Understanding the Second Amendment

Following the horrific slaughter of school children in Florida, and remembering Sandy Hook, Columbine, Las Vegas and other mass shootings, I decided, without reservation, that ownership of certain types of automatic weapons should be banned in this country.

Acknowledging that such a ban might be blocked because of the Constitution’s Second Amendment I needed to learn more about what it actually says.

I needed to understand why it seems to have such a stranglehold on America’s ability to protect its citizens from death at the hands of individuals with high capacity guns.

Thanks to the Internet, anyone with a computer can get all the information necessary to be knowledgeable about the Second amendment and its history.

Here are some of the things I learned after doing so.

The text of the Second Amendment 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.”

It appears that the purpose of the amendment was to allow states to have armed citizen militias to protect themselves from being overpowered by a foreign country (since there was not yet a central federal government or federal standing army at the time), and to keep the peace.

After the formation of The United States of America , with its own standing army and the militias disbanded, the Second Amendment became obsolete but remained a part of the Constitution as written. It was never revised or deleted.

In 2008, in the case of the District of Columbia V. Heller, the Supreme Court held that “the Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self defense within the home.”

However, as Justice Scalia said in his Heller case opinion, “The right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited. We do not cast doubt on concealed-weapons prohibitions, laws barring possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, laws barring firearms in sensitive places like schools and government buildings, and laws imposing conditions on commercial sale of arms.

“Also, the sorts of weapons protected are the sorts of small arms that were lawfully possessed at home at the time of the Second Amendment’s ratification, not those most useful in military service today, so M-16 rifles and the like may be banned.”

Laws banning assault type weapons have already existed in the United States. In 1994, The Federal Assault Weapons Ban (The Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act, a subsection of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994) was enacted.

It included a prohibition on the manufacture for civilian use of certain semi-automatic firearms it defined as assault weapons, as well as certain magazines it defined as “large capacity.” The ban was valid for ten years. It expired in 2004 in accordance with its sunset provision.

Efforts were made to pass a new federal assault weapons ban after the Sandy Hook School shooting. Senator Diane Feinstein introduced the Assault Weapons Ban of 2013 that was similar to the 1994 ban but differed in that it would not expire after 10 years.

The Senate Judiciary Committee approved a version of the bill but the NRA and the Texas Congressional delegation condemned it. The bill failed on a Senate vote of 40-60.

After doing this research I now believe more than ever that having a permanent ban on citizen ownership of assault type weapons would go a long way toward protecting American citizens from further mass shootings.

I plan to contact my Senators and Congressman urging them to move promptly to enact such legislation and hope many who read this letter will do the same.

I can’t bear the thought of hearing about another mass murder of young, middle-aged or old Americans on the morning/evening news. But we the people can act in order to prevent that.

As the saying goes, “The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.” Kate Okie West Chester