Before You Freak out, Read the Executive Orders

I heard that Obama is going to disarm the people with an executive order or something like that.  I was mildly annoyed until I remembered one thing: people are fucking liars.

I think it's pretty well known that I am no fan of the current president.  I really haven't been a fan of any president since I was born.  However, he seems to me to have done this one right.

Great care appears to have been taken so as to create two effects:

1. Avoid violating the second amendment or, really, even treading near its protections.
2. Avoid fixating on guns as the problem and stay focused on gun violence.

I think that last bit is a little dumb.  There is no gun violence problem in america.  There are gun violence incidents and, everyone reasonable seems to agree, there's no way you are going to prevent every incident of gun violence.

Half the executive orders amount to simply declaring he will do his job.  Like nominating a director of the ATF.  Oh no.  Not a director!  Some of them are things like encouraging the states to share information with the federal government.  There's no violation there, of the second or ninth amendments.  If anything, it's more recognition of the latter than I've seen in years.

Some of them are just common sense, like reminding doctors that they are not federally obligated to keep in confidence their concern that a patient might harm themselves or others.  Three times.  Another common sense order is reminding gun stores that they are not obligated to sell guns to crazy people and offering them training on how to spot a nut.

Nestled in there are even a few good ideas.  I'm not going to tell you what they are, though, because I want you to read the orders for yourself.  If you do - if you actually read the orders and evaluate them against the text of the constitution - you probably will realize you should reserve your outrage for other problems...

...like when he tries to push an unconstitutional assault weapon ban through later this year.

Why Does Everyone Keep Adding Words to the Second Amendment?

In the course of my life, I keep hearing people quote the second amendment 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.

Then they try to couple the militia clause to the right to keep and bear arms clause.  That is, they frequently make the claim that we only need to preserve the right to keep and bear arms in such ways as to support the creation of a well regulated militia.

First of all, if try to slice things that way, it parses as a comment or a supporting argument, not a constraint.  The constitution is clear: the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.  Period.  There's no "unless" in there.  There's no "so long as" either.  There's nothing that makes it okay to infringe upon the right of the people to keep and bear arms.

Nothing.

Now, you might say "Hey!  Wait a minute!  There are no other comments in the constitution!"  You'd be right and that still would not justify infringement on the right of the people to keep and bear arms.  In fact, as you'll see, searching for an interpretation of the second amendment that minimizes the amount of comments actually shows our government to be in a far greater state of infringement than merely restricting the right of individuals to keep and bear arms.

The obvious answer is that this is one of the more important issues.  For ages, it has been the case that tyrants start with the restriction of arms.  It wasn't just Hitler.  It's been pretty much all of them.  In one case, it was so bad that the people had to mutate Karate and Kung Fu into Taekwondo in order to dismount the horseback-bound soldiers who oppressed them.

People who fear an armed populace the most usually should have the least voice in how others are governed.  That, I think, accounts for the "being necessary to the security of a free State" bit; which seems pretty in-arguably to be a statement of intent  rather than a prescription or a proscription.

The other amendments in the Bill of Rights are all grants of multiple rights, not a single one.  Even the first amendment works that way.  If you consider that one part to be a comment, and look at how the rest of the constitution is written, you'll see a pretty clear statement that makes a lot of sense.

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.

When you strip out the comment you are left with the following.

A well regulated Militia, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

In which case the proscription against the people's right to keep and bear arms being infringed is still in tact but there is another proscription that has been repeatedly violated over the course of US history: the right to maintain a well regulated Militia.

"How so?" one might ask.  "We have a National Guard!"

Indeed we do but it has been slowly reorganized to be continuously more "national" and less "guard."  That process is likely to continue until, ultimately, the National Guard is completely indistinguishable from the U.S. Army.  We're not there yet - the national guard still has some ties to its containing state - but we're working on it?

Why is that a problem?  Where in the second amendment does it say it shouldn't be a national militia?  To answer that question, we have to come full circle and re-instate the part of the amendment I earlier threw out as "reasoning" instead of law.  Instead of adding words, like typical Republicrats and Democans want to do, let's try just adding parentheses and color groupings to assist in parsing:

(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.

If you look at it that way, it's really clear - like all the other amendments, there is no flexibility or wiggle room in its interpretation.  It is an ironclad statement with many protections:

1. The state has the right to create a well-regulated Militia
2. The people have the right to keep and bear arms
3. Those rights shall not be infringed

I don't see how you could interpret it any other way.