issue,  second only to budgetary and tax issues.  

Whereas big-city mayors like Michael Bloomberg of New York, Rahm Emmanuel of   

Chicago and Antonio Villaregosa of Los Angeles and millions of ordinary citizens are in support of legislation to ban further sales of  assault-weapons, limit the bullets in magazine clips to  ten rounds, and tighten up background checks for all gun sales in the nation others are less than pleased  and feel this will somehow lessen freedom for citizens.  It is a divide that is both rural and urban, Southern and Northern, West versus East and ultimately an effort than will likely end in most of the President's proposals being nullified  by the Congress. 

Too many Republicans worried about being targeted and Democrats in conservative "red states" like Arkansas and Montana  simply will not dare buck the National Rifle Association, which represents a percentage within the group itself of hard-core gun owners loathe to give an inch, even  in the aftermath of the mass shootings. (to the left: A study published in the Washington showing the amount of gun violence by region of the country.)  

In my own part of the country, southern Oregon, the divide is seen by the support given to President Obama's proposals from the police chief of the largest semi-metro area in the region, Tim George of the city of Medford, and the opposition to same from Sheriff Mike Winters and other sheriffs who have a more rural focus on gun issues.  

    

The Second Amendment to the Constitution is not one of the less ambiguous measures even to see the light of day.   In one sentence the phrases "well-regulated militia" and "the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" occur in separate clauses of the same extended sentence.  Where should the emphasis lie--in regulation or lack of infringement?  

  A look back at the post-revolutionary past of the 1780-90s and the American Constitution shows us that the Amendment was interpreted differently by different Founding Fathers who generally argued on the same side for passage of the new Constitution.  Alexander Hamilton of the emerging Federalist Party sided more with the idea of an actual organized militia.    Hamilton was more concerned about foreign invasions, Native-American uprisings or putting down armed insurrections by those who refused to pay taxes or heed laws.  Here is Hamilton writing in The Federalist Papers.  (below, from Wikipedia)  

In Federalist No. 29, Alexander Hamilton suggested that well-regulated refers not only to "organizing", "disciplining", and "training" the militia, but also to "arming" the militia:

This desirable uniformity can only be accomplished by confiding the regulation of the militia to the direction of the national authority. It is, therefore, with the most evident propriety, that the plan of the convention proposes to empower the Union "to provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States, reserving to the states respectively the appointment of the officers, and the authority of training the militia according to the discipline prescribed by congress."^[49]

A tolerable expertness in military movements is a business that requires time and practice. It is not a day, or even a week, that will suffice for the attainment of it. To oblige the great body of the yeomanry, and of the other classes of the citizens, to be under arms for the purpose of going through military exercises and evolutions, as often as might be necessary to acquire the degree of perfection which would entitle them to the character of a well-regulated militia, would be a real grievance to the people, and a serious public inconvenience and loss.^[49]

"If a well regulated militia be the most natural defence of a free country, it ought certainly to be under the regulation and at the disposal of that body which is constituted the guardian of the national security...confiding the regulation of the militia to the direction of the national authority...(and) reserving to the states...the authority of training the militia".^[49]  

 Others, like George Mason and Patrick Henry, anti-federalists who despaired  federal control over the states and did not sign the Constitution, thought that an armed citizenry was necessary to defend freedom itself.          There is also evidence that men like George Mason, who were slave-owners, wanted the state militias not because of fear of invasion or tyranny but the more clear and present fear of a slave insurrection, as was already happening on the island of Santo Domingo in the Caribbean.  Slave uprisings were not unusual in the Southern states, especially in partss of Georgia and South Carolina where slaves outnumbered whites.  George Mason for instance owned 300 slaves.  It would certainly be in the interest of he and his peers to have a "well-regulated militia" of white citizens to gather  periodically and make their presence .as an armed force known to unarmed and unpaid field hands.       

Unlike other early amendments,  the first ten of which are designated "The Bill of Rights", the Second Amendment has increased greatly in debate just over the last few decades while being almost dormant for much of the 19th and most of the 20th Century.