June 10, 1999 New York Times Op Ed Page
ESSAY / By WILLIAM SAFIRE
An Appeal for Repeal
-----------------------------------
Amendment II: 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.
-----------------------------------
WASHINGTON -- Twenty years ago, I asked Richard Nixon what he thought of gun control. His on-the-record reply: "Guns are an abomination." Free from fear of gun owners' retaliation at the polls, he favored making handguns illegal and requiring licenses for hunting rifles.
Last week, when ABC's Charles Gibson asked Bill Clinton why he was supporting only niminy-piminy restrictions on guns, our current President, also with the freedom of a lame duck, replied testily: "Should people have to register guns like they register their cars? Do I think that? Of course I do." He didn't propose it only because Congress was opposed.
The majority of the nation may well share the revulsion at firearms expressed by these two quite different Presidents. That is why Congress, using the loophole of protecting minors, is nibbling nervously at the fringes of gun control. We'll get trigger locks and a delay of sales at gun shows; big deal.
Why not bite the bullet? Wouldn't it be better to frame the argument in plain, stark terms?
Believers in unrestricted purchase and ownership of guns claim a personal right guaranteed under the Bill of Rights' Amendment II. They say the people's right "to keep and bear Arms" means exactly what it says.
Believers in gun control insist that the Founders wanted to insure that the states forming the Federal compact had the right to have militias, which each state would regulate; thus could Virginia put down a slave rebellion. They argue that the Second Amendment did not confer any right of an individual to carry a weapon.
Who's right? Or, whose right -- is it the state's or the individual's? Until recently, advocates of gun control have argued successfully that the right belongs to the state, not the private person.
But that has recently been successfully challenged. A Federal court in Texas held that individuals have at least some rights to weapons. The appeals will probably put the argument before the Supreme Court.
This is not a lay-down hand for the anti-gun lobby. For years, principled liberals have had qualms about the way the Second has been treated as a quaint archaism to be ignored.
Prof. Laurence H. Tribe, Harvard's guru of constitutional law who supports gun control and would surely be on the high court if liberals had their way, told The Times this week: "It becomes impossible to deny that some right to bear arms is among the rights of American citizens."
Asked to elucidate, Professor Tribe tells me: "The debate has been cast in a misleading, dichotomous way between those who cast the Second Amendment as completely irrelevant to any claim of individual right and those who treat it as . . . essentially stripping the Government of the power to impose reasonable limits to protect public safety. That's a false statement of choice."
Comes now the emergence of a constitutional middle ground. The Murky Second is thus interpreted as a state right sometimes and as an individual right at other times. One day it's James Madison, the next day it's Madison James.
That can't be right. Put another way, a right that is sometimes not a right is no right at all. After doing a great job on the First Amendment, the amending Founders botched the Second.
The intellectually lazy will say, "Let the Supremes sort it out." I say, let the people decide a political issue. Either we're serious about our right to gun ownership or we're serious about our need for gun control.
Here's how to fix a flawed amendment that is the source of so much confusion: Repeal its ambiguous preamble. Let some member of Congress introduce an amendment to strike the words before the comma in the Second Amendment.
Then vote the amendment up or down. If it fails to pass, stop arguing and compromise on nibbling. If Congress passes repeal, let ratification be fought out in the states, where representatives closest to the people can decide on strict licensing.
That's the decisive, constitutional way to come to grips with the abomination of too many handguns in trigger-happy hands.
ESSAY / By WILLIAM SAFIRE
An Appeal for Repeal
-----------------------------------
Amendment II: 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.
-----------------------------------
WASHINGTON -- Twenty years ago, I asked Richard Nixon what he thought of gun control. His on-the-record reply: "Guns are an abomination." Free from fear of gun owners' retaliation at the polls, he favored making handguns illegal and requiring licenses for hunting rifles.
Last week, when ABC's Charles Gibson asked Bill Clinton why he was supporting only niminy-piminy restrictions on guns, our current President, also with the freedom of a lame duck, replied testily: "Should people have to register guns like they register their cars? Do I think that? Of course I do." He didn't propose it only because Congress was opposed.
The majority of the nation may well share the revulsion at firearms expressed by these two quite different Presidents. That is why Congress, using the loophole of protecting minors, is nibbling nervously at the fringes of gun control. We'll get trigger locks and a delay of sales at gun shows; big deal.
Why not bite the bullet? Wouldn't it be better to frame the argument in plain, stark terms?
Believers in unrestricted purchase and ownership of guns claim a personal right guaranteed under the Bill of Rights' Amendment II. They say the people's right "to keep and bear Arms" means exactly what it says.
Believers in gun control insist that the Founders wanted to insure that the states forming the Federal compact had the right to have militias, which each state would regulate; thus could Virginia put down a slave rebellion. They argue that the Second Amendment did not confer any right of an individual to carry a weapon.
Who's right? Or, whose right -- is it the state's or the individual's? Until recently, advocates of gun control have argued successfully that the right belongs to the state, not the private person.
But that has recently been successfully challenged. A Federal court in Texas held that individuals have at least some rights to weapons. The appeals will probably put the argument before the Supreme Court.
This is not a lay-down hand for the anti-gun lobby. For years, principled liberals have had qualms about the way the Second has been treated as a quaint archaism to be ignored.
Prof. Laurence H. Tribe, Harvard's guru of constitutional law who supports gun control and would surely be on the high court if liberals had their way, told The Times this week: "It becomes impossible to deny that some right to bear arms is among the rights of American citizens."
Asked to elucidate, Professor Tribe tells me: "The debate has been cast in a misleading, dichotomous way between those who cast the Second Amendment as completely irrelevant to any claim of individual right and those who treat it as . . . essentially stripping the Government of the power to impose reasonable limits to protect public safety. That's a false statement of choice."
Comes now the emergence of a constitutional middle ground. The Murky Second is thus interpreted as a state right sometimes and as an individual right at other times. One day it's James Madison, the next day it's Madison James.
That can't be right. Put another way, a right that is sometimes not a right is no right at all. After doing a great job on the First Amendment, the amending Founders botched the Second.
The intellectually lazy will say, "Let the Supremes sort it out." I say, let the people decide a political issue. Either we're serious about our right to gun ownership or we're serious about our need for gun control.
Here's how to fix a flawed amendment that is the source of so much confusion: Repeal its ambiguous preamble. Let some member of Congress introduce an amendment to strike the words before the comma in the Second Amendment.
Then vote the amendment up or down. If it fails to pass, stop arguing and compromise on nibbling. If Congress passes repeal, let ratification be fought out in the states, where representatives closest to the people can decide on strict licensing.
That's the decisive, constitutional way to come to grips with the abomination of too many handguns in trigger-happy hands.