How the NRA Rewrote the Second Amendment

[ZiprHead]

The Founders never intended to create an unregulated individual right to a gun. Today, millions believe they did. Here’s how it happened.

fraud on the American public.” That’s how former Chief Justice Warren Burger described the idea that the Second Amendment gives an unfettered individual right to a gun. When he spoke these words to PBS in 1990, the rock-ribbed conservative appointed by Richard Nixon was expressing the longtime consensus of historians and judges across the political spectrum.

Twenty-five years later, Burger’s view seems as quaint as a powdered wig. Not only is an individual right to a firearm widely accepted, but increasingly states are also passing laws to legalize carrying weapons on streets, in parks, in bars—even in churches.

Many are startled to learn that the U.S. Supreme Court didn’t rule that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual’s right to own a gun until 2008, when District of Columbia v. Heller struck down the capital’s law effectively banning handguns in the home. In fact, every other time the court had ruled previously, it had ruled otherwise. Why such a head-snapping turnaround? Don’t look for answers in dusty law books or the arcane reaches of theory.

On June 8, 1789, James Madison—an ardent Federalist who had won election to Congress only after agreeing to push for changes to the newly ratified Constitution—proposed 17 amendments on topics ranging from the size of congressional districts to legislative pay to the right to religious freedom. One addressed the “well regulated militia” and the right “to keep and bear arms.” We don’t really know what he meant by it. At the time, Americans expected to be able to own guns, a legacy of English common law and rights. But the overwhelming use of the phrase “bear arms” in those days referred to military activities.

There is not a single word about an individual’s right to a gun for self-defense or recreation in Madison’s notes from the Constitutional Convention. Nor was it mentioned, with a few scattered exceptions, in the records of the ratification debates in the states. Nor did the U.S. House of Representatives discuss the topic as it marked up the Bill of Rights. In fact, the original version passed by the House included a conscientious objector provision. “A well regulated militia,” it explained, “composed of the body of the people, being the best security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, but no one religiously scrupulous of bearing arms, shall be compelled to render military service in person.”

Politicians adjusted in turn. The 1972 Republican platform had supported gun control, with a focus on restricting the sale of “cheap handguns.” Just three years later in 1975, preparing to challenge Gerald R. Ford for the Republican nomination, Reagan wrote in Guns & Ammo magazine, “The Second Amendment is clear, or ought to be. It appears to leave little if any leeway for the gun control advocate.” By 1980 the GOP platform proclaimed, “We believe the right of citizens to keep and bear arms must be preserved. Accordingly, we oppose federal registration of firearms.” That year the NRA gave Reagan its first-ever presidential endorsement.

Today at the NRA’s headquarters in Fairfax, Virginia, oversized letters on the facade no longer refer to “marksmanship” and “safety.” Instead, the Second Amendment is emblazoned on a wall of the building’s lobby. Visitors might not notice that the text is incomplete. It reads:

“.. the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”

The first half—the part about the well regulated militia—has been edited out.

 

[Trausti]

Yet somehow abortion - nowhere in the Constitution - is an unassailable Constitutional right. Makes sense.

 

[Harry Bosch]

Yet somehow abortion - nowhere in the Constitution - is an unassailable Constitutional right. Makes sense.

And yet no where in the constitution does it say that the state can force a person to subordinate their bodily rights to another person (or a fetus).

 

[Trausti]

Yet somehow abortion - nowhere in the Constitution - is an unassailable Constitutional right. Makes sense.

And yet no where in the constitution does it say that the state can force a person to subordinate their bodily rights to another person (or a fetus).

The Federal Constitution is for the FEDERAL government.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Yet somehow abortion - nowhere in the Constitution - is an unassailable Constitutional right. Makes sense.

It's nowhere in the Constitution because there was no need to defend it at the time. The church used to perform abortions!

Why should the George Floyd case be considered murder? Nowhere in the Constitution will you find a right to breathe!

 

[Trausti]

Yet somehow abortion - nowhere in the Constitution - is an unassailable Constitutional right. Makes sense.

It's nowhere in the Constitution because there was no need to defend it at the time. The church used to perform abortions!

Why should the George Floyd case be considered murder? Nowhere in the Constitution will you find a right to breathe!

FFS, did everyone fail civics? The Federal Constitution was for the new national government. You don’t think murder was a crime in Virginia before the Constitution was ratified?

 

[Patooka]

I guess convicted felons are allowed guns because of that "shall not be infringed" clause. And that arresting them violates both their 2nd and 14th Amendment rights. I wonder if the NRA will die on that particular hill.