Six Views on the Second Amendment
Heller may have determined the legal effect of the Second Amendment, but to the surprise of none, it did not end any controversy as to what that amendment should mean. To the best of my knowledge, six basic views remain:
- GOA View: What part of “shall not be infringed” don’t you fascist pigs understand, goddammit?
- NRA View (Standard/Heller Model): A well-regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state. Therefore, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
- Stevens View: Same as the Standard Model, but “the right of the people to keep and bear arms” is really, really small. But it is buried in there somewhere, honest. Look closely, it’s hiding next to Waldo.
- Breyer View: Same as the Standard Model, but as long as there is one legal product on the market that goes “bang,” the right in question hasn’t been infringed.
- ACLU View: It’s a collective right, dammit! And by “collective right” we mean, of course, that the only right you have as an individual is the right to live on a collective. What did you think we were, some union of Americans interested in civil liberties or something? Geez.
- Linguist View: A well-regulated militia being unnecessary to the security of a free state, infringe away.
Any others I missed?
UPDATE: Some commenters offer alternative views which, IMO, are really just variations on the above. The Obama view, for example, has morphed from #5 (when he served on the board of the Joyce Foundation and personally completed the 1996 questionnaire he has since blamed on an aide) to either #3 or #4 (when he started claiming to have always believed that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right, but continued to maintain that DC’s handgun ban was constitutional) to #2 (the day Heller was decided, when he claimed to have always maintained that DC’s handgun ban was unconstitutional, as was the Chicago ordinance he had actively supported while serving in the Illinois Legislature).
July 6th, 2008 at 12:28 am
7. Obama View: Owning guns is an individual right. Except when it’s not. When is it not? Well, look around. Hope. Change. Yes, we can. Can do what? Hm?
July 6th, 2008 at 2:00 am
Linguist view? I’ll have you know I’m a cunning linguist, and that’s not my view.
Ahem.
July 6th, 2008 at 7:01 am
8) My view: We have an inalienable right to self defense, and be extension the right to own and use the means of self defense.
I think this was the intent of the founders, but thats beside the point. It’s MY intent and belief, 2nd amendment aside.
July 6th, 2008 at 10:25 am
Moonbat view: If it’s an individual right, then all those right-wing wackos would get a thermonuclear device and use it, (the Terrorists!) and since that can’t be the reason of the 2nd (duh, nukes weren’t invented until at least 20 years after the Declaration was signed), NO ONE except the police should ever be allowed to have even a .22. And Bush sucks! NO BLOOD FOR OIL! Meat is Murder! We gotta wear hemp shoes to stop global warming! Just because I hate my country doesn’t mean I am unpatriotic! The Constitution isn’t a legal document, it was just sort of a guide.
July 6th, 2008 at 11:19 am
I think this needs work.
I don’t like your characterization of the Stephens and Breyer Views as being “the same as the Standard Model.” They’re only similar in that they make a token attempt to reconcile themselves with the text, but they characterize the right in such a limited fashion as to make it a different view rather than a variation on the correct one.
I also don’t think that the GOA and NRA embrace different views of the RKBA so much as different understandings and approaches to political problem solving. The NRA is an incrementalist organization while the GOA is more of a stickler for ideological purity. The GOA appeals to the true believers while the NRA appeals to the apathetic middle. IMO the GOA is being mostly stupid and short sighted although I believe that they serve the valuable function of keeping the NRA aggressive and honest in their defense of our rights. I think the NRA’s overall view is correct- that the scope of the right to keep and bear arms depends entirely on what the American people perceive that scope to be. Thus the answer lies in cultivating an American culture supportive of the maximum possible scope of the right.
IMO, the NRA political/legal/cultural model is the correct one although not really something you can explicitly base a supreme court argument on. But I think if you follow the reasoning, you get to three more correct views of the scope of the right to keep and bear arms:
1) Pro-gun originalist view- believes that the right protects all personally portable firearms including a wide variety of military arms. I think there is disagreement within this view about the final scope of this right and the speed with which our society should proceed in this direction. This is the real distinction between the NRA/GOA/Scalia views. This is a very sizable group and only growing with each passing year.
