Gun Control Is Not Losing Your TarGet In the Recoil

Guns, like many other issues of the day, have two distinct and opposing views with many people in the middle or undecided. Even following the tragic events of December 7, 1993, when unemployed handyman Colin Ferguson boarded the LIR's 5:33 out of Penn Station. Ferguson waited until the train, filled with local commuters on their way home, pulled out of the Hicksville station before drawing a 9mm pistol. Ferguson then opened fire walking up and down the aisle shooting passangers indiscriminately, stopping only to reload, twice. When he was finished six were dead and 19 were injured.

Gun control advocates think that outlawing guns would have stopped the killings from ever happening. While gun rights advocates believe just as strongly that it could have been stopped by one innocent person being armed and fighting back. In order for an issue to even be at hand, both sides must agree that there is a problem with guns and gun control. Both gun control and pro gun advocates do agree that there is a problem. Pro gunners say it is too hard to own a gun and the gun controllers say it is too easy to get a gun.

Gun control advocates would argue that gun ownership is not a right and is not protected by the second amendment. They further believe guns are harmful to society. Gun control advocates also believe guns are not needed for self-defense. Gun-controllers use points such as, the constitution, specifically the second amendment, hunting and gun related assaults to try to prove their point; however most of their arguments are based in emotions and only have merit in the specific case they are trying to illustrate. For when you strip away the emotional rhetoric and examine issues logically, so called gun control laws fail to accomplish any of their stated goals.

A lawyer once said, "If the facts are with you, argue the facts. If the facts are against you, argue the law." Now gun control advocates have added, "If the facts and the law are against you, argue the emotions!" Let us start this discussion with the simplest and strongest argument for gun rights. This argument comes to us from the very foundation of our great nation, the Constitution.

On December 15, 1791, the new United States of America adopted the Bill of Rights the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution, affirming the fundamental rights of its citizens. The First Amendment guarantees freedom of religion, speech, and the press, and the rights of peaceful assembly and petition. The second amendment says, "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 importance of this right to the framers of the constitution and the founding fathers could not be clearer, as it spells out in the foundation document of their new nation that they hold this right to be no less important than the freedom of speech.

Much has been made by the gun control advocates of the phrase "a well-regulated militia", as it appears in the second amendment; arguing that the true intent of the framers was to guarantee this right to state militias and not the individual. I believe the flaw in this argument comes from their ignorance at best and selective interpretation or outright lying at worst, of the historical facts surrounding the original intent of this amendment.

The framers of the constitution were purposefully vague in the wording of many articles throughout the constitution. As a significant portion of the constitution's framers were themselves lawyers, I believe this deliberate vagueness was an effort to prevent the spirit of the document from becoming lost in the semantics of verbatim analysis so often favored by barristers and politicians. This necessitates that we look at other works of the time to help us in interpreting the framers intent. To these ends constitutional scholars, the federal courts and laymen alike have relied heavily on the Federalist Papers for additional insight to our constitution.

In the Federalist Paper: No. 29, Alexander Hamilton defines the characteristics of the "militia" in its context of the second amendment, as a collection of the individually armed members of the citizenry, and not a standing army. Of this collection of everyday friends and neighbors Hamilton says, "Little more can reasonably be aimed at, with respect to the people at large, than to have them properly armed and equipped; and in order to see that this be not neglected, it will be necessary to assemble them once or twice in the course of a year." Mr. Hamilton seems to be going as far as to imply that the "people at large" should periodically get together to ensure they stay properly armed and equipped for the times and the possible threats of the day.

James Madison incontrovertibly posits the notion that an armed citizenry is an absolute deterrent to the ambitions of a tyrannical government. On January 29, 1788, the Revolutionary War fresh in everyone's memories, Madison wrote to the people of New York in Federalist Papers: No.46. Speaking of how the minutemen and militia faced down the whole of the renowned British army:1

It may well be doubted, whether a militia thus circumstanced could ever be conquered by such a proportion of regular troops. Those who are best acquainted with the last successful resistance of this country against the British arms, will be most inclined to deny the possibility of it. Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of.

The United States of America was emerging as the world's first democracy. Madison illustrates in details how armed citizens are required to protect it, then and now, as we have been doing for over 200 years.

Having established a constitutional base for the argument that the right to keep and bear arms to be an individual right, lets us now look at the legal precedents set down by our courts.

The United States Supreme Court listed the second amendment as a pre-existing individual right in 1875, when Chief Justice Waite delivered the courts opinion in U.S. v Cruikshank stating, "This is not a right granted by the Constitution. Neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence."

In April 1999, Judge Cummings of the United States District Court wrote in his opinion in U.S. v Emerson, "A textual analysis of the second amendment supports an individual right to bear arms." The government not agreeing