I RECEIVED a letter from a reader who passionately replied to an article I wrote about the gun control. In the article, I looked at the importance of understanding the spirit and historical context by which the law was written in our understanding and appreciation of the Second Amendment of the Constitution in the very contentious issue of stricter gun control measures that President Barack Obama has been advocating for.
I quoted US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg who explained in an interview the historical basis for her view on the Second Amendment and how it relates to the gun control debate.
“The Second Amendment has a preamble about the need for a militia… Historically, the new government had no money to pay for an army, so they relied on the state militias,” she said.
“The states required men to have certain weapons and they specified in the law what weapons these people had to keep in their home so that when they were called to do service as militiamen, they would have them. That was the entire purpose of the Second Amendment.”
Justice Ginsburg went on to say, “It’s function is to enable the young nation to have people who will fight for it to have weapons that those soldiers will own. I view the Second Amendment as rooted in the time totally allied to the need to support a militia. So…the Second Amendment is outdated in the sense that its function has become obsolete.”
Mr. Scott Miller from Grand Terrace, California is married to a Filipina and had the chance to read my article in the Asian Journal while they were dining at a Filipino restaurant.
In essence, Mr. Miller said he does NOT support Pres. Obama’s executive action on gun control. From what I understood in his commentary, Mr. Miller believes 1) the president is abusing his executive power and is, therefore, violating the Constitution; and that 2) Obama has ill intent in advocating for stricter gun control laws and would only want to deny Americans of their right to bear arms as protected by the Second Amendment of the Constitution.
Mr. Miller wrote that “all the ‘common sense’ gun laws in the world would not have prevented past mass shooting …or will they or the new executive actions proposed by Obama prevent a single shooting. ” He added that “they have no more potential of saving lives than any previous gun law or regulation has to date.”
He also opined that neither Justice Ginsburg nor this writer, have a clue about the true spirit or purpose of the Second Amendment.
To quote his thoughts about this:
“…few non-gun owning Americans understand the true reasons why our founding fathers included the right to bear arms in the Bill of Rights to the US Constitution. They did not include it to protect hunting rights or for self-protection against the bad guys who do own guns, or even for self-defense by individuals living on the frontier far from the protection of military forces against Indian attack…”
And then Mr. Miller said, “rather, our founding fathers understood all too well that those in charge of any government, even one based on democratic principals, have a natural tendency to believe not only that they, and ONLY they, know know what is in the best interest of the people they govern, but that the people are INCAPABLE of knowing what is in their own best interest”.
“As a result, governments,” he wrote, “even ones based on democratic principals, will become despotic and tyrannical if nothing is put in place to prevent it. An armed populous is the only thing that keeps a democratic government democratic.” Mr. Miller then went on to quote George Washington to prove his aforementioned point.
“The Second Amendment serves to protect all of the other God-given rights protected by (NOT created by) the US Constitution. Without the Second Amendment, [the] government would have abolished ALL our rights long ago,” he wrote.
THANK YOU, Mr. Scott Miller, for sharing your opinion.
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Gel Santos Relos is the anchor of TFC’s “Balitang America.” Views and opinions expressed by the author in this column are are solely those of the author and not of Asian Journal and ABS-CBN-TFC. For comments, go to www.TheFil-AmPerspective.com, https://www.facebook.com/Gel.Santos.Relos
“THANK YOU, Mr. Scott Miller, for sharing your opinion.”
And a cogent opinion it is!
Ginsberg glosses past the fact that the right to bear arms is preexisting and fundamental (U.S. v. Cruikshank, 1875; Heller v. D.C., 2008), and that the majority opinion in Heller ruled that the reference to the “militia” in the amendment merely announced the reason the guarantee was being enumerated. The right has always been presumed to exist independent of any legal instrument.