Ability to keep and bear arms should also keep in mind nation's welfare

Viewpoint By Viewpoint The Kalamazoo Gazette
on February 18, 2009 at 8:00 AM, updated April 05, 2010 at 5:37 PM

My compliments to Bill Hollett for demonstrating and commending politeness, as we have a table conversation about the Second Amendment.

I will try and follow suit. I began the conversation on Nov. 20 and he joined in Dec. 15.
First, let's remind ourselves what the Second Amendment says: "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."

In his Dec. 15 Viewpoint, he said the parts of the Second Amendment explain why it exists, they do not define what it means.

When I got married the pastor asked me if I took my intended "... from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part.".

Now, I could look back on that day and say, "Those words served only to explain I was committing myself to being a good husband." I could say the words themselves had nothing to do with defining what my being a good husband meant. But I can't, because the words obviously do help define what being a good husband means. Otherwise, why didn't the pastor just ask, "Do you hereby commit yourself to being a good husband?"

Likewise, if the singular intent of the First Amendment was to explain the peoples' right to "keep and bear arms," why didn't it just say: "The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed"?

Why are the parts about "a well regulated militia" and "the security of a free state" in the Second Amendment if they have no meaning?

Second, Hollett's Viewpoint said the context for the Bill of Rights, including the Second Amendment, is the important thing. It said the Declaration of Independence contains the context, namely, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

I will concede a connection here. The Declaration of Independent, albeit adopted 15 years before the Bill of Rights, does say a lot about the mindset of the colonial revolutionaries. Their mindset would naturally spill over into the Constitution and Bill of Rights, which were later adopted.

But even if this means each amendment in the Bill of Rights is one of the unalienable rights those who framed the Declaration of Independent had in mind, how does this change how that right is defined in the text of the Second Amendment itself?

If we are going to read outside meaning into the Second Amendment we would perhaps be closer to home looking in the context of the Constitution itself.

For example, the Preamble to the Constitution says its intent, in part, is to "provide for the common defense." That sounds something like the "security of a free state" to me.

Then, in Article I, Section 8, we read that Congress is empowered "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." It sounds like the conviction a "well-regulated militia" is "necessary to the security of a free state," strongly lived in the minds of the framers and later was poured into the meaning of the Second Amendment.

The "security of a free state" comes up again in Article I, Section 9, where we read a mandate about the writ of habeas corpus, "unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it."

Then, in Article II, Section 2, "the militia of the several states" comes up again where the President's executive powers are enumerated so as to include this arena, as well as the Army and the Navy.

Then in Article IV, Section 4, the United States are charged with protecting each individual State "against invasion, and on application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic violence."

The 5th Amendment in the Bill of Rights also speaks of the militia in the context of "war or public danger."

Is all this contextual stuff enough to persuade the jury that the keeping and bearing of arms by "the people" in the Second Amendment is about more than individual self defense?

Now if these militia are to be "well regulated," their use of arms as militia will be well regulated. How can it be assumed that if the organized use of arms necessitates regulation, the individual keeping and bearing of arms does not?

We should not be debating whether we have gun control -- for individuals -- we should be debating its shape and scope. I cannot foresee a day when the Second Amendment, as it now stands, will ever be interpreted so as to deny individuals the right to keep and bear arms. But it ought not be interpreted so as to make that right absolute, and without qualification.

We have a two-sided coin here. On the one side is the individual, on the other, the nation. It is a citizen's right to keep and bear arms, but in regard to the welfare of the nation.

If a particular kind or manner of individual arms keeping and bearing is a self evident threat to the national welfare, it shoots the Second Amendment in the foot, defeating its purpose. The kind and number of arms an individual is permitted to keep and bear should be subject to our democratic legislative process and also subject to the individual's demonstrated capacity to exercise this right responsibly.

In California, Bruce Pardo crashed a Christmas Eve party. He used arms and fire to murder nine people. He reportedly had no previous criminal record. His killing spree started with a semi-automatic handgun.

Was the security of the free state of California, or our nation's welfare itself, served by his kind of arms keeping and bearing? If "we the people" do not have the right to make laws around such threats to the common good, "we the people" do not live in a democracy, and we are being held captive to an interpretation of the Second Amendment which contravenes its purpose.

The Rev. Dave Knapp resides in Climax.