Jovan Belcher shooting his girlfriend and himself over the weekend has set off, as expected, a new debate on gun control. In every argument about gun control somebody inevitably brings up the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution. Noted Constitutional Scholar, Piers Morgan from CNN decided to weigh in on the issue on Twitter which led to this exchange (stolen blatantly from Vodka Pundit)
The entire exchange is good and Morgan is shown to be the idiot that he is. In case you were wondering, the text of the Second 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.
Now, you can argue a lot of things about this text. It is broad and vague. One thing that is not in the text is any reference to muskets being the exclusive “arms” that can be kept. The actually text doesn’t matter though because Piers Morgan is on TV and he is clearly our intellectual better so the rest of us should just shut up. It is always nice to learn about the U.S. Constitution from a guy who is from England.
I seem to remember another time the British tried to tell us what our rights were and ironically, it ended with muskets – and quite poorly for the British.
Anyway, let’s assume for a moment that Piers is correct. Essentially, he is saying that you can an own a gun as long as it’s a musket. So, if Jovan Belcher had shot is wife with a musket, apparently, Piers Morgan would be cool with that. I’ll remember that if I snap and climb a clock-tower. I’ll just bring a musket and nobody will care. See how stupid that logic is? If you got shot would you care if it was a musket ball or a .38? It’s like saying its okay to beat your wife as long as the stick is no longer than a thumb – it doesn’t really matter to the person being beaten.
I am a gun owner. My handguns are the dreadfully evil semi-automatic handguns that gun control advocates are wetting themselves over. They treat these guns as if they are new and deadlier. They’ve been around for at least 100 years and a .45 coming at you from a revolver is just dangerous as one coming from a Glock.
The thing that gets me is why do we only worry about guns when we discuss the Second Amendment? The text doesn’t even refer directly to guns or firearms. It is just the right to bear arms. According to Dictionary.com “bear arms” means,
bear arms,a. to carry weapons.b. to serve as a member of the military or of contending forces: His religious convictions kept him from bearing arms, but he served as an ambulance driver with the Red Cross.
So bearing arms means to carry weapons generally, not just guns. If this is the case, then why don’t we have big public debates on the Second Amendment whenever someone is stabbed, run over by a car, poisoned, etc? I mean, anything can be a weapon or “arms” it’s just a matter of how you use it. Why the obsession with guns? Why do we just argue about one type of weapon rather than the full scope of the Second Amendment?
Like it or not, the Second Amendmentisstill part of the Constitution. These are rights that we the people have to protect us against tyranny and oppressive government. Every regulation or law that narrows our rights takes away part of our liberty and freedom. Changes or new laws that affect our individual rights should be looked upon with a skeptical eye. We should not be too eager to forfeit our rights because once we do we’ll never get them back.
Also, Piers Morgan is a pompous ass.