Gun Control

Gun control motivates one of U.S. law's fiercest duels.

Arguments favoring control range from calls for regulation to support for total disarmament. At the most moderate point of the spectrum is the idea that government should regulate who owns guns and for what purpose, a position held by the lobby Handgun Control Incorporated (HGI), which helped write the Brady law. This kind of monitoring is far too little for one antigun group, the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, which demands a complete ban on manufacturing and selling guns to the general public. The opposition leaves room for only very slight compromise. The NATIONAL RIFLE ASSOCIATION (NRA)—the most powerful opponent of gun control—generally fights any restrictive measure. The NRA has opposed efforts to ban socalled cop-killer bullets, which can pierce police safety vests. It has supported background checks at the time of purchase, yet only if these are done instantly so as not to inconvenience the vast majority of gun buyers. Even more adamant is the group Gun Owners of America, which opposes any legal constraints.

With so many laws on the books, the question of gun control's constitutionality would seem already settled. Yet this is where the gun control debate begins. The SECOND AMENDMENT reads, "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." Does this mean citizens have a constitutional right to own guns? The gun lobby says yes.

A minority of legal scholars believe that the framers of the BILL OF RIGHTS meant to include citizens along with "a well regulated Militia" in the right to bear arms. One supporter of this view is Professor Sanford Levinson, of the University of Texas, who argues that the Second Amendment is intended to tie the hands of government in restricting private ownership of guns. He charges that liberal academics who support gun control read only the Constitution's Second Amendment so narrowly.

The majority view is more restrictive in its reading. It pictures the Second Amendment as tailored to a specific right, namely, that of states to equip and maintain a state NATIONAL GUARD. Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe argues that "[t]he Second Amendment's preamble makes it clear that it is not designed to create an individual right to bear arms outside of the context of a state-run militia."

This argument has a leading advantage over the minority position: it is what the U.S. Supreme Court has consistently held for over fifty years.

In the 1939 case of United States v. Miller, 307 U.S. 174; 59 S. Ct. 816, 83 L. Ed. 1206 (1939)—the only modern Supreme Court case to address the issue—a majority of the Court refused to find an individual constitutional right to bear arms.

Since the meaning of the Second Amendment seems well settled, the dispute has turned to pragmatics. How well does gun control work, if it works at all? Measuring lives saved by gun control is practically impossible; it is only possible to count how many lives are lost to gun violence. Advocates generally claim that the fact that lives are lost to guns and the possibility that even one life may be saved through gun control are justification enough for legislation. They can quantify gains of another sort under the Brady law. In early 1995, the JUSTICE DEPARTMENT estimated that background checks had kept forty thousand felons from buying handguns, a figure derived from information provided by the state and local authorities who ran the checks.

Opponents say gun control is a gross failure. They argue that it never has kept criminals from buying guns illegally. Instead, they say, prohibition efforts have only been nuisances for law-abiding gun owners: city ordinances like Chicago's that ban handgun sales send buyers to the suburbs, and the Brady law's five-day waiting period amounts to another unfair penalty. Moreover, opponents rebut arguments about gun violence by insisting that guns are actually used to protect their owners from harm. The NRA's chief lobbyist has argued that the SELF-DEFENSE effectiveness of guns is proved by "the number of crimes thwarted, lives protected, injuries prevented, medical costs saved and property preserved."

Settling the gun control debate is no more likely than solving the problem of crime itself. In fact, only the latter could ever bring about the former. After all, it is violent crime, more than accidental gun deaths involving children, that animates the gun control movement. On this point, the two sides agree briefly and then diverge once again. Both want tougher action on crime. The key difference is that gun control opponents want such measures to include almost every traditional means available—more police officers, more prisons, and longer prison sentences—except the control of guns. Advocates believe there can be no effective anticrime measures without gun control.