The post What if Guns and Bullets Had Not Been Invented Before the Constitution Was Written? appeared first on Occasional Planet.
]]>Filmmaker Michael Moore was on Chris Hayes’ MSNBC show on Tuesday, May 24, 2022. It was the day of another senseless mass shooting in the United States. The targets this time were once again school children. Twenty-one people in all killed in the town of Uvalde, Texas.
Moore is clearly for strong gun control legislation, but he didn’t say what so many proponents of gun control frequently say, “I believe in the Second Amendment.”
Instead, Moore pointed out how the Second Amendment has essentially given pro-gun people free license in opposing meaningful gun control. Then Moore raised a fascinating hypothetical question. “What if bullets had not been invented until fifty years after the U.S. constitution was written?”
His point was that gun rights are completely different from any other rights in the constitution. All of the other rights would have been relevant in the times of Greece, or Rome, or really any time. These non-gun rights could easily have stood alone without the Second Amendment. This doesn’t mean that people could not have had guns once they and bullets were invented. The difference is that there would not have been a constitutional guarantee to be able to purchase and possess guns.
There are many who say that even with the Second Amendment, there is no such guarantee. The wording is thoroughly ambiguous:
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 may seem at first that this amendment guarantees people the right to bear arms, but the context is having a well regulated militia. So does the right to bear arms only apply for those who are in a militia (armed forces) or the United States, or can they own guns regardless of whether or not they are in the U.S. military?
This argument is one which America’s gun owners have won. Much as those who favor gun control want immediate new regulations, it appears that it will be years before Congress passes meaningful legislation or the Supreme Court chooses to value public safety above gun rights.
There are numerous reasons why the gun advocates are currently winning this dispute:
The United States did not come close to writing a constitution in a time before guns and bullets were invented. The first guns were invented in China in the 10th Century. Michael Moore was not trying to point out that we almost avoided having the Second Amendment in our Constitution. What he meant is that it is significantly different than any other part of the constitution, and had guns not existed, we would have found a way to agree on the constitution.
It’s one of those “What ifs ….” that keep us thinking. It’s interesting talk, but regrettably, only academic now. Barring some sort of unforeseen circumstances, we’re going to have to live with lightly regulated guns for some time which means that we’ll have more Uvaldes and other mass shootings. The “thoughts and prayers” come easily; meaningful gun control is stymied by the oddity of having the Second Amendment in our Constitution.
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