Rights. And Wrongs.

The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, adopted in 1791, reads as follows:

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'm a lawyer who dutifully and sincerely respects the Constitution, which was ratified in 1788.  In 1787, the Northern and Southern states reached a compromise where (black) slaves would be counted as three- fifths of their total  number for purposes of apportionment and taxation.  And then later it became apparent to enough people that the whole "three-fifths" thing was, well, wrong and gross, and that part was removed.  The point is, this country has a sometimes warped history with its Constitution, and as precious as the document may be, it was far from perfect.

In high school I had a civics teacher who'd served as a Green Beret in Vietnam.  One day, he split the class into four groups and asked each group to imagine a dystopian future where we would have to eliminate three of the Amendments from the Bill of Rights.  Each group chucked the Second Amendment in the first round without agonizing over it.  The next day we had to get rid of three more, then two more the next day, and on the final day, we had to choose the one to save.  As I recall, all of the groups were struggling between freedom of speech and freedom association because what group of teenagers would want to live in a world where you couldn't hang out with your friends or say whatever you want?  When we'd all decided, the teacher asked us what we thought of the exercise, and then politely told all of us that we'd gotten it wrong: the Second Amendment was the one to keep. He said we'd understand someday.

I'm all but 40 and I still think the teacher was wrong. Wrong. Of course I'm talking about the shooting in Arizona, which killed six people and wounded thirteen more. The Framers of our Constitution were worried about a tyrannical government running roughshod over a fragile new country.  I'm confident that they weren't concerned with the right of a deeply disturbed 21-year-old to spray dozens of bullets in a few seconds over a crowd of people who'd gathered to meet a member of Congress.  A gun he'd purchased legally and carried legally to the gathering.

I happened to be in the car a lot today, and the radio was bubbling over with people quick to blame what someone else had said that incited the violence.  But since Saturday, all I can think is ... what if this deeply disturbed individual had only had access to a knife? Or even a simple hunting rifle? What if the same were true of the Army psychiatrist who killed the people at Fort Hood?  Or the Virginia Tech killer?  People with serious problems will still do seriously bad things, but is the definition of what it means to be an American still so fragile that it would be lost if we couldn't have nearly unfettered access to semi-automatic weapons?

Anytime anyone mentions gun control, a certain segment will shriek that it's unconstitutional. To which I say: Bullshit.  The "Arms" mentioned by the Framers bear no resemblance to the sophisticated, powerful, ridiculous weapons available at a sporting goods store or gun show near you.  Handguns are for killing people. Period.  They shoot faster, more accurately, and with less expertise and physical strength needed by the operator with each new model.

I'm sure that Congresswoman Giffords had things to do after she met with her constituents on Saturday.  I'm sure the judge who died had a personal life and a full docket of cases with parties depending on him to carve a path for them through the justice system.  I'm sure every person who took a bullet on Saturday had people counting on them, jobs to do, families and friends who loved them and who were planning to see them. One deranged guy was able to wipe that out in a matter of seconds.  The same Constitution that allowed him to buy a semi-automatic weapon will also provide him with a lawyer, a jury, a right to stay silent, and a protection against cruel and unusual punishment for his crimes.  (I can't really imagine how the almost certain death penalty he will face isn't cruel and unusual, but maybe that's for a different post.  Or maybe we don't think it's terribly cruel and unusual, given the ease with which we provided him with a gun in the first place.)

I guess I'm saying that, of the laundry list of rights he will encounter as society deals with him, I don't see all of those rights as equally valuable.