Congress and the NRA

The House of Representatives has passed legislation relaxing gun control laws. Opponents of gun control are overjoyed and continue to argue for almost unlimited access to guns. But many of these people ignore a number of important points, which strongly suggest a need for controls on the easy availability of guns.

On a typical weekend in Los Angeles, more people are killed with guns than are killed in an entire year in all of England where there are very few guns. In this country, thousands of innocent men, women and children are killed each year with handguns. In the vast majority of these homicides, both the victim and the assailant knew each other prior to the crime. They were either friends or related to each other by blood. Either there is a terrible accident or a “crime of passion” occurs during an argument and a needless death results.

However, a gun advocate might discount these thousands of innocent deaths and call these points irrelevant because of our constitutional right to own guns. The NRA and other gun fans often quote the Constitution to reiterate their inalienable right to own firearms; “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” However, these same people suffer from selective reading. The complete text of the Second Amendment reads: “A well regulated militia being necessary for the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

People who rely on this constitutional guarantee ignore the first part of the amendment; if they ever knew it. The definition of a militia, taken from Webster’s dictionary, is “A part of the organized armed forces of a country liable to call in emergency.” And the vast majority of the 3 million members of the NRA, and others who carry guns, are not part of the “organized armed forces of the country.” Thus, these gun owners are not part of a militia and not guaranteed gun ownership.

The two parts of the amendment are directly related and cannot legally be taken as separate statements regardless how fervently gun enthusiasts want to ignore the first part. Therefore, in addition to the fact that the easy availability of guns cause thousands of innocent deaths a year, there is no constitutional guarantee to own guns.

TONY HILLBRUNER

San Gabriel