I support the Second Amendment — the interpretation our Founders endorsed

I am pro-Second Amendment and favor reasonable measures to stop mass killings such as comprehensive background checks and banning access to battlefield weapons.

I embrace both, as most Americans do, but the media has created a false dichotomy of opinion around the amendment that favors the do-nothing minority.

Print and electronic reporters described the small numbers counter-protesting the millions who marched for sensible and limited gun control on March 24 as pro-Second Amendment. Well, I am pro-Second Amendment, too, and so probably are those millions who, like me, favor the right to own weapons for hunting and recreation, but not those designed for warfare.

I support the Second Amendment of the Founding Fathers who understood that keeping and bearing arms came with responsibilities, rights and regulations. “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 framers’ overriding goal was “the security of a free State.”

The “Father of the Constitution” James Madison’s “Notes” on the constitutional convention contains not one word about individual rights. The debate over the amendment concerned control of state militias: Delegates opposed to giving the new national government too much power insisted control be left to the states and they prevailed.

The framers of the Constitution wanted security without having a standing army under central control. They had just fought a revolution against a mighty empire that, they charged in the Declaration of Independence, had “kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.” Revulsion against a standing army largely shaped the amendment, but also the need for security.

The framers assumed both an individual right to bear arms for personal use and the ability of states to regulate them. The colonies had done both for two centuries. Note well, individual rights were assumed but went with responsibility desired for the collective defense, and regulation was part of the package.

During the Revolution the states had regulated weapons by disarming Loyalists — colonists loyal to Britain and opposed to Independence. In 1776 Pennsylvania’s new constitution affirmed the individual right to bear arms but also passed a loyalty oath disarming a large part of its population. Other states passed similar loyalty oaths and other regulations.

English common law that still was followed in the new nation meant that Americans expected to own guns, but “bearing arms” usually referred to what was then mandatory service in the militia. Every man 16 to 60 was enrolled and expected to “bear arms” for collective security, like those farmers and town folk known as “Minutemen” (i.e., the town militia) who showed up at Lexington and Concord and stood up to a professional army.

Under common law, remarkably, any citizen could approach a justice of the peace and demand that a person could be disarmed if they posed a danger to public safety. The right to keep and bear arms was never absolute.

Not until 2008 did a 5-4 conservative, activist majority of the Supreme Court, against all precedent, rule that the Second Amendment guaranteed an individual’s right to own a gun. But it also said the right “is not unlimited” and “not a right to carry any weapon whatsoever.”

The media differentiates between supporters of limited gun control and those who oppose any measures by describing the latter as “passionate” about a “sacrosanct” Second Amendment.

That’s wrong. I am passionate about the amendment but it’s the one the Founders wrote and not the absolute-no regulation one the lobby for gun manufacturers (i.e. the NRA leaders not most of its members) has created.

Not until 1977 did the National Rifle Association leadership decide to propagate its ahistorical version of the amendment, politicize gun rights and lobby for gun manufacturers. It then paid for a massive campaign to produce dozens of law review articles touting the new view of the amendment, much the same way the tobacco industry paid researchers to deny the link between smoking and cancer.

Not all proponents of the new interpretation did it to be paid; some were libertarians; and a handful of respected and even liberal law professors joined them, disagreeing with almost all of their peers. Undecided citizens should read and decide for themselves.

For the record, I do not hunt but own a beautiful old 12-gauge shotgun that I treasure because my father had hunted small game with it and passed it on to me shortly before he died.

This story was originally published April 4, 2018 at 12:42 PM with the headline "I support the Second Amendment — the interpretation our Founders endorsed."