FOLLOWING the San Bernardino massacre that claimed the lives of 14 people and injured 21 others, people ask: when will these senseless killings end? When will Congress pass sensible gun control laws to keep high-powered firearms out of the hands of people who are not fit to own guns?
Republicans argue against this — contending that because of these series of mass killings in the United States, people should absolutely be armed to protect themselves against bad guys who do have guns. Besides, they say that any infringement of the right to bear arms is in violation of the Constitution.
But is it really?
I read this interpretation of the Second Amendment from Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg:
“The Second Amendment has a preamble about the need for a militia…Historically, the new government had no money to pay for an army, so they relied on the state militias. And the states required men to have certain weapons and they specified in the law what weapons these people had to keep in their home so that when they were called to do service as militiamen, they would have them. That was the entire purpose of the Second Amendment.”
But, Justice Ginsburg explained, “When we no longer need people to keep muskets in their home, then the Second Amendment has no function, its function is to enable the young nation to have people who will fight for it to have weapons that those soldiers will own. So I view the Second Amendment as rooted in the time totally allied to the need to support a militia. So…the Second Amendment is outdated in the sense that its function has become obsolete.”
As for the Heller case, decided by the Court in 2008, Justice Ginsburg said, “If the Court had properly interpreted the Second Amendment, the Court would have said that amendment was very important when the nation was new; it gave a qualified right to keep and bear arms, but it was for one purpose only—and that was the purpose of having militiamen who were able to fight to preserve the nation.”
Do you agree with Justice Ginsburg’s interpretation of the law? Should there be stricter gun control laws in America?
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Gel Santos Relos is the anchor of TFC’s “Balitang America.” Views and opinions expressed by the author in this column are are solely those of the author and not of Asian Journal and ABS-CBN-TFC. For comments, go to www.TheFil-AmPerspective.com, https://www.facebook.com/Gel.Santos.Relos
