Ruling protects individuals’ rights

The Supreme Court affirmed the right of the individual citizen to keep and bear arms for… The Supreme Court affirmed the right of the individual citizen to keep and bear arms for personal defense Thursday when it overturned the D.C. handgun ban.

The case was decided by a 5-4 vote, with the majority opinion written by Justice Antonin Scalia, who said, “It is not the role of the court to pronounce the Second Amendment extinct.”

And as much as it pains me to put this in writing, I agree with Scalia.

The notion that the Second Amendment applies only to those citizens serving in a militia is a specious argument put forward by certain segments of the American Left, which has a commitment to ending gun violence stronger than its commitment to republican government.

I respect those supporters of the handgun ban for their dedication to public safety, and I understand their arguments.

I was one of them for some time.

But over time I abandoned my strong conviction that the Second Amendment was a dangerous and racist relic of America’s slaveholding past.

Let me explain. It is understood in certain political and historical circles that the Second Amendment was included in the Bill of Rights to placate Southerners who were less worried about any physical threat from the federal government than they were about the threat posed by their slaves.

In order to counter this threat, Southern whites formed militias to patrol plantations and prevent slave rebellions. It was these militias that the Second Amendment was designed to preserve.

The problem with this interpretation of the Second Amendment’s history is that it ignores the greater republican history of the armed citizenry.

The role of an armed citizenry in safeguarding republican liberty and preventing tyranny dates back to the days of the Roman republic.

From Rome onward, the armed citizenry has remained a constant facet of republican philosophy.An armed citizenry founded the English republic, on which this nation is largely modeled, and it only failed when the people of England relinquished their military power to a standing army.

Americans today must be wary that we do not repeat the mistakes of the ancient Romans and the modern Britons. Americans must not abdicate their responsibility to protect themselves and their families to the government.

Thursday’s Supreme Court ruling amounts to an admission that the government is not able to protect the citizenry, and as such, it is a citizen’s right to be able to protect him or herself.

This is not a radical position: Article XIII of the Declaration of Rights of the 1776 Pennsylvania Constitution states, “The people have a right to bear arms for the defense of themselves and the state.”

The men who wrote the Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776, including Benjamin Franklin and George Bryan, were not only pillars of their community but also leading politicians and philosophers. What did they understand about an armed citizenry that our society has forgotten?

Perhaps the answer lies in the nature of citizenship during the early republic.

Citizenship was extremely restrictive in the early years of the republic and so was gun ownership. Both were regulated racially and economically, and although I don’t endorse such qualifications for citizenship, it is important to note that such qualifications made the Second Amendment a lot less dangerous to private individuals and society as a whole.

But a lot has changed since 1776. The 14th Amendment established birthright citizenship in 1868 and that made those protected by the Second Amendment a much less exclusive club.

And that is why I support not just the part of Scalia’s opinion that protects the right of individuals to own handguns but also the parts of the majority opinion that reaffirm existing restrictions on what guns can be purchased and where they can be carried.

In effect, the ruling did not change much. Individuals still cannot purchase machine guns, and laws governing concealed carry licenses remain unchanged.

In fact, for the first Second Amendment ruling in 70 years, Thursday’s decision was actually quite moderate.

Debate the Second Amendment with Giles at gbh4@pitt.edu.