2) Gun-apathetic view- the broad mass of people that own no guns or a single sporting gun and don’t really care about the issue at all. This is the biggest group, but slowly converting to the pro-gun view as memes like concealed carry and home defense ownership take hold over the general populace. These people only rarely notice the gun issue, although they will react adversely to what they perceive as excessive changes in one direction or the other. A slow pace of progress keeps the gun-control battle a fight between group 1 above and group 3 below, a battle we will slowly but surely win.
3) Anti-gun view- a very small minority that hates firearms. This is often coupled with hostility to the right of self defense and is usually only found amongst academics, the political elite and the dim-witted few they manage to convince. Unfortunately this guarantees this view will be well funded until it has been entirely discredited and shown to be poisonous to one’s political and social aspirations.
So the real test, in my mind, is whether we can settle in for the long haul and continue to win this fight, day-by-day for the next 20 or 30 years until we have won. The biggest threat is that we will win too much too quickly, frighten people and deal ourselves a setback. The slow pace of the judiciary is perfect for this.
July 6th, 2008 at 1:36 pm
I agree with Carteach0 completely on that. It’s my life, let me defend it in the best way I know how.
July 6th, 2008 at 1:37 pm
I’m with GOA: Seems many people have reading comprehension issues including supreme court justices.
I am sure there are people out there arguing that 2+3 is not 5 and a Stop sign doesn’t mean stop but they are completely wrong and as much so as 3-6 above.
July 6th, 2008 at 2:42 pm
Jim W., 6 Kings: I disagree that the GOA view and the NRA view are the same. Aside from differing sharply on tactics (one group wheels and deals to get the best political result possible, while the other prides itself in a record of 30+ years of no compromise/results), they also differ philosophically on the definition of the word “infringe.” The NRA goes after outright bans and highly onerous restrictions that tend to have that result, while GOA asks us to forget the meaning or history of the word “infringe” and replace it with a princess-and-the-pea definition whereby anything that burdens the right to bear arms, however slightly, is automatically deemed an infringement.
In other words, GOA actually holds the cartoonish, knee-jerk views the anti-gun media wrongly attributes to the NRA.
July 6th, 2008 at 5:56 pm
You mentioned on my poor site that had Robert Bork been confirmed, Heller would probably have gone the other way; I hope that you’ll expound on that more fully.
But your line, “I’d rather elect McCain and hope he’s telling the truth than elect Obama and hope to God he’s lying,” was brilliant, and is my new blog tagline! :)
July 6th, 2008 at 6:02 pm
I think the NRA will come to hold progressively more pro-gun views once they think the public is receptive to them. As I stated at the end of my post above, I think the biggest threat is in “scaring white people.”
July 6th, 2008 at 9:49 pm
Here’s the part I don’t understand, how can anyone fail to grasp the mean of these simple words?
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 seems to me that those few words are so easily understood that all but the most dense would be able to grasp them.
July 7th, 2008 at 8:45 am
[...] has six schools of thought on the second amendment. Pretty much sums it [...]
July 7th, 2008 at 12:03 pm
The collective right is found elsewhere in The Constitution and the states’ constitutions. Americans, as a free people have the “right” to armed forces, armed police, and to otherwise arm their citizens as they may choose for common defense, domestic peace and game animal overpopulation. So is the Second Amendment just an “inkblot” in the Bill of Rights?
July 7th, 2008 at 7:56 pm
It would be interesting if one our honorable Members of Congress would introduce the following constitutional amendment for consideration:
I wonder just how far that would get?
But, of course, such would be an honest attempt at addressing the right to keep and bear arms, rather than trying to do so through subterfuge; one should never expect such honesty from a liberal.
July 7th, 2008 at 10:55 pm
Re #14: I could look it up myself but it’s past my bedtime back here on the Unleft Coast so I’ll just ask:
Is Major Owens still in Congress? And is he still introducing his annual “Repeal the Second Amendment” resolution?