Guns & Ammo: What Does the 2nd Amendment Really Guarantee?

25 Deadliest Mass Shootings

in U.S. History: Fast Facts

INTRODUCTION 

For two centuries, the Second Amendment received little notice. Few citizens understood its provisions. Scholars paid it little attention. Lawyers rarely raised it in court. In recent years, of course, the Second Amendment has been thrust to the center of controversy. Politicians declare themselves its “strong supporters.” News reports speculate about gun laws and whether they will pass muster. It has become a synonym, in powerful unspoken ways, for America’s gun culture.

The Second Amendment is one sentence. It reads in its entirety:

"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."

Its foggy wording and odd locution stand out in the Constitution. Lawyers and scholars debate its commas and clauses. For 218 years, judges overwhelmingly concluded that the amendment authorized states to form militias, what we now call the National Guard. Then, in 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court upended two centuries of precedent. In the case of District of Columbia v. Heller, an opinion written by Justice Antonin Scalia declared that the Constitution confers a right to own a gun for self-defense in the home. That’s right: the Supreme Court found there to be an individual right to gun ownership just a few years ago. Now, when we debate gun control we do so in the context of a Supreme Court ruling that limits what we can do (though we don’t yet know how much).

Far from a dry set of words scratched on parchment, then, it turns out that the story of the Second Amendment can tell us much about how our country has changed and grown, how we see ourselves and our government, how we balance the rights of individuals and the need for safety.

Debate still burns about the Framers’ intent and the original meaning of the Constitution. Surprisingly, there is not a single word about an individual right to a gun for self-defense in the notes from the Constitutional Convention. Nor with scattered exceptions in the records of the ratification debates in the states. Nor on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives as it marked up the Second Amendment. James Madison’s original proposal, in fact, included a provision for conscientious objectors.

People ask: who is right? Did the Second Amendment protect militias, or an individual right to a gun? The answer: both, and neither. It protected the individual right to a gun . . . to fulfill the duty to serve in a militia. To the Framers, even our question would make little sense. To us, today, their answer makes little sense.

As the nation spread west, guns grew abundant. (After all, one of those young Constitution writers, Alexander Hamilton, was killed in a duel!) In the years immediately following the Civil War, the authors of the Fourteenth Amendment wanted to make sure that former slaves could arm themselves to protect against organized violence from white vigilantes.

But gun control laws were prevalent, too. An iconic photo of Dodge City—that legendary frontier town—shows a sign planted in the middle of its main street: “The Carrying of Fire Arms Strictly Prohibited.” In the twentieth century, Americans demanded a stronger government as they surged into crowded cities. Amid Prohibition and the Depression, modern gun control laws sought to rein in gangsters and the heat they packed. And, again, the courts stayed out. Chief Justice Warren Burger—a rock-ribbed conservative appointed by Richard Nixon—articulated the consensus when he called the idea of individual gun rights in the Constitution a preposterous “fraud.”

Part Two of the story is about how that changed: how a remarkable, concerted legal campaign toppled two centuries of precedent.

One thread, of course, is the rise of the National Rifle Association. The group brags of its ballot box victories. Starting in the 1970s, the organization also quietly—but emphatically—backed a jurisprudential campaign to enshrine gun rights in the Constitution. Its legal allies insisted that for two centuries judges simply got it wrong. They managed to persuade a substantial part of the public, and after that the courts. The road to Heller was paved by one of history’s most effective, if misleading, campaigns for constitutional change.

Heller shows something more: how a generation of conservative judges and scholars transformed the way we interpret the Constitution. “Originalism” asserts that the only legitimate way to interpret a constitutional provision is to ask what the Constitution meant at the time it was enacted, in the late 1700s. Its influence has peaked in the Supreme Court led by John Roberts. He assigned Scalia the 2008 gun case. Lawyers arguing before the Supreme Court now brandish obscure historical texts like graduate students defending a particularly opaque dissertation. Reverence for the “text” can be just a pretext for a particular political view.

What now? Part Three traces Heller’s impact as we struggle again to curb gun violence. As before, spasms of violence spur calls for new laws. (Today, we are sickened by massacres such as the one in Newtown, Connecticut, rather than the political assassinations that prompted action before.) This is the first time, though, that Americans have debated firearm safety proposals with an individual right to own a gun enshrined in the Constitution. Will new doctrine deflect new laws? Will we all have the right to carry a weapon and stand our ground?

