It’s an arduous process arguing with people who support more gun control. Most of the time, it requires getting past layers of logical fallacies and flat-out untruths to get to the heart of the matter, which is that they wish the Second Amendment didn’t exist.
If you support the Second Amendment, you’ve likely heard the nonsensical argument about “need,” as if that is relevant in a discussion about constitutional rights. It doesn’t matter if I “need” a new Glock 17 or an AR-15. The question is whether the Second Amendment protects my right to have one, and it does. Naturally, some people disagree, and it’s worth having those debates, but only if they are willing to discuss the issue in good faith, and they often are not — hence the declaration that someone does not “need” a particular type of firearm. Ironically, it is an issue the Supreme Court will decide this year in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen. New York requires anyone wishing to carry a gun outside their homes to explain to local police why they “need” to have a weapon by showing “proper cause” to carry. Considering the court’s shift since the Heller decision in 2008, gun control advocates are rightfully concerned.
There is also the likelihood that one will deal with the aspersion that gun owners, particularly those who own a variety of firearms, are creepy weirdos who should be put on no-fly lists simply because they have a lot of guns. Tom Nichols did that recently in a discussion he had with A.D. Stoddard. He said in a rant about the Republican Party, “It believes in propagating its own re-election purely for the sake of its people being in office. When that threads along a primary and a voter base that doesn’t just like guns, but as you said, a fetish, an obsession … a weird fixation — not just on guns, but on some of the most powerful guns.” His father was a police officer, and he saw guns often enough, “But it wasn’t this kind of creepy fascination with the black guns, with the shiny weapons that are made to kill human beings.” Apparently, the guns he saw on the block when he was a kid were made for something else?
That also gets into another pointless debate tactic used by gun control supporters. They will tell you, “Its only purpose is to kill people” or “It’s designed to kill people!” Taken at face value, the only conclusion one could reach for the millions of people who own guns and haven’t killed someone is that they didn’t use their firearms for their intended purpose or the guns were poorly designed. It’s emotional, not rational, rhetoric. Sport shooting these days is much more popular than hunting. People enjoy going to the range, meeting up with friends, and spending the day shooting targets with various firearms. It is no more “creepy” or “weird” than when gearheads gather together to talk shop, groups of people play Dungeons & Dragons, or others engage in modern-day treasure hunts via geocaching.
However, one of the most infuriating arguments put forth by gun control advocates is the notion that the Supreme Court, in its Heller decision, “reinterpreted” the Second Amendment as one that had something to do with the collective right to join a militia vs. an individual right to own a firearm.
Nothing could be further from the truth, as is made clear when one examines the history of James Madison and the creation of the Bill of Rights. When Madison first proposed them during the first session of Congress in 1789, he wanted the language inserted into Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution, that section that limits the powers of Congress. In addition, he wanted other amendments in that section — free speech, free press, unreasonable searches and seizures, cruel and unusual punishment — all protections for individuals.
If Madison meant for the Second Amendment to be a limitation on federal militia powers, he would have proposed its insertion into Article I, Section 8, which explicitly defines federal militia powers.
As National Review’s Charles Cooke notes, such an interpretation would mean that the Second Amendment grants people “an individual right to join a state-run organization over which the federal government has full control and can exclude you.” It’s preposterous to think that was the intent of the Constitution’s authors, and to say it in the face of all available evidence is to propagate a lie, nothing more.
