The Difference Ignorance Makes

(Supreme Court Decisions)

What is normally required in law school is reading, writing, and critical thinking.  This involves public speaking, political science, economics and history/government/politics.  The assumption is that the baseline of preparation for legal work is to be able to argue a case with linguistic skill – whether oral or written.

In America, the basic document that is the gauge of interpretation for law is the constitution.  However, the art of interpreting the constitution is grounded in that skill called Historical and Literary Criticism. This art requires an understanding of the historical times in which a document is written in order to understand the meanings of the document – the nature of the culture and its peculiar sociology. 

This is generally accepted as a pre-requisite in advanced education for the interpretation of all historical documents whatever they might be – Shakespeare, Greek mythology, or the Bible. Without such an understanding the meanings of a document are easily misunderstood while translating them into today’s cultural subtleties.  This means that understanding the American constitution requires grasping the nuances of the nation’s social background in the mid seventeen hundreds – a time radically different from our own present moment.   Without this historical approach, the tendency is to impose one’s own personal prejudices upon the document being interpreted and call it professional perspective.

The Second Amendment is an example.  It reads: 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 viewed from its historical context the meaning is plain and without misunderstanding.  The constitution was ratified in 1758.  The primary purpose of state militias was to …execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions. Militias were generally made up of volunteers between the ages of 18 and 45. There was no standing army until 1792 when the Legion of United States was formed of 300 soldiers to help the state militias with this purpose as they fought the native indians on the country’s western front.  This federal army only gradually expanded as wars escalated between the US and other territories.

The subtlety is that state militias were actually a substitute for a national standing army – that which the federal government could call on without having its own.  The fear of having a national standing army was that it might be used to support a despotic government.  However, we now have a federal army, navy, air force and coast guard which obviates the reason for state militias.

Moreover, states have National Guard units whose function is to respond to domestic emergencies, support military operations overseas, and address civil unrest. Thus, state militias are no longer valid which makes the Second Amendment invalid and makes the argument for citizens having an arsenal of guns invalid.

An additional reason for settlers to be armed on the American frontier was to provide meat on the table for those who lived along this region. However, hunting game is now only a sport and not a necessity for family sustenance.  And, if a deer or elk cannot be killed with the first rifle bullet, the second bullet is usually too late – making any sporting gun that requires more than two bullets invalid.

In brief, the Second Amendment is obsolete and those who rely on it to justify the citizenry having a private arsenal of weapons are either ignorant about the purpose and history of this amendment or only use it to justify arming themselves for a war against the nation they claim as their allegiance. And this includes those justices that make up the Supreme Court.  The present majority of this court is either grossly ignorant of the historical context of this amendment or deliberately ignore it for reasons they do not wish made known.  On either count, they pose a threat to the well-being of the citizenry and will make decisions contrary to the nation’s common good.

Social progress is inevitably a war between those who wish to move forward and those who wish to stay where they are – between those who choose the ignorance of the past over the knowledge of the present.  The only issue is who will win; on this issue the fate of the nation rests.

Robert

mythinglink.com