Waldman examines the cases since Heller, and finds a surprise: despite the hoopla surrounding the case, courts upheld nearly all gun rules. Individuals have a right to a gun, judges have found, but society has a right to protect itself, too. Yet that assumption may be premature. As Justice Robert Jackson said, the Supreme Court is not final because it is infallible, but infallible because it is final. Inevitably the Court will speak again. But the High Court’s imprimatur has given new strength to Second Amendment fundamentalism. Increasingly the debate over guns resembles less a contest over crime policy, and more a culture war over core values.

Through it all, Waldman shows in his new study of the 2nd Amendment how the great themes of American history rise and recur: the role of government. Race. Freedom. The singular power of the Supreme Court. Most strikingly, the fact that our view of the Second Amendment is set, at each stage, not by a pristine constitutional text, but by the push-and-pull, the rough-and-tumble of political advocacy and public agitation.

Waldman's book is a good place to start in understanding why we have a Second Amendment in the first place and what it means for our lives today. The story begins in the heat of revolution, sixteen miles outside Boston. May the gun violence against our children end today, before it ever gets to our schools and churches, summer camps and front door steps. Michael Waldman does us all a favor by using his legal skill and clear thinking to put the 2nd Amendment into proper context.

Instead of ranting about the mounting carnage and role the 2nd Amendment plays in our lives, read Michael Waldman's book to help us all get on the same page. Our kids are counting on us to figure it out.

http://books.simonandschuster.com/Second-Amendment/Michael-Waldman/9781476747446/excerpt#sthash.W10qRIZN.dpuf

Michael Waldman is President of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, a nonpartisan law and policy institute that focuses on improving the systems of democracy and justice. Waldman is one of the nation’s most prominent public interest lawyers, and is an expert on the presidency, democracy and the Constitution. 

Fashion, Film and Fantasy

When I got there the music was bumping, pounding in a way guaranteed to give you tinnitus in old age. I wiggled around the limos to get to the velvet rope where the guard did a full look-over before letting me in, the list monitor matched my name to my face, then I was there, in the happening--Beatnik Gallery, fantasy-time Sacramento.

"Fashion On Film" premier, a showcase of short films inspired by the local fashion scene, was a melange of photo shoot, runway show, costume design showcase, make-up and hair design, trunk sale and party in an art gallery with tons of people.

Here's a link to a video explaining what this fun evening was about http://youtu.be/u6fE4QhTfmw

And, here's a link to film producer/director Matt Salvo's movie trailer for "Freakquency"

High fashion is not my usual subject matter so I was astonished to find hundreds of people in a big mid-town art gallery celebrating the local fashion scene on a work night.

Runway show at "Fashion on Film" premier

 I was there because a couple of friends have produced fashion films selected for the upcoming Sacramento International Film Festival and another friend, a former high-fashion model, has an insightful new memoir out about her international modeling experiences -- Runway: Confession of a not-so supermodel. As a result, beautiful clothes, body art, technology and fun suddenly came together in my life. I wasn't looking for it. It just happened and now I'm trying to understand "fashion" in this larger, more dynamic context.  

When the party was over, I couldn't help but wonder What's the point?  Yes, it was a fun evening. But, I guess I'm wondering why young women model. What I mean is why would any beautiful young woman wants to dress in showy clothes and strut around grabbing attention? If you're young and beautiful, the attention is automatic so why bother with theatrics? What is the internal dynamic that causes someone to exhibit themselves beyond the usual notice? What's the emotional payoff on the runway?

One of the short films was the story about a girl caught in the hum-drum of life and college. For her, getting onto the runway was about "the dress." I assume the motivation was that she got to wear lovely clothes she wouldn't be able to otherwise. Is that a common motivation for models or is there something deeper? What's in it for the model?

