Does tradition trump public safety?

I saw this in an Associated Press article in the June 3 Monterey Herald. 

“The high court in 2022 handed down a ruling that expanded gun rights and told lower-court judges they should no longer consider factors such as public safety in deciding whether firearm laws are constitutional. Instead, they should focus on whether a law fits into the nation’s historic tradition of gun ownership, the court said.”

I checked it out, and it is true. The Supreme Court of the United States of America, in what is known as the Bruen decision, stated that tradition is more important than the written law. This comes from a court whose conservative members have often declared that the letter of the law is not open to interpretation. It should be taken literally, as the founding fathers intended. This is ironic, no it’s completely nuts, because the stated objective of the Second Amendment to the US Constitution is “the security of a free state,” in other words, public safety.

On a few occasions I have asked people what the stated purpose of the Second Amendment is. Republicans typically answer “the right to bear arms” in accord with their belief that anybody should be able to buy a gun for any reason. Democrats usually say “A well-regulated militia” since they’re into gun regulations. They all miss the real answer which has been staring them in the face all along, “the security of a free state.

If security is the objective, then the founding fathers apparently believed gun ownership was the best way to achieve security. But let’s be clear, it is the means not the end. So when the Supreme Court directs lower courts to give gun ownership traditions priority over the stated objective of the Second Amendment the court is essentially saying public safety and security are irrelevant.

How does that make you feel?

Public safety should never be an afterthought. Since it has such a prominent role in the Second Amendment, it should be the standard against which all gun laws are judged. Safety first, as the popular slogan goes.

Interestingly, for as long as I can remember gun owners have implicitly argued in favor of the public safety angle. They say that the purpose of the Second Amendment is to protect the civilian population from potential authoritarianism should a president or Congress go off the constitutional rails. Guns, they say, freely owed by American citizens, are part of the checks and balances baked into the constitution to prevent a dictator from taking control. According to this interpretation, armed citizens would have a way to fight back when the president directs the military or law enforcement to oppress ordinary law-abiding citizens and legal residents.

That’s actually a legitimate topic for discussion. But this popular argument fails to take into account a few things. 

First, it doesn’t consider the possibility that the gun owners might take the side of the oppressor, as many have been doing since 2016. All Donald Trump had to do to align the gun owners with his power grab was to convince them that the Democrats were plotting to take away everyone’s guns even though no president of either party has actually attempted it. Actually, the gun owners had already convinced themselves that Democrats were out to get them. All Trump had to do was agree with them and now they follow him everywhere, even to the point of insurrection. The founding fathers don’t seem to have considered that possibility, but now it is alarmingly real.

Second, the founding fathers never envisioned the nightmare scenarios that have unfolded across the country in recent decades, nor did they anticipate the easy availability of high-powered firearms that enable such atrocities. Guns of many types have been used by mentally unbalanced citizens to take their frustrations out on innocent people doing ordinary things like going to school or church, watching movies, buying groceries, or attending concerts. If the intent of the Second Amendment is “the security of a free state” it has failed miserably. But apparently, SCOTUS has decided that can’t be taken into consideration.

Third, I don’t know of any occasion where citizens successfully used firearms to overcome perceived government oppression. But there were some that were unsuccessful. Ruby Ridge and Waco come to mind. These incidents demonstrated that going up against the federal government with weapons, no matter how legitimate the grievance, is a recipe for tragedy. So as a remedy for government oppression, guns are not very effective. Peaceful protests and civil disobedience aka non-cooperation, have better track records.

If we are to be honest with ourselves we must admit that our firearm traditions have not been particularly successful in achieving security. Therefore to rely on tradition to define our national gun laws is a recipe for continued violence and heartbreak.

It is time we took a careful look at the Second Amendment with its clearly stated objective at the forefront of the discussion. Use that to frame the amendment in a way that unifies the three main clauses of the Second Amendment into a coherent national policy that protects everyone, not just gun owners.