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Open thread: Second Amendment rights and responsibilities [1]
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Date: 2023-03-29
A young boy stares at a rack of guns inside a Sweetwater Rifle and Pistol Club show at Nolan County Coliseum on March 11, 2018 in Sweetwater, (LOREN ELLIOTT/AFP/Getty Images)
Reviewing my drafts folder after the Nashville mass shooting, I thought I had started writing this in response to an earlier mass shooting. But I actually had started writing this because of the news of a gun accident.
By the time you read this, another child will have injured himself playing with a loaded gun. Another mass shooting might have also occurred. That’s just the price of freedom, according to so-called “pro-life” “conservatives.” The right to guns is apparently sacred, inviolable and immune to even the most timid regulations.
Several weeks ago, I heard in the local news of a young boy who shot himself in the hand with an unsecured gun that presumably belongs to his father. The boy will almost certainly lose the use of one of his thumbs, which will make it difficult for him to eat, put on clothes... shoot a gun... etc.
The police say there will be charges for the irresponsible adult who failed to properly secure that gun. So maybe at least there is the sense that gun owners must take steps to keep children from playing with guns.
It’s so grating to hear people call themselves “supporters of the Second Amendment,” when they really only support the second half of the Second Amendment, the part that says that the right to bear arms shall not be infringed. The first part, that’s just filler for the sake of the word count, as the Founding Fathers were supposedly averse to writing short amendments.
Over the years I’ve come to have the opinion, unpopular even among progressives, that the Second Amendment is a state right, not an individual right. A state in the United States has the right to have its own militia, and to regulate weapons however that state sees fit.
Although I was trained on the M16A2, earning a marksmanship badge, and a little bit on heavier guns, both as part of my duty in the federal military, the Second Amendment as I see it has never actually applied to me. That’s because I have never served in any state’s National Guard.
The Second Amendment as a state right is the only right interpretation that honest originalism can come to. And even writers of fiction who base their fantastical worlds on the United States create fictional parallels to the Second Amendment, which are more clearly worded as state or member rights, not individual personal rights.
But even if the Second Amendment was really meant as an unrestricted personal right by 18th Century men who foresaw both that guns would get way more efficient and that a much smaller proportion of the population would ever be involved in military activities, doesn’t the right to guns come with responsibilities?
Like, for example, if you claim that since you are people therefore you are the militia, when is the last time you got together with others to practice your military skills? Marching in formation, being lectured about gun safety, those things are not as fun as shooting beer cans on the fence.
Pretty much every other right in the Constitution is limited by responsibilities to others. Like the famous don’t yell “Fire” in a crowded theater, for one. The First Amendment is regulated to an extent that is somehow unthinkable for the Second Amendment.
The open thread question: what are the people’s responsibilities under the Second Amendment?
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[1] Url:
https://www.dailykos.com/story/2023/3/29/2148705/-Open-thread-Second-Amendment-rights-and-responsibilities
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