Bridging on Paul Jacob’s latest excellent column here on TFL, he correctly reminds us that the right to keep and bear arms are guaranteed us in the Constitution. Confiscating arms from peaceful citizens in NO is over the line, no question.
But I wonder: Why are Americans so conflicted on the subject of arms? Strong majorities believe in the right to gun ownership, yet there is also a regulate guns counterforce which is also quite strong.
The easy answer is that high-profile public shootings of widely admired pols and celebs over the past 40 years prompts a desire to not relive those events, if at all possible. The NRA’s mantra “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people” is certainly true and reasonable from where I sit.
And yet, the Constitution is not so crystal clear on what “keep and bear” really means. “Keep and bear” what and where? What’s an “arm”? Can you take that “arm” anywhere?
No, you can’t, IMO. You certainly can’t take an arm onto someone else’s property if they don’t want you to. Whether you can take an “arm” into public is, I think, an open, hazy constitutional question.
To explore it, I’m reminded of an old Springsteen song, “New York City Serenade,” and the line “It’s a mad dog’s promenade.” Imagine walking down the streets of Manhattan with thousands of people. In an extreme gun culture, anyone could walk around with any sort of arm they wanted, including automatic weapons. I find this vision unimaginable and horrific. Manhattan would be a ghost town, for any crazy person would have the “right” to brandish weapons, high-powered weapons at that. Who’d want to be there with that knowledge? I for one would not.
Perhaps a way to interpret the Constitution is that the words “keep and bear” arms means “on your property.” That’s a nationwide right. The states, however, should be allowed to regulate arms “in public,” that is, off your property. Perhaps seeing a machine gun strapped to someone’s back in Barrow, AK, would be OK. But, I suspect, not OK in NYC.
-Robert Capozzi