Meghan modeling, age 18

I asked author/editor Meghan Ward about the motivation and she said: "For me it was ALL about the money. During high school, I was waitressing at the Sign of the Beefcarver for $2.15 an hour plus tips (and the tips were low because we didn't have our own tables and didn't serve the food - it was a buffet-style restaurant). I met a girl in a lifeguarding class I was taking who had just been paid $800 for one day modeling in a pizza commercial. I was probably making $50/day waitressing. That clinched it for me.

"But others do it for other reasons," Meghan said. "I think many just like the attention, the chance to be on a runway or in a magazine and be admired by others. Others do it to get away from their home towns and travel. I think every model has a different reason."

She has a blog post about the top 10 questions people ask her about modeling. Here's an answer to the question:

Do you miss it?

Meghan: I miss the travel sometimes. I never stayed in one country for more than three months at a time. I lived in Paris, London, Tokyo, Milan, Hamburg, Munich, Zurich, Sydney, and New York and traveled to Greece and India. And I miss the money sometimes. I could afford designer clothes back then. I owned a $2000 jacket and several $400 pairs of shoes (and this was 25 years ago). I bought my own apartment in Paris when I was 21 (long sold, sniff sniff), and an Alfa Romeo for my French boyfriend at the time. But it’s really true that money doesn’t buy happiness. I’m much happier now wearing blue jeans and tennis shoes  than I ever was back then.

Although not my usual subject matter, here are some raw images captured at the Fashion on Film preview party:

Film producer/director Kim Mims
 on the red carpet

With film producer/director Matt Salvo
Photo by Ching Lee

Cast of "Freakquency" with producer/director Matt Salvo

From "Gatsby Glam" collection

"007 Hot Shot" collection

"Star Wars Fantasy" collection

"Star Wars Fantasy" collection

"Street Smart" collection

Kim Mims talks inspiration/motivation behind
her fashion short: "Life on the Reeway"

Why does fashion matter?
Leave a comment.
We'd like to know what you think.

You'll find us in the Word Garden

Solving the "Abominable Mystery"

Ambrolla flowers - photo Scott Zona
Wertheim Conservatory, Florida International University, Miami

Scientists are buzzing like bees around new discoveries related to the origin of flowers. They're getting to the root of the blooms we love and sometimes take for granted. What they're finding -- and publishing in the December 20, 2013, issue of the journal Science -- is evidence for the evolutionary processes that paved the way for the amazing diversity found in the world's more than 300,000 flowering plant species we enjoy today.

It seems the "sister" to all blooming plants -- ornamental and food crop species -- is Amborella, a small, evergreen shrub found in the moist understory of tropical mountainside forests of New Caledonia, an island in the South Pacific. Researchers conclude Amborella trichopoda is a descendent of the oldest confirmed branch in the flowering-plant family tree. It is also the sole living species remaining in its line of ancestry.

The plants are unisexual, meaning they will either produce all male or all female flowers, requiring cross-pollination for reproduction. Female flowers are both wind and insect pollinated. Amborella flowers are tiny, typically about 4-8 mm.  The petals and sepals are indistinguishable, so botanists call them tepals.

© Daniel & Irène Létocart (le 04/02/2006)
Lieu: Tchamba (Néouni)

Additionally, there are a variable number tepals, usually about 3 to 8.  A Male flower has anywhere from 6 to 100 flat, reflexed stamens, the male reproductive organs. Female flowers bear 3-8 carpels, the female reproduction organs. If pollinated, female Amborella flowers develop into small red berries, each containing a single seed

Researchers at the University of California, Riverside, are members of an international team — the $7.3 million Amborella Genome Sequencing Project. The newly sequenced Amborella plant is the focus of study because it highlights Darwin’s “abominable mystery” — the question of why flowers suddenly proliferated on Earth millions of years ago.

“This was a very large project where each lab contributed their expertise to a small part,” said Susan Wessler, a distinguished professor of genetics at UCR, who led the California project team.  “Our expertise is the analysis of DNA transposable elements — DNA sequences that can change locations or multiply within the genome. We annotated the DNA transposable elements in the Amborella genome.”

In addition to UCR, researchers from Penn State University, the University at Buffalo, the University of Florida and the University of Georgia found that Amborella is unique as the sole survivor of an ancient evolutionary lineage that traces back to the last common ancestor of all flowering plants. It appears scientists can now tell us what happened, but not why. The unique heritage, however, gives Amborella a special role in the study of flowering plants.

