From the Daily

Right to bear arms?

Second Amendment must be reinterpreted

"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."

The Michigan Daily's editorials reflect the opinions of the paper as a whole, not those of individual editors or editorial staffers. The content and position of each editorial is determined by the Daily's editorial board and express a cohesive set of opinions guided by 108 years of previous editorials.

Some of the Daily's stances are quite specific - the Daily will always be pro-choice and pro-student. Other stances are less specific. One of these stances has been in favor of gun control. Under normal circumstances, the Daily's position would be fleshed out over time, but tragic events in the last few months demand that the Daily take a harder and more direct position on gun control.

Our decision is that no amount of gun control will ever be sufficient - the Second Amendment must be reinterpreted. Individual citizens should not be allowed to bear arms. This is both a just and necessary interpretation of the Second Amendment.

The Second Amendment: a modern interpretation.

In just five months the nation has experienced high-profile massacres in Littleton, Colo., Conyers, Ga., Atlanta and Fort Worth, Texas. These tragedies may have drawn attention to the problem of gun control, but they are only a small part of a great national tragedy. People have become so accustomed to gun violence that it takes a Columbine-scale event to garner notice. Guns lead to the tragically senseless - and preventable - destruction of human life.

The purpose of the Second Amendment lies in maintaining a "well-regulated" armed civilian body, not private gun ownership. No gun control law brought before the Supreme Court or other federal courts ever has been overturned on Second Amendment grounds.

Preserving Liberty

To a certain degree, gun lobbyists are correct in suggesting the Second Amendment is fundamental to preserving liberty. The drafters of the Constitution realized the necessity to provide citizens with a way to protect themselves from an oppressive government. Thomas Jefferson said "...when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism is their right, is their duty, to throw off such Government."

When the constitution was ratified, each state had its own militia - a compulsory military force. Ordinary citizens served as part-time soldiers, protecting a young nation from potentially threatening outside forces and from internal rebellions. Member requirements included training and supplying their own firearms. The federal government soon established a permanent, professional military arm, but many of the Anti-Federalists feared a standing army could be used as a tool of oppression. State militias were viewed as a counterbalance to the federal army.

Gun lobbyists such as the National Rifle Association often omit the crucial beginning of the Second Amendment: "a well-regulated militia." Times have changed. The Second Amendment has not grown obsolete, but the old interpretation of it has. The U.S. government has since established the National Guard, which is today's equivalent of a "well-regulated militia," a group of private citizens armed with government-supplied - not privately owned - firearms. It is not fundamentally different from the state militias of the colonial era. It is still composed of civilians who the government trusts to bear arms. The Second Amendment calls on the federal government to trust civilians and allow them to bear arms in a "well-regulated" setting - it doesn't say that anyone can bear arms at any time.

The right to protect oneself

Gun-rights activists argue individuals have a right to protect themselves and their families with firearms. This position can be addressed with both statistics and common sense: According to a study in the New England Journal of Medicine, a gun kept in the home is 43 times more likely to kill a family member or a friend than an intruder. But in a country where criminals often have more guns than law enforcement officials, people feel as if they have the right to adequately defend themselves.

The potential of self defense does not grant individuals the right to own guns. Everyone has the right to defend themselves. But this does not imply they have the specific right to confront an attacker with a firearm. And even if it was a right, that right should certainly not be valued more than the right of the thousands of people who are victims of gun violence every year to live. Firearms are by no means the only way an individual can defend themselves.

Hunting, Shooting and Gun Culture

One of the distinguishing characteristics of American culture is the prominence of the firearm. There are an estimated 192 million privately owned firearms in the United States, 65 million of which are handguns.

Hunting and target shooting are popular sports, attracting many responsible gun owners.

But the safety of the majority should not be compromised by a pastime. The government should not allow guns simply to preserve hunting.

The irrational nature of the gun culture sometimes exposes itself in the attitudes displayed openly by pro-gun extremists. "You can take my gun when you pry my dead fingers off the trigger" is a popular phrase among gun rights hard-liners. Hearing or reading this, it is difficult to believe values like "responsibility" and "tradition" are as important to the pro-gun movement as it claims. For some, the paranoia and violence lying at the heart of the gun culture clearly take prominence over these values.

Destroying an industry

An entire industry operates alongside the gun culture. Firearms provide a livelihood for many Americans. Obviously, the government must provide a safety net for those whose businesses would be closed as a result of a reinterpretation of the Second Amendment. In the face of this, it can not be forgotten that the death of the gun industry would also benefit consumers in the form or reduced health-care costs. In 1995, the Journal of the American Medical Association estimated that the cost of direct health care expenditure for firearm-related injuries in the United States was $4 billion.

A "radical" position?

In the United States, anyone advocating a ban on the private ownership of firearms is bound to be denounced by many as a "radical." Such characterizations, while taken seriously in this country, are laughable in other advanced nations. These countries have all reaped the benefits of strict gun control policies or blanket prohibition on private gun ownership in the form of saved lives.

A 1997 United Nations study revealed the United States has weaker firearm regulations and higher numbers of deaths involving firearms than all other industrialized - and even most developing - nations. There is no denying the causal relationship between weak firearm regulation and the United States' remarkably high rates of firearm homicide, suicide and accidental death.

The Second Amendment must be reinterpreted and guns should be banned, in the best interests of the health, safety and welfare of every U.S. citizen.

09-22-99