The use, misuse and regulation of firearms in America is a long running controversy. Opinions range from a desire for total elimination, to no rules at all — and we struggle to find a balance.
There are good reasons on both sides of the issue and extremes that border on insanity. If all arms were well-regulated there would probably be few problems but that is unlikely. If there were no guns there would be no gun injuries, but there would still be the kind of people who commit gun crimes and they are more creative than one might imagine. Many people are capable of creating new guns. Almost anything heavy, sharp, pointed or flammable can be, and has been, turned into a deadly weapon. Individual firearms are no doubt the most worrisome. Modern pistols and rifles have amazing stopping power which is why armies, police and criminals depend on them.
The founders had some very good reasons for the Second Amendment. There were very few police departments outside a few cities. There was still a state of war with some Native Americans. The revolution from Britain was not fully settled. That took another 25 years. Some state boundaries were still unsettled. Many states and their citizens were, and are, wary of excessive federal power. A review of world history reveals how unarmed people have lost what little freedom they had to overzealous politics. More often than from invasion. They had no power to resist. One of the first acts of every dictator has been to disarm the civilian population.
Long ago in 1939, the Supreme Court interpreted the preamble “well-regulated militia” to limit arms to those suitable for use in a disciplined, trained militia. That is, those arms that would be carried by an ordinary soldier. Not a machine gun, cannon or sawed- off shotgun. In 1939, ‘suitable’ probably described something like a six gun or Springfield that held 5 rounds. In this century that would be a semi-automatic, but not a fully automatic or crew-served weapon. Definitely not a hard to control, ammunition wasting bump stock modified AR, or sear blocked Glock.
Most people of the colonial time were farmers who hunted. The men, and they were apparently all men, the authors of the Constitution, were experienced and well educated for the time. Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson were successful inventors. The industrial revolution was under way. Many had military experience. They would not have expected the armament to be limited to the specific arms of the 18th century. Many of which were virtually hand made. Some personal rifles of the era were superior to the military issue Brown Bess musket in terms of range and accuracy. Communication and firearm design were the revolutionary high tech of the era. State-of-the-art evolved from muzzle loading flintlock to Gatling machine gun in the same time as communication evolved from a Paul Revere on a horse, to telegraph at the speed of light.
Overly ambitious attempts to remove firearms are likely to fail, but there are some reasonable steps. Everybody thinks his idea is the definition of reasonable. Automatic weapons, expensive to use, belong only on a battlefield and even there are wasteful. Armies resisted them for 50 years.
Every living thing has a right to self-defense against expected threats for which the arms carried by an ordinary soldier are adequate barring an armed invasion. Many reasons that motivated the founders are still valid, but less so than in 1790. It is not unreasonable for the people to keep and bear arms. There are however a small minority who are unreasonable and need to be restrained. Thus, reasonable calls for background checks and red flag laws that can reduce the misuse of weapons. It’s not perfect, but such measures can reduce the risk to a more acceptable level.
Another reasonable measure would be to demystify guns. There is nothing so fascinating to youth as forbidden fruit. Young people can be taught to shoot while at the same time be taught gun safety and responsibility. The high point of Boy Scout camp was the rifle range where injuries were unheard of until a certain loaded AK47 violation here.
Ken Obenski is a forensic engineer, now safety and freedom advocate in South Kona. He writes a biweekly column for West Hawaii Today. Send feedback to obenskik@gmail.com