Dr. Haas De­liv­ers Sec­ond Amend­ment Lec­ture

MISHAWAKA-- Tues­day, Sept. 17, marked the 232nd birth­day of the Con­sti­tu­tion of the United States. To cel­e­brate the event,  Dr. John Haas, As­so­ci­ate Pro­fes­sor of His­tory, de­liv­ered a pre­sen­ta­tion con­cern­ing the his­tory and con­tro­versy sur­round­ing the Sec­ond Amend­ment. 

“It’s some­thing I’ve been read­ing about for sev­eral decades,” said Haas. He said that the Sec­ond Amend­ment must be viewed in two con­texts--the con­text of our pre­sent de­bate and the con­text of the de­bate the found­ing fa­thers were hav­ing in the 1780s and 1790s. 

Haas said that, while most peo­ple agreed that Amer­i­cans have the right to keep and bear arms, the Supreme Court held that this right had lit­tle or noth­ing to do with the Sec­ond Amend­ment; rather, they held that the Sec­ond Amend­ment per­tained strictly to mili­tias. 

How­ever, that all changed eleven years ago. That’s when Jus­tice Scalia handed down the de­ci­sion in the case Dis­trict of Co­lum­bia v. Heller; the de­ci­sion stated, “the Sec­ond Amend­ment pro­tects an in­di­vid­ual right to pos­sess a firearm un­con­nected with ser­vice in a mili­tia, and to use that arm for tra­di­tion­ally law­ful pur­poses, such as self-de­fense within the home.” 

“We’re sort of left where we were be­fore Heller,” said Haas, “which was the con­text of the de­bate in the 1780s and ‘90s.” 

The Con­sti­tu­tion was not drafted un­til af­ter the con­clu­sion of the Rev­o­lu­tion­ary War. Dur­ing the war, the gov­ern­ment had been op­er­at­ing un­der the Ar­ti­cles of Fed­er­a­tion. In 1787, these were com­pletely thrown out, and the Con­sti­tu­tion was pro­posed to take their place.  

The Con­sti­tu­tion was pub­lished in news­pa­pers in the fall of 1787 along with a call for each state to hold con­ven­tions to vote on whether or not they would rat­ify the Con­sti­tu­tion. Not every­one wanted to ac­cept the Con­sti­tu­tion, and the de­bate raged so hotly that it gave birth to two po­lit­i­cal par­ties: the Fed­er­al­ists (pro-Con­sti­tu­tion) and the Anti-Fed­er­al­ists (anti-Con­sti­tu­tion). 

Patrick Henry iden­ti­fied him­self as an Anti-Fed­er­al­ist and in 1788 he ar­gued against the Con­sti­tu­tion on the fol­low­ing grounds: “Your arms where­with you could de­fend your­selves, are gone. A stand­ing army we shall have also, to ex­e­cute the ex­e­crable com­mands of tyranny… [Con­gress’s] con­trol over our last and best de­fence is un­lim­ited. If they ne­glect or refuse to dis­ci­pline or arm our mili­tia, they will be use­less: the States can do nei­ther, this power be­ing ex­clu­sively given to Con­gress.” 

“In other words,” said Haas, “there’s no guar­an­tee that we get to keep our arms in this new con­sti­tu­tion.” 

In­deed, dur­ing the first vote to rat­ify the Con­sti­tu­tion, not every state agreed to pass it. So the Fed­er­al­ists came up with a com­pro­mise: the Bill of Rights. 

“The Fed­er­al­ists said to the Anti-Fed­er­al­ists, ‘pass [the Con­sti­tu­tion], and we will pro­tect your rights,’” said Haas. 

Haas ex­plained that James Madi­son, who penned the Bill of Rights, would have con­sid­ered the rights cur­rently main­tained by other states in their con­sti­tu­tions. Penn­syl­va­ni­a’s con­sti­tu­tion main­tained the right to bear arms and men­tioned noth­ing about mili­tias, whereas Vir­gini­a’s con­sti­tu­tion did the di­rect op­po­site, in­sist­ing upon a mili­tia and men­tion­ing noth­ing about the in­di­vid­ual right to keep and bear arms. 

Madis­on’s fi­nal word­ing of the Sec­ond Amend­ment reads 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.” 

Orig­i­nally, Madis­on’s Bill of Rights con­tained 12 amend­ments; how­ever, Con­gress only passed 10 of those amend­ments, leav­ing us with the Bill of Rights that we still use to­day. 

Ac­cord­ing to Haas, the an­tiq­uity of the Bill of Rights is part of the prob­lem. 

“We are try­ing to get a clear an­swer from the Con­sti­tu­tion, which may not be ad­dress­ing those ques­tions at all,” said Haas. 

Haas said that it is very likely that the Sec­ond Amend­ment per­tains only to mili­tias. 

“The peo­ple were the mili­tia. The mili­tia was the peo­ple. The peo­ple were white males over 18 who were fit to do that kind of stuff,” said Haas. “We do not have that sit­u­a­tion to­day.” 

Haas likened the de­bate about the Sec­ond Amend­ment to plac­ing the Con­sti­tu­tion on a rack. 

“We’re tak­ing the Con­sti­tu­tion and we’re strap­ping it to a rack and we’re stretch­ing the ropes and we’re try­ing to tor­ture an­swers out it that it just does­n’t have.” 

He added that the found­ing fa­thers would likely be sur­prised and dis­ap­pointed that we are turn­ing to them to an­swer the ques­tions of to­day. 

“They re­ally did ex­pect us to fig­ure it out,” said Haas. “Thomas Jef­fer­son only ex­pected the Con­sti­tu­tion to last 20 years. My guess would be that those 55 guys, if we brought them here, they would have vary­ing opin­ions just like we do.” 

He added that he is “fairly con­fi­dent” that the found­ing fa­thers would have agreed with the in­di­vid­ual right to keep and bear arms; how­ever, what ex­actly they say what free­dom would mean is an­other story.  

“They would not com­pre­hend our sit­u­a­tion,” said Haas. 

Haas said that, at the pre­sent time, he does not see a clear way to re­solve the de­bate. 

“I don’t nec­es­sar­ily see a way out of this. I think we’re kind of stuck.” 

Haas con­cluded his pre­sen­ta­tion by ad­vis­ing the at­ten­dees to read the Con­sti­tu­tion for them­selves, not only be­cause it is a valu­able piece of Amer­i­can his­tory, but also be­cause they will then be bet­ter equipped to de­fend their own view­point on the is­sue.