{"id":4846,"date":"2018-02-22T14:03:10","date_gmt":"2018-02-22T12:03:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/?p=4846"},"modified":"2018-02-23T10:30:00","modified_gmt":"2018-02-23T08:30:00","slug":"time-to-assess-the-second-amendment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/time-to-assess-the-second-amendment\/","title":{"rendered":"Time to assess the second amendment"},"content":{"rendered":"
Re-assess the Second Amendment?\u00a0 Most people would reject the notion at face value. Others would be more critical. After all, only one amendment, the 18th that prohibited the sale and use of alcoholic beverages, was ever repealed.\u00a0 And most Americans believe that the right to bear and carry arms is sacrosanct.<\/div>\n
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Yet, beyond the terrible toll gun violence is taking on the nation\u2014-and the horrific killings in a Florida school last week are the latest outrage\u2014-there is another fundamental reason for re-examining this amendment.\u00a0 The amendment reads \u201cA well regulated militia<\/b>, necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to bear and carry\u00a0 arms shall not be infringed.\u201d\u00a0 What is often missed is that the rationale for a \u201cwell regulated militia\u201d arose from Article I of the Constitution establishing the legislative branch.<\/div>\n
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Article I gives only Congress the power \u201cto raise an army and maintain a navy.\u201d\u00a0 In 1789, after the Constitution came into force, the need for a large standing army was rejected.\u00a0 In the event of a crisis, state militias would provide the armed forces the nation would need at least initially.\u00a0 State militias were also necessary as a further check on the power of the federal government. Because ships took much longer to build than armies, and states had no navies, the requirement for\u00a0 maintaining a navy was understood.<\/div>\n
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Until World War II ended, America only raised large armies to fight wars.\u00a0 In 1947, the National Security Act created \u201cunified\u201d the services under a department of defense and created a separate Air Force. Since then, Congress\u2019s authorization and appropriation of monies for the Defense Department have legalized large standing forces.\u00a0 However, a clear contradiction exists between Article I andjustifying the laws justifying maintaining rather than raising an army.<\/div>\n
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Over time, state militias have evolved into national guards.\u00a0 National Guards have two chains of command.\u00a0 Routinely, each reports to its governor.\u00a0 But the Federal Government also has claim on the Guard.\u00a0 Indeed, a four star officer overseeing the Guard and Reserve has become a member of the Joint Chiefs. Guard and Reserve forces are critical to the active duty military augmenting both numbers and broad capabilities essential to defending the nation.<\/div>\n
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Given that well-regulated militias have been transformed into national guards with federal responsibilities and integration in the Defense Department chain of command and the army is no longer raised, it is self-evident that the Second Amendment, much as the Eighteenth was, is quite obsolete.\u00a0 And while the Supreme Court has repeatedly validated the right of individuals to bear and carry arms, with some limits noted in the Heller Decision of 2008, that was never the intention of the Founding Fathers.<\/div>\n
The Founding Fathers believed and argued that arms were to be borne in the context of state militias.\u00a0 Indeed, for decades, guns and gun control were non-issues.\u00a0 As far as gun control, even in the Wild West, many towns and cities required guns to be checked at city limits to prevent violence.\u00a0 No one claimed Second Amendment rights were being impinged then.<\/div>\n
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From the 1960\u2019s, all that changed.\u00a0 Propelled by the National Rifle Association, the right to bear and carry arms has become explosively charged.\u00a0 Indeed, \u201cguns, gays, God and gestation periods\u201d have become battle flags in American politics. In no other civilized democracy has any of these issues reached similar levels of political and often violent debate.<\/div>\n
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The chance that any serious review of the Second Amendment will follow is zero.\u00a0 The Constitutional authority to raise an army has been ignored in practice.\u00a0 The same applies to the change of well regulated militias to national guards.\u00a0 And even though the original intent of the Second amendment was not to extend the right to bear and carry to virtually all citizens, courts have reversed that interpretation.<\/div>\n
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The U.S. absolutely needs standing armed forces of quality and sufficient quantity to defend the nation.\u00a0 Raising an army is obsolete and unworkable in the security environments, challenges and dangers facing the nation. But, contradictions exist.\u00a0 In a perfect world, common sense would lead to fixing these inconsistencies.<\/div>\n
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Common sense unfortunately is in short supply today.\u00a0 Several conclusions are clear.\u00a0 The Congress will not act to contain gun violence or undertake a sensible review of the Second Amendment. More shootings such as occurred at Sandy Hook in 2012 or Lakeland last week will persist and likely increase.\u00a0 While we are fearful of Islamic State terrorists killing Americans here, the greater threat is gun violence at schools and in the work place.\u00a0 But who is listening?<\/div>\n
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______________________________ ______________________________<\/div>\n
Harlan Ullman served as Senior Advisor for Supreme Allied Commander Europe for twelve years and currently at the Atlantic Council and chairs two private companies.\u00a0 <\/i>His latest book is Anatomy of Failure:\u00a0 Why America Loses Every War It Starts <\/i>and he can be reached @harlankullman.<\/i><\/div>\n

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Re-assess the Second Amendment?\u00a0 Most people would reject the notion at face value. Others would be more critical. After all, only one amendment, the 18th that prohibited the sale and use of alcoholic beverages, was ever repealed.\u00a0 And most Americans believe that the right to bear and carry arms is sacrosanct. Yet, beyond the terrible toll gun violence is taking on the nation\u2014-and the horrific killings in a Florida school last week are the latest outrage\u2014-there is another fundamental reason for re-examining this amendment.\u00a0 The amendment reads \u201cA well regulated militia, necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to bear and carry\u00a0 arms shall […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":4845,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69,76],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4846","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-americas","category-harlan-ullman-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4846"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4846"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4846\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4847,"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4846\/revisions\/4847"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}