A tale of two amendments - 4-19-1774

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Robert Davey: A tale of two amendments
By Robert Davey Published 11:00 pm, Saturday, March 10, 2018
RE: https://www.theintelligencer.com/opi...s-12742359.php

In a speech on American taxation in the British House of Commons, April 19, 1774, Edmund Burke named some of the colonists’ grievances, soon to boil over into the American Revolution.

He ended his list with this: “With a compulsory provision for the quartering of soldiers, the people of America thought themselves proceeded against as delinquents, or at best as people under suspicion of delinquency.”

Burke was talking about the practice of forcing American colonists to host British troops.

James Madison proposed what became the Third Amendment to the Constitution to take care of that provocation:

“No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.”

The amendment was not controversial, and was ratified in 1791, one of the first 10 amendments that together are known as the Bill of Rights.

Not surprisingly, the Third Amendment has not figured much during the 227 years since. No military commander needs to quarter soldiers in private homes anymore — the Pentagon takes care of those needs.

But unlike the Third Amendment, its close neighbor on the Bill of Rights, the Second Amendment, has loomed large, perhaps never larger than today: “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.”

But what exactly does it mean?

In 2008 the Supreme Court, in “District of Columbia v. Heller,” suggested the first part of the amendment expressed a purpose—the need for a well-regulated militia — but it said that purpose had no bearing on the meaning of the second part of the amendment, the right to own firearms. Yet, grammatically, the two parts together make up one sentence; therefore both parts support the meaning of the sentence.

The Court ruled that people have the right to own guns “unconnected with service in a militia.”

In any case, the purpose appears to be served by today’s military, for the Pentagon budget that covers soldiers’ housing and food also pays for all the weapons needed by today’s Army, Navy, Marines and Air Force, as well as the National Guard.

But Madison, who is also credited with drafting the Second Amendment, intended something different when he wrote of a “well-regulated militia.” He wrote in Federalist Paper No. 46, published 1788, that he wanted citizens to be armed so that they would be able to resist a regular army, should it be turned against them by the federal government. He guessed that a regular army might amount to 30,000 men. “To these would be opposed a militia amounting to near half a million of citizens with arms in their hands ... fighting for their common liberties, and united and conducted by [state] governments possessing their affections and confidence.”

Thus it looks as if Madison really did want citizens to be armed in order to serve in a militia, and so the Heller ruling was incorrect in its reasoning.

Yet the idea that millions of armed citizens should be ready to resist the might of the federal government seems silly.

Really then, isn’t the Second Amendment also hostage to the conditions of a far-off historical era, when the everyday considerations of leaders were far different?

But while I’m sure all Americans would agree that the 18th century language of the Third Amendment is irrelevant today, the confusing 18th century language of the Second Amendment lives on, treated as sacred by gun rights groups who use it to justify opposing any attempt to ban civilian ownership of military-style assault weapons in the wake of atrocities like the school massacres in Newtown and Parkland — crimes that would have been impossible even to commit with 18th century weaponry.