So it’s happened again. Inevitably. The details are still murky, but a terrorist (let’s call him what he is) has shot up a crowd of festival-goers along the Las Vegas Strip in what now appears to be the bloodiest mass murder in U.S. history. It turns out he wasn’t a member of IS. And perhaps it’s just as well; if he were, the “Pray for Las Vegas” hashtag going around, with its subliminal Christianity vs Islam, West vs East message, would play right into their polarising agenda.
The attack has thrown more fuel on the already raging fire that is the gun control debate. But little is likely to change; not so much because of a lack of national appetite or an absence of outrage over the atrocity, but because the right to bear arms, as most people know, is written into the Second Constitution:
“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.”
My native England once too had the right to bear arms enshrined in law – namely in our Bill of Rights (1689). It was never part of our constitution though because we’ve never had one. Or at least not a written one. The Law of the land is instead made up of parliamentary acts, court judgments and conventions. And throughout the long and occasionally illustrious history of my sceptred isle, we’ve produced some similarly batshit laws which really should be, but to the best of my knowledge have yet to be, repealed.
One peculiar relic of Anglo-Gaelic tensions at the beginning of the 15th century is that you can still shoot a Welshman within the walls of the city of Chester with impunity, as long as it’s with a crossbow and you do it after sunset. Another is that you can legally murder a Scotsman in York, provided he has the great misfortune to be carrying a bow-and-arrow at the time.
So does this mean I can invite my irksome friend Douglas to York for a Red Letter archery experience, patiently wait until he picks up his bow, shoot him at point-blank range in the face, and then hope to get away with it scot-free for want of a better phrase?
Of course it doesn’t. Much to Douglas’s relief, and to the relief of Welshmen up and down the land who fancy a wild night out in Chester, these archaic laws have been superseded by a host of others that safeguard their right not to be brutally murdered in geographically specified locations.
I have neither the time nor desire to sift through English legal code and its laws relating to murder and manslaughter. But I can point to one well-known law that would help Douglas sleep well before our upcoming archery trip: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948):
“Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.”
Now, let’s go back to the Second Amendment and its right to bear arms. That one must bear them in a militia, and that the arms must be taken up for the preservation of a free state (i.e. against a tyrannical government) is problematic. But we can skirt over this for now. What we shouldn’t skirt over is the historical context in which the Second Amendment came to light.
The Second Amendment was written in 1791, just 15 years after the U.S. was founded. The nation was going through the growing pains one would expect from an adolescent: a crisis of identity, a need to understand its place in the world, and an unhealthy attitude towards drinking.
But the biggie was insecurity. This manifested itself in its wish to be able to defend itself from its government from above and, much more uncomfortably, from its slaves from below.
Plus there was the perfectly rational fear that the parental English, whose house the U.S. had just moved out of, would come knocking–not to mention the Welsh and the Scots who were keen to get as far away from Chester and York as physically possible.
The kind of arms in existence at the time of the Second Constitution were muskets–unreliable, inaccurate and really…really…slow…to…reload. Granted any tyrannical government at the time wouldn’t have had access to anything better, just more people to bear them (hence the need for a militia). Let’s imagine though that a government worse than Trump’s current one were to crop up right now. What would be the likely outcome?
Fighting off a tyrannical government today would be slightly more problematic than it would two centuries ago. The government would have at its disposal stealth jets, tanks, and drones, instantly deployable and easily coordinated. With the current state of military AI, I can’t imagine it would even have to invest human resources in putting down a revolution. Call me a coward, but I’d wish my local militia the best of luck in the wars to come and throw in the towel.
The part of the Second Amendment providing for the right to bear arms is therefore no longer fit for purpose. Today’s guns are simply more advanced than those writing it could have envisaged; and even though those of the fully-automatic variety are tightly controlled, semi-automatic weapons, especially when modified, are still capable of causing unspeakable damage. As we saw yesterday.
Yet still, U.S. courts refuse to recognise the anachronism of the Second Amendment. As recently as March 2016 in fact, a court saw no problem in chronologically telescoping the Amendment’s content onto the present day, proclaiming:
“The Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding.”
A great deal of ink will be spilt in the coming days and weeks over what should be done in the wake of this terror attack. That tighter controls are needed is self-evident. But that’s not the point I want to make. Rather the reason for my detour into the plight of the Welsh and Scots in Chester and York is to suggest that we should feel no more justification preaching antiquated laws as gospel than an atheist would feel preaching the gospel as gospel.
Even the Ancient Romans–one of the most conservative cultures in western history whose Republic (and later Empire) offers a valuable foil to today’s U.S.–didn’t believe their laws were static. So why should we do the same with ours by making the Second Amendment sacrosanct, inviolable, and impervious to change?
We owe it to every citizen as part of their human right to life, liberty and security of person to drastically change the direction this is going. Or, to quote from the Second Amendment for any pro-gun supporters who disagree with the idea, we owe it to every citizen as part of their right “to live without fear in a free state.”