“In the same way the genome sequence of the platypus — a survivor of an ancient lineage — can help us study the evolution of all mammals, the genome sequence of Amborella can help us learn about the evolution of all flowers,” said Victor Albert of the University at Buffalo.

Scientists who sequenced the Amborella genome say it provides conclusive evidence that the ancestor of all flowering plants, including Amborella, evolved following a “genome doubling event” that occurred about 200 million years ago. There does not appear to be an explanation for why this event occurred. Researchers do say some duplicated genes were lost over time, but others took on new functions, including contributions to the development of floral organs.

“Genome doubling may, therefore, offer an explanation to Darwin’s ‘abominable mystery’ — the apparently abrupt proliferation of new species of flowering plants in fossil records dating to the Cretaceous period (geologic period and system from 145 to 66 million years ago),” said Claude de Pamphilis of Penn State University. “Generations of scientists have worked to solve this puzzle.”

What disturbed Darwin was evidence that flowering plants, among all groups of organisms, presented the most extreme exception to his strongly held notion "natura non facit saltum," nature does not make a leap. In Darwin's time, climate change was little understood and perhaps not factored into his theories. Whether that is part of the answer to "why" is not addressed in the current genomic research.

Because of Amborella‘s pivotal evolutionary position, however, it allows better understanding of gene changes in flowering plants that evolved later, including many crop plants — "hence, it will be essential for crop improvement,” said Doug Soltis of the University of Florida.

Darwin's mystery continues, but part of the conundrum has been answered. We now know the "what" of the problem. Perhaps we will soon know the "why."

Under Construction: Stackpole Photo Exhibit

View of Bay Bridge construction from San Francisco

Peter Stackpole: Bridging the Bay Showcases

Engineering & Photographic History

 

Working on the Bay Bridge girders

  

When the photo exhibit "Bridging the Bay" opened in July at the Oakland Museum of California, it marked the first time the museum's full set of Peter Stackpole's bridge building images from the 1930s have been publicly displayed since being acquired. It has taken two decades to gather the two dozen images that form the collection's core.

"We've brought them out one or two at a time, but this is the first time they will all be gathered together in one space," said Drew Johnson, OMCA curator of photography and visual culture.

The show runs through January 2014, and, if the new span of the Oakland-Bay Bridge opens any time soon, it will be a cleaver positioning of these fascinating historical photos.

Bridging the Bay focuses on Stackpole's the early work--he was 21 when he began taking photos of the bridges under construction--and includes quotes from the late artist that interpret the moments and people he captured on film. The selection includes interesting vantage points from the tops of catwalks, beautiful shots that render the bridge’s components in abstraction, and portraits of the construction workers, who faced great personal risk on a daily basis.

As a young photographer in his 20s, Stackpole’s technical expertise and experimentation with the hand-held camera allowed him access to a subject—the construction of the bay's  two bridges—that no other photographer had captured at the time.

Golden Gate Bridge - View of north tower

On Aug. 30, "Above and Below: Stories From Our Changing Bay" will open in the museum's Great Hall. It runs through February 2014, in hopes that by then there will be an opening to celebrate.

Funded by the state's Caltrans, the multidisciplinary exhibition will include aerial photography of the bay, though it will be hard to top the aerial photography taken by Stackpole, who was holding on with one hand while shooting with the other.

"That thing can't make art," Stackpole's father, a well-know San Francisco sculptor and painter Ralph Stackpole reportedly said after seeing the miniature Leica. But that didn't stop his son from climbing the bridge towers like the rest of the building crew.

"He never had official authorization to do this work, which is kind of amazing," Johnson says, while  admiring a dizzying image before the opening. "As you can see he was right up there with them risking his neck."

Peter Stackpole

As long as Stackpole wore a hard hat nobody objected to him being up there. Nobody paid him to be up there either, until "Vanity Fair," ran a spread, in 1935. Someone from the San Francisco Museum of Art saw it, and Stackpole's bridge photos were given a show before the bridge had even opened.

You won't need a hard hat to enjoy these images at the Oakland Museum of California that offer both an historical and artistic perspective on iconic infrastructure that helps define the San Francisco Bay Area.

