After Sutherland Springs, Use The Second Amendment To Prevent Mass Gun Violence

Editorial Cartoon by AF "Tony" Branco

by Ralph Benko, Contributing Author: Since Orlando we've experienced multiple mass shootings. Las Vegas was the most horrendous such incident in modern America. Sutherland Springs is merely the most recent and, unless we act decisively, surely not the last.

The only thing I find more frightening than those mass shootings is how quickly they disappear from the national consciousness. Simply ignoring this problem is unacceptable. Sending prayers to the families of the victims is surely not enough.

After the mass shooting in Orlando I wrote a column, After Orlando, Let's Require Gun Owners To Join The National Guard, pointing out that Switzerland has a gun culture that rivals that of America's, yet with an order of magnitude less gun violence. This column explained how, by taking the Second Amendment to the Constitution seriously and in full we can dramatically reduce gun violence while impeccably respecting the Bill of Rights.

I'm a Constitution nut. A solution lies hidden in plain sight right in the Second Amendment: "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."

The militias now, by and large, are subsumed into the National Guard. The Guard is a very well-regulated militia indeed.

Without doing any violence to the letter or spirit of the Constitution, it is entirely possible to make gun ownership contingent upon membership in the Guard or other legally recognized state militia. If done in full good faith -- with NRA officials given seats at the table -- this will appeal to the right (which has high respect for our military and for service) and will be at least palatable to the fair-minded left.

... As reported in Time Magazine in a 2012 article, The Swiss Difference: A Gun Culture That Works:

"Even as the gun-control debate rises again in the U.S. in the aftermath of the horrific school shooting in Newtown, Conn., the gun-loving Swiss are not about to lay down their arms. Guns are ubiquitous in this neutral nation, with sharpshooting considered a fun and wholesome recreational activity for people of all ages.

"Even though Switzerland has not been involved in an armed conflict since a standoff between Catholics and Protestants in 1847, the Swiss are very serious not only about their right to own weapons but also to carry them around in public. Because of this general acceptance and even pride in gun ownership, nobody bats an eye at the sight of a civilian riding a bus, bike or motorcycle to the shooting range, with a rifle slung across the shoulder.

... "Switzerland trails behind only the U.S, Yemen and Serbia in the number of guns per capita; between 2.3 million and 4.5 million military and private firearms are estimated to be in circulation in a country of only 8 million people. Yet, despite the prevalence of guns, the violent-crime rate is low: government figures show about 0.5 gun homicides per 100,000 inhabitants in 2010. By comparison, the U.S rate in the same year was about 5 firearm killings per 100,000 people, according to a 2011 U.N. report."Think about it. Switzerland rivals the United States in gun ownership yet experiences only one-tenth of the gun violence. How can this be? It is because the Swiss celebrate gun ownership as a patriotic duty and conjoin it with high gun responsibility.

What does this mean for us? Control gun violence by respecting the Second Amendment, including its first thirteen words.

Despite drawing 34,000 readers, that heterodox column had no notable policy impact. The NRA is opposed to almost anything that represents restrictions on gun ownership. Many professional gun control advocates appear to believe that eventually mass shootings will shift popular sentiment toward incremental, then rigorous, gun control. Many leaders from both sides are engaged in dogmatic Virtue Signaling rather than Constitutionally rigorous, classically liberal, civic engagement.

Time to return to first principles. In this case: "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."

I do not fetishize the Constitution and its Bill of Rights. I respect them not out of sentimentality. They are fully deserving of respect.

The Constitution's authors were political geniuses. Statesmen of historic stature. We depart from their shrewd insights at our peril.

The debates around gun ownership at the founding of the United States make it clear that the founders were not trying to protect the rights of deer hunters, much less Big Game hunters whose idea of a good time is to slaughter some innocent elephant. Based on their experience in the American Revolutionary War, they wanted an armed citizenry as a bulwark against tyranny. As nicely summarized at the Lectlaw.com.

As Noah Webster put it in a pamphlet urging ratification of the Constitution, "Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe." George Mason remarked to his Virginia delegates regarding the colonies' recent experience with Britain, in which the Monarch's goal had been "to disarm the people; that [that] . . . was the best and most effectual way to enslave them." A widely reprinted article by Tench Coxe, an ally and correspondent of James Madison, described the Second Amendment's overriding goal as a check upon the national government's standing army: As civil rulers, not having their duty to the people duly before them, may attempt to tyrannize, and as the military forces which must be occasionally raised to defend our country, might pervert their power to the injury of their fellow citizens, the people are confirmed by the next article in their right to keep and bear their private arms.

Thus, the well regulated militia necessary to the security of a free state was a militia that might someday fight against a standing army raised and supported by a tyrannical national government.How do we dramatically reduce the level of gun violence without doing violence to the Bill of Rights? Take seriously the full text and purpose, including the first, explanatory, clause of the Second Amendment. What does a well regulated Militia look like?

Back to TIME:

…Switzerland's gun ownership is deeply rooted in a sense of patriotic duty and national identity. Weapons are kept at home because of the long-held belief that enemies could invade tiny Switzerland quickly, so every soldier had to be able to fight his way to his regiment's assembly point. (Switzerland was at risk of being invaded by Germany during World War II but was spared, historians say, because every Swiss man was armed and trained to shoot.)TIME later wrongfully asserts that "the Swiss mentality can't be transposed to the current American reality." That is preposterous and betrays a smug denigration. Cultivating a "culture of responsibility and safety that is anchored in society" is custom tailored to America. Let's embrace it and inculcate it rather than persist in the political warfare between those who advocate gun ownership repression and those who prefer gun anarchy. The right to keep and bear arms also entails a civic duty.

What to do? The state militias have been largely subsumed into the National Guard. I propose that we open the National Guard to auxiliary members who meet its standards for moral and psychological rectitude, making membership a predicate for gun ownership. That will screen out those who the Founders would not have tolerated in the State militias of their day.

Doing this also would ensure that gun owners receive training, and even a modest degree of drilling, and be subject to inspection to ensure their compliance with Guard regulations. Done with integrity it would exalt, not degrade, the clear purpose of the Second Amendment.

I myself am a gun owner. Based upon my informal polling of other rank-and-file gun owners, this proposition could be palatable, even welcome, if carried out in good faith. Gun owners trend patriotic and, moreover, respectful toward the Armed Services. To be required to join the Guard, on reasonable terms, would be more of an honor than onerous.

There will be plenty of specifics to argue about. As Van der Rohe once observed, "God is in the details." The National Guard is under the joint authority of the state governors and the president. And the contingency of federal control is something that needs, and deserves, to be very carefully considered and even constrained for the spirit of the Second Amendment to be fully honored.

The NRA certainly will, as it should, be militant at helping to shape the specifics of what "well regulated" should look like and prevent this from turning into a pretext for disarming the American people. And the left, rather than hoping for a turn in the tide of public sentiment in favor of plenary gun control, will then assuredly stand up for reasonable standards that will be effective without trampling a Constitutional right.

"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."
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Ralph Benko is an advisor to nonprofit and advocacy organizations, is a member of the Conservative Action Project, a contributor to the contributor to the ARRA News Service. Founder of The Prosperity Caucus, he was a member of the Jack Kemp supply-side team, served in an unrelated area as a deputy general counsel in the Reagan White House. The article which first appeared in Forbes.

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