February 21, 2007
The right to bear arms and common sense
USA Today reports that police departments throughout the country have been forced into an arms race with street gangs and common criminals. To combat the weapons now widely available to criminals, departments have to equip themselves with higher caliber, automatic weapons.
The reason? Assault rifles like the AK-47 have become so accessible that just about anyone can get their hands on one. As a result, police are now encountering the automatic weapons in “routine burglaries and traffic stops.”
The Right to Bear Arms is enshrined in the Constitution. Fair enough. I grew up in a semi-rural area of Ohio. I know that firearms are essential in these environments; and I have no desire to take away anyone’s 410 shotgun or 22-calibre hunting rifle. In my teenage years, I used to go skeet shooting with my grandfather. So I am not one of those hypersensitive folks who equates gun ownership with bloodlust or barbarism.
But an AK-47 is perhaps beyond the scope of what the Founding Fathers intended when they gave us all the Right to Bear Arms. In the late 1700s, all firearms were single-shot weapons that took even a skilled shooter nearly a minute to reload. The Founding Fathers didn’t know about twentieth century assault rifles, so we can’t automatically (forgive the pun) assume that Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin would have been in favor of every citizen owning an AK-47 or a Tec-9.
While still honoring the Constitutional Right to Bear Arms, it is possible for us to acknowledge that this right---like many others----is not limitless. As the old saying goes, “The right of free speech doesn’t give one the freedom to yell ‘fire’ in a crowded theater.” By the same token, we should be able to agree that the right to bear arms can be subjected to reasonable limits without the U.S. lurching into totalitarianism.
Sadly, the radical gun lobby has taken the position that any abridgement of gun ownership rights will inevitably lead to the outlaw of all guns. The Iranian government could just as easily argue that if the United Nations wants it to stop enriching uranium today, then tomorrow it will ask them to destroy all their tanks and fighter planes.
An assault rifle is useless for hunting. For personal protection, it’s overkill. It is difficult to imagine why a private citizen would need one---other than to commit a crime, or simply to assert an extreme interpretation of the Right to Bear Arms. In regard to the latter, there will doubtlessly be individuals who claim that they have a right to keep weaponized anthrax or suitcase nukes in their homes. But once again---we are talking about scenarios that the Founding Fathers never could have imagined.