First let me just reiterate that my mind isn’t made up on where I stand in terms of 2A interpretation and application. So if you’re reading this, know that you’re witnessing someone’s thinking evolve over time.
So lets get into it. I’ve done a fair amount of research since my last article on guns and what I’ve learned is that the issue is much more complex than either the right or the left would have you believe. It’s especially complex if you want to do your own thinking and not accept the talking points from one side or the other without fully examining the issue first.
I started my research with the question of interpretation. Of the several interpretations I found, most of them fell in one of two camps; individualist or collectivist.
The individualists look at the 2A as an individual right – with the core premise being that the individual has a right to self-defense, whether the attacker is a single individual or a tyrannical government.
The collectivists look at the 2A as a right which applies to the group – the core premise being that the 2A was written to accommodate our collective need for security provided through state militias.
Lets dig into each of these a little further.
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“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.”
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The Individualist Interpretation
The core premise from the individualists is that the 2A enshrines in the Bill of Rights an individual’s right to keep and bear arms. The reason this right is enumerated is because the individual has a right to self defense, whether the attacker is a private citizen or a tyrannical government.
This idea has some readily accessible historical and philosophical precedent. In fact, the right to keep and bear arms for self-defense was also enshrined in English Common Law. England recognized the importance of an individual right to self-defense. And as a broader philosophical question, thinkers throughout history have supported the notion that our drive to self-defense and self-preservation is a powerful force that builds and maintains positive societal structures. And that because the drive to self-protect/preserve has this effect, it should therefore constitute a right of the individual in a free society.
The second piece of the individualist argument is that an armed populace is a guard against government tyranny. The argument is that the government will think twice before coming into our homes if they know we’re armed. Supporters of this argument point to history, which is replete with examples of governments taking the rights and methods of self-defense away from the people and then proceeding to further strip away the rights of the people – up to and including the right to life.
Therefore the individualist reading of the 2A becomes “A well regulated militia, being necessary for the security of a free state.” In other words…because we need an army to protect ourselves, and implied in that is the possibility that the State could use the army to oppress the people, “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
Bringing each piece together: because a State directed army is necessary for national security, but could also be used by a tyrannical State to oppress the people, and because the individual has a right to self-defense, the people must have the individual right to keep and bear arms.
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“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.”
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The Collectivist Interpretation
The core premise from the collectivists is that the 2A enshrines in the bill of rights a collective right to keep and bear arms because, in the context of the time, militias were a necessary part of the national defense. Militias didn’t provide guns, therefore men needed to bring their own, therefore the founders thought it necessary to include the collective right to own guns to provide for the national defense. Many collectivists go as far as to say that this means military service is the only acceptable context within which an individual can own a gun.
I should note here that that some collectivists also grant a right of self-defense and support the right of the individual to keep and bear arms to maintain that defense, citing the 9th amendment as the protection for the right to self-defense/preservation. They still maintain that the 2A was written as a collective right to provide for our collective security.
There seems to be minor precedent for the enumeration of collective rights in our founding documents. The Declaration of Independence enumerates our collective right to alter or abolish the government if it becomes destructive of our rights to life, liberty and happiness, saying “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government,”.
That being said, I was hard-pressed in the time I’ve given this project to find any strong example of a collectivist right in the constitution itself, certainly in the bill of rights. But that doesn’t necessarily, on its own, mean that the collectivist interpretation is wrong.
So, a collectivist reading of the 2A would be “A well regulated militia, being necessary for the security of a free state,” in other words, because we need militias to protect ourselves from foreign threats, “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”. Putting it all together: because we need militias, and because we need people to bring their own guns, we should be sure to protect the right of those people to own guns for this purpose.
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“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.”
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I hope what I’ve produced here is a reasonably fair, if unavoidably reductive summary of these two broad approaches to the 2A. At a minimum – for me – this serves as a starting point as I dive deeper into the issue. I hope it gave you something to think about.
One thought to wrap things up and perhaps spur discussion:
Regardless of which interpretation you use, its difficult to derive an individual right to own a gun, purely for individual self defense, from the text of the 2A. Each approach interprets the last two clauses through the context of the first two. And the first two clauses create a context of militias and of national security.
In fact, wouldn’t the 9th amendment, combined with the idea that the right to own a gun for individual self-defense was understood as a common law right and not an enumerated constitutional one, be a simpler way to defend that right?
The 9th amendment reads: “The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”
Historical accounts support the idea that 1) the federalists and anti-federalists did not disagree over whether the individual should have the right to own a gun for self-defense, and 2) that the understanding at the time was that the right to own a gun for self defense was a common law right and not an enumerated constitutional one.
In this context, the right to own a gun for self-defense would be one of those rights the 9th amendment was written to protect; it could be written like this “the second amendment shall not be construed to deny or disparage the right of the people to own guns for individual self-defense.”
Seems like a solid argument to me.
MW 