Links:

http://baybridgeinfo.org/history

 

http://museumca.org/press/omca-photography-exhibition-chronicles-construction-original-bay-bridge-golden-gate-bridge#sthash.sMnDM313.dpuf

Turning Good Straw into Great Gardens

Good soil is the key to a great garden. This truth leads to mixed success through trial and error. In my case, the soil in my area is heavy clay that clogs the roots of even the hardiest plants. Top watering causes the soil to form a glaze that prevents water from readily sinking in, but, on the plus side--it retains the water once it penetrates. This is a blessing during the summer when Sacramento Valley temperatures are routinely in the triple digits and water is slow to evaporate.

I've often thought there has to be a better way to improve my gardening results, but besides hours and hours of laborious spading to mix amendments, I didn't have any ideas about any easy fix until I learned about straw bale gardening and Joel Karsten.

Joel Karsten

He has just published a 78-page guide to growing a successful Straw Bale Garden that explains in detail the perfect way for anyone to have a garden without weeding, bending over, or using chemicals. Karsten promises that, if you follow his step-by-step methods and suggestions you will  grow a beautiful and productive garden this year, even if you have never gardened before.

The best part is that if the soil in your backyard is, like mine, less than productive, it doesn't matter at all. If you have sunlight and water, you'll have a great garden this year. From the Arctic Circle to the heat of the desert, people are using this method, and having great success. The booklet is full color  and has a perfect bind booklet binding.

“I grew up on a crop and dairy farm in Southwestern Minnesota, and started gardening as a kid with my Grandma Josephine,” Karsten says. “She was really my first ‘professor’ of horticulture, but I rounded out my education with a BS in horticulture from the University of Minnesota a few years later.

“Farming and caring for livestock is much more than a full time job,” he said. “My dad always joked when I complained, ‘you can take a vacation anytime you want, as long as you're back in three hours!’ I decided farming wasn’t for me, so I became an entrepreneur starting a business while I was still in college.

“I have owned a number of businesses over the years, but have always maintained my passion for gardening. I want to help gardeners discover the greatest way ever to grow vegetables, a method of gardening I have perfected over the years, a method I call Straw Bale Gardening.”

 If you've ever thought growing vegetables was difficult, time consuming, and hard on your knees and back, Karsten’s method might change your mind. The method eliminates weeding and bending, making it so much easier. This method is low cost and low maintenance and doesn’t depend on great soil.

Small straw bales can range anywhere from $2 to $7 each. Check prices at local feed stores. Also, a soaker hose on a timer makes for easy watering, especially if you've got extended summer travel plans. Eventually the straw breaks down, adding a good mulch to the underlying soil.

Read more: http://www.howmuchisit.org/bale-of-straw-cost/#ixzz2YBlY9CwR

http://www.amazon.com/Straw-Bale-Gardening-Joel-Karsten/dp/0984544909

Making Better Baseball Bats

Cutting the Rate of Shattered Bats by 50 Percent   Researchers say it's the slope of the maple grain wood that makes a better, safer wooden bat

As a long-time baseball mom -- from Little League to the Wood Bat World Series -- I couldn't help but notice the U.S. Department of Agriculture is doing it's part for America's favorite pastime and working to save baseball parents a few bucks, as well as making the game safer.  Sacramento team members check cracked bat during a 2008 Wood Bat World Series game   With the 2013 Major League Baseball (MLB) season sliding into the All-Star break, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack says results of U.S. Forest Service research, funded by MLB, show how professional and youth baseball players can have fewer broken bats. Good news when good wooden bats go for more than $100 a piece.   I have a whole collection in the garage, which needs to go; won't even make decent firewood. But that's another story.   "This innovative research will make baseball games safer for players and fans across the nation," said Vilsack in a prepared statement. "The U.S. Forest Products Laboratory has once again demonstrated it can improve uses for wood products in practical ways."   Here's how: The lab tested and analyzed thousands of shattered Major League bats, developing changes in manufacturing that decreased the rate of shattered maple bats by more than 50 percent since 2008. Researchers said while the popularity of maple bats is greater today than ever before, the number of shattered bats continues to decline.   "Since 2008, the U.S. Forest Service has worked with Major League Baseball to help make America's pastime safer," said U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell. "I'm proud that our collective 'wood grain trust' has made recommendations resulting in a significant drop in shattered bats, making the game safer for players as well as for fans."     The joint Safety and Health Advisory Committee of Major League Baseball and the Major League Baseball Players Association began working to address the frequency of bats breaking into multiple pieces five years ago. FPL wood experts looked at every broken Major League bat from July to September during the 2008 MLB season.   The research team found that inconsistency of wood quality, primarily the manufacturing detail "slope of grain," for all species of wood used in Major League bat manufacture was the main cause of broken bats. Also, low-density maple bats were found to not only crack but shatter into multiple pieces more often than ash bats or higher-density maple bats. Called multiple-piece failure, shattered bats can pose a danger on the field and in the stands.   Slope of grain refers to the straightness of the wood grain along the length of a bat. Straighter grain lengthwise means less likelihood for breakage.   With the help of TECO, a third-party wood inspection service, the FPL team established manufacturing changes that have proven remarkably successful over time, researchers said. Limits to bat geometry dimensions, wood density restrictions and wood drying recommendations have all contributed to the dramatic decrease in multiple-piece failures, even as maple's popularity is on the upswing.   The Forest Service research team has been watching video and recording details of every bat breakage since 2009. The team will continue monitoring daily video and studying broken bats collected during two two-week periods of the 2013 season, working to further reduce the use of low-density maple bats and the overall number of multiple-piece failures.   The U.S. Forest Service maintains the largest forestry research organization in the world. And, if you don't find me in the garden during the All-Star game, look for me in front of the TV with my rally hat on -- Go National League!

 

Sun Splash -- Solar Fountains in the Garden

With the West broiling in triple-digit temperatures, (it’s 108 F in our Sacramento neighborhood) the thought of water and the cool sound of splashing is more than a little appealing.

Got this email advert today about solar fountains that got me to thinking. A quick search of the Internet shows there are as many solar fountain styles as there are gardens. Prices range from high to low, but no solar kits are real budget busters.

With the kits, any whimsical container can be turned into a soothing, refreshing fountain. The ones from Solarrific come in three designs that can create different water patterns depending on mood or patio activity.

Here are some solar fountains that might spark an idea for your own hot-summer water splash:

Also, Solarrific White String Lights can brighten the garden scene. The cheerful essence of this outdoor décor eliminates extension cord mess and danger along with everyone’s enemy—the electric bill. String them inside or outside, the lights hold a full charge with eight hours of sunlight exposure and will automatically turn on at dusk and switch off after six hours.

http://www.solarrific.com For a catalog of products that will cool your garden and your spirit.

What I Talk About When I Talk About Guns



Campbell Armory at Inveraray Castle

What do ancient struggles of the Scottish clans have to do with today's debate in America about gun control?

To my mind, everything. In the wake of atrocities against innocents at places like Virginia Tech, the cinema at Aurora Colorado, the slaughter of children and teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, and now UC Santa Barbara students, the debate about gun control has devolved into Congressional inaction, corporate lobbying and the sniping of special interests, along with bureaucratic and judicial malaise. It's time to take a look at where the idea of the inalienable right to bear arms comes from and how it should be interpreted in America today.

What seems to be lost in the discussion is what the right to "bear arms" actually means and how the concept came to be included in the U.S. Constitution. Reviewing the Federalist Papers, the writings of the Constitution's framers on various aspects of what would become the final document, I find there's reference to the right in English law to bear arms as recognition of the historical rights of Protestants to protect themselves from attackers, particularly followers of Catholic monarchs.

The right to have arms in English history is believed to have been regarded as a long-established natural right to self-protection that supports life. The English Bill of Rights of 1689 emerged from upheaval in a country where clan grudges and religious violence threatened sovereign rule.



Archibald Campbell, 1st Marquis of Argyll
8th Earl of Argyll, chief of Clan Campbell, with his wife Margaret.
He was the de facto head of government in Scotland during
most of the British Civil War (1642-1651). He was a major figure in the
 Covenanter movement that fought for the Presbyterian religion.

According to the history of the Campbell family, Archibald Campbell, the 8th Earl of Argyll and the 1st Marquess of Argyll, was a devoted Presbyterian. This led to conflict with the monarchy. The Earl led (Protestant) Covenanters opposed to King Charles I and was beheaded for treason against the throne in 1661. Efforts were made after his death to disarm the Highland Clans. The fortunes of the House of Argyll were down until the "Glorious Revolution" in 1688.

Ultimately, the Catholic James II was overthrown in the English Civil War and his successors, the Protestants William III and Mary II, accepted conditions codified in the English Bill of Rights, adopted in 1689. Among issues the Bill resolved were the authority of the monarchy to disarm its subjects, after James II had attempted to disarm Highland Protestants, and his desire to maintain a standing (permanent) army.

The English Bill of Rights states that it restores "ancient rights" trampled upon by James II, though some have argued that it created a new right to have arms, which developed out of the sense that it's a "duty" to have them.

Mentioned as an historic  "Protestant" right in the Federalist Papers during the framing of the U.S. Constitution, the right to bear arms for self-protection and the potential need to form militias in times of national emergency was included in the U.S. Bill of Rights.

The U.S. Constitution's 2nd Amendment reads: "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."

When the U.S. Constitution was created in 1787, however, the framers of the document were thinking of the right of persons to protect themselves from attack, historically an attack prompted by a disagreement over personal religious beliefs and fears of insurrection, still a strong concern in a nation newly founded by religious dissidents. 

Today it's estimated by Amnesty International, Oxfam, and the International Action Network on Small Arms, that there are more than 639 million small arms in circulation and more than 1,135 companies based in more than 98 different countries that manufacture small arms, as well as their various components and ammunition. In the U.S., market research counts about 300 gun manufacturing companies with combined annual revenue of more than $5 billion. That's a lot of fire power and a lot of money to support the right of American citizens to protect home and hearth. 

What I talk about when I talk about guns -- and the right to bear arms -- is this: historically it means a single-shot muzzle loader or a pistol to protect oneself from personal attack. Sticking with the context of history and Constitutional intent, possession by private citizens of high-powered, rapid-fire weaponry capable of indiscriminate mass killing is NOT guaranteed by the 2nd Amendment.

It simply is not and never has been. Just as all speech is not guaranteed by the 1st Amendment, ownership of any and all weapons is not guaranteed by the 2nd.

I can't figure out why nobody gets this. I call it Constitutional Drift or a Constitution of Convenience. We make up the Constitution as we go along to fit the fashion of the moment or to serve corporate or political interests or conform to self-centered intentions of individuals. Taken to extremes, I suppose a case could be made for the 2nd Amendment guaranteeing personal atomic bombs for children.

We need to grasp the genesis of the 2nd Amendment -- what it actually says and what it actually intends -- protection of the individual from surprise attack and establishing ready responders in the event of insurrection or foreign assault.

Those simple rights do not guarantee ownership of an AK 47 or a Glock semi-automatic pistol. I say ownership of a revolver and a hunting rifle stretches the 2nd Amendment as far as it will go. Possessing any of the rest of today's modern assault hardware is NOT guaranteed by the 2nd Amendment, is illegal, and, except when this equipment is used by trained professionals for agreed upon purposes of public safety and military response, is a clear and present danger to modern American life.

No mater what money mongers, political opportunists, or the self-serving adventurers might say, when we talk about guns, let's stick with the basics -- let's talk about history and the law. Because, as has been amply illustrated, the lives of our children depend on it.

I understand the complexities of this issue, the acrimony in the debate. I get that we aren't living with technology available three or four hundred years ago. I'm aware that I'll be dismissed as a crackpot. I also recognize that gun violence in America today is out of control and innocent Americans are dying.

I don't believe there is any Constitutional footing for allowing the current level of gun violence to continue unrestricted in the name of the U.S. Constitution. Instead we need to insist Constitutional law be upheld. This is not an economic or partisan issue. It's about social survival. The 2nd Amendment does not guarantee the right of anyone to possess an Uzi, whether its continuous-fire mechanism has been disabled or not. I'm sick of splitting hairs and watching people die.

And, once we finish the discussion and confiscate the illegal weapons, let's get back to gardening.

Gardens at Inveraray Castle, Scotland

Home of Clan